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Dominion 投票系统员工是否关于操纵特朗普的选举?

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2020 年 11 月,包括特朗普总统的儿子和律师在内的右翼活动分子和评论员以一名选举技术员工为目标。

【宣称】

曾担任多明尼投票系统产品战略和安全主管的埃里克·库默在反法发电话会议中吹嘘 2020 年选举对抗唐纳德·特朗普。

【结论】

未经证实

【原文】

Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but the misinformation keeps on ticking. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here.

In the aftermath of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, outgoing President Donald Trump, along with many of his allies and supporters, promoted a slew of unfounded conspiracy theories and allegations that electoral fraud played a telling role in the victory of Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

In particular, election denialists focused on Dominion Voting Systems, a company that sells electronic voting machines and software in North America. We have previously addressed several of those claims in detail. In mid-November, Snopes readers asked us to look into one widely shared set of claims surrounding Eric Coomer, who was at one time Dominion’s director of product strategy and security. 

On Nov. 13, the right-wing commentator Michelle Malkin interviewed Colorado businessman and right-wing activist Joe Oltmann, who made a number of allegations against Coomer.

Oltmann claimed he had infiltrated local antifa groups in Colorado, and in September 2020 took part in a telephone conference call. He said during that conversation, he heard a man named Eric speak, and another caller referred to him as “Eric, the Dominion guy.” According to Oltmann, another participant in the call asked “What are we going to do if fucking Trump wins,” to which, according to Oltmann, “Eric” replied “Don’t worry about the election. Trump is not going to win, I made fucking sure of that. Hahaha.”

It’s also not clear whether Coomer’s alleged remarks, if they did take place, were made in earnest, and therefore whether they should be interpreted as proof of election meddling. Oltmann told Malkin he had heard Coomer laughing after allegedly bragging about interfering in the election (“Trump is not going to win, I made fucking sure of that. Hahaha.”)

Furthermore, even if Coomer made the comment in earnest, he might have been lying, either to impress others on the call, to exaggerate his power and influence, or for some other reason. 

Facebook

In mid-November, Oltmann published what appeared to be several screenshots from the Facebook account of an individual named Eric Coomer. We found an account whose profile picture matched that of the account apparently featured in the screenshots, but we have not yet been able to verify that it is owned by Eric Coomer from Dominion. 

Snopes asked Oltmann for any and all relevant screenshots, archived links and URLs relating to what he presented as Coomer’s past pronouncements on Facebook, and in particular any concrete evidence demonstrating that the Facebook account did indeed belong to Eric Coomer from Dominion.

In response, Oltmann told Snopes he had “over 200 pictures and screenshots,” though he didn’t specify whether they constituted the proof we had requested. Oltmann expressed reluctance about providing them to Snopes, and ultimately did not do so in time for publication. If we receive substantive additional evidence, we will update this article accordingly. 

Since we haven’t yet been able to verify the authenticity of the screenshots, or confirm that they were actually posted by Eric Coomer from Dominion, we’re not linking to them in this article. They included a post that contained a purported statement by “Antifa,” but no clear sign that the poster endorsed the statement; a vehemently anti-Trump post from July 2016; a post dismissive of Trump supporters in Texas; posts of YouTube videos for songs whose titles or lyrics expressed antipathy towards police; and a post that strongly criticized a controversial “election integrity” commission set up by Trump to investigate his own unfounded claims of widespread electoral fraud in the 2016 elections.

To reiterate, we don’t know whether Eric Coomer from Dominion created the posts shown in the screenshots Oltmann published. However, even if he did, they would not constitute proof of any impropriety on his part, and certainly would not point towards any election interference on his part. They do indicate that whoever created them is strongly critical of Trump and some of his followers. It might be inadvisable for an employee of an election technology company to articulate those views on social media, but the posts are not, in and of themselves, proof of improper actions. 

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