CNN
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Among the materials turned over to special counsel Jack Smith on alleged fraud in the 2020 election are documents that touch on numerous debunked conspiracies and unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud peddled by Donald Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani.
The documents were withheld by former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who claimed they were privileged, only to be handed over to Smith on Sunday in what was the late stages of a federal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The files include affidavits claiming widespread “irregularities,” shoddy statistical analysis said to reveal “fraudulent activities,” and opposition research about a senior employee from Dominion Voting Systems at the center of civil litigation and a federal criminal investigation stemming from a breach of Colorado’s voting system.
Documents turned over by Kerik also connect him and other members of the Trump legal team to efforts to discredit an executive at Dominion Voting Systems — efforts that are now the subject of civil litigation and a Colorado state criminal investigation.
The tranche includes a 29-page dossier on the executive, Eric Coomer, detailing his anti-Trump rhetoric on social media, as well as his background working for the voting machine company. The title of the document describes it as written by a North Carolina attorney on behalf of “Hon. Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Trump Legal Team, and Other Associate Attorneys Fighting Election Fraud, 2020 Presidential Election.
Coomer has brought a defamation lawsuit against the Trump campaign, Giuliani and others promoting claims that he is connected to a scheme to rig the 2020 election.
The documents denied by Kerik also include a 105-page report from the aftermath of the 2020 election compiled by the Trump and Giuliani campaign that contains unsubstantiated allegations of campaign fraud, including witness statements and false allegations of excessive votes and illegal votes.
They also include communications between investigators hired by Giuliani — including Kerik — about the debunked report on irregularities in Antrim County, Michigan, which Trump repeatedly told was bogus but continued to be touted until January 6, 2021.
An example is a memo titled “Briefing materials for members of the Senate” that Katherine Friess – a former Trump lawyer – sent to Kerik, Steve Bannon and an email address known to belong to Giuliani on January 4, 2021.
This tranche of documents handed over to Smith further illustrates the scope of the unsubstantiated fraud claims being circulated to high-level Trump allies at the time.
One of the research documents Kerik handed over was a report on so-called U-Voters, a theory that there is “an army of phantom voters,” accumulated on voter rolls over the past few years, “that can be dispatched at will.”
The report was referenced in late December 2020 letters sent to the Justice Department and to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell by Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a leading proponent of overturning Trump’s election run for governor in 2022.
The Kerik documents also include multiple versions of a research memo purporting to analyze the Pennsylvania election and claiming to be looking for an “indication” of fraud. The Trump team’s focus on Pennsylvania, and how its bogus claims of fraud there affected state election officials, has been the subject of Smith’s scrutiny.
Additionally, internal communications handed over by Kerik suggest Trump’s team tried to seize on an earlier Government Accountability Office report about the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber arm to undercut what Trump said — and accepted — during a February 2020 Oval Office meeting about election security.
They include the GAO report and what appears to be a memo highlighting the fact that “DHS Critical Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA) failed to fully implement multiple strategies to secure the 2020 Presidential election.”
The memo seeks to counter CISA’s public assertion that the election was “the most secure in American history,” based on the security programs presented by Trump officials in a February 2020 briefing. Trump seems to have embraced the programs in early 2020, to the point of suggesting the agencies hold a press conference so he can take credit for their work, CNN reported Monday.
This headline and story has been updated with additional reporting.
