IIt was billed as an “explosive report” on the “foreign ties” of election technology company Dominion Voting Systems that Donald Trump’s legal team sent to state lawmakers to give them an “overview” of alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election. But despite the Trump team’s apparent eagerness to denounce the report and its claims in December 2020, three months later no one seems to want to write it.
Katherine Friess, the Trump legal team volunteer whose name is on the front page of the report entitled “Dominion Voting Systems Overview 12/2/20,” and in metadata embedded in the document, says she had nothing to do with it . Friess and Bernie Kerik, a former New York City police chief under former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a volunteer on Trump’s legal team, say the report was sent to the legal team by a then White House employee to former Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro. The former high-ranking Trump official declined multiple opportunities to comment on the record for this story.
The difficulty in identifying an author for a report that Trump’s team once happily bragged about underscores the extent to which the looming threat of lawsuits from Dominion Voting Systems has seen veterans of the 2020 presidential election overturning the confused. Lawyers for Dominion have filed $ 1.3 billion lawsuits against Trump personal attorney Giuliani, pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell and pillow magnate Mike Lindell over their alleged defamation of the company’s voting software, and more lawsuits are reportedly to come.
Senior Trump campaign officials, including former president and head of the legal team Giuliani, have broadcast publicly since debunking conspiracy theories about Dominion, from nonexistent ties with Venezuela to falsify “deleted” votes. But Friess and Kerik’s claims that a Trump administration employee shared the report with the campaign’s legal team suggests the White House was even more involved in the attempts to question Dominion’s products.
The Dominion report first appeared publicly in early December in an article about the Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump conspiracy site. The story alleged that the Trump campaign used the document to inform state lawmakers of their allegations of voter fraud. The report describes itself as “an overview” of Dominion Voting Systems’ “history, executives, ability and design” and “foreign ties”, and reiterates a number of claims that have since been discredited, including that Dominion has ties. with “several state-run Venezuelan software and telecommunications companies” and that the company’s products use software from another election technology company, Smartmatic.
Friess’ name appears on the cover page and metadata embedded in a PDF uploaded to Archive.org linked by The Gateway Pundit. In an email to The Daily Beast, Friess insisted that she had nothing to do with the report and did not know how her name got on the document.
“I had nothing to do with researching, writing, or producing the Dominion Report. I have no idea how my name got on a cover page for it, who did it, or why, ”Friess told The Daily Beast, claiming the report was“ distributed ”by a member of Navarro’s team.
Kerik, who was pardoned by Trump for a host of felony charges and later aided Trump’s legal team in his crusade to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory, said Friess was not involved in the production of the Dominion report. . “It was actually sent to the mayor’s legal team [a person with] Peter Navarro’s office [on] 11/29, I’m not sure though [Peter] saw it before we received it. “
Kerik continued, “I am of the opinion that Navarro did not see it, and I do not believe he wrote it. However, it was sent to me and the legal team through a then White House employee who worked for Peter. “
During a phone call on Monday, Kerik read The Daily Beast the email the “then White House assistant” had sent on Nov. 29, but declined to name who sent it. The Daily Beast has since confirmed that the sender was indeed an official working at the Trump White House.
Kerik worked with Giuliani on Trump’s legal team to collect affidavits about alleged irregularities in the 2020 election and “liaise with people who wanted to discuss the matter with the president or mayor,” he said. Kerik added that Friess “had never met Giuliani or the president before coming in and volunteered to assist in the legal efforts. I was the one who introduced her to the mayor. I was with her in the White House the first time they met [Trump], and that was a meeting with Giuliani and [others]
A staunch Trump loyalist, Navarro also wrote three documents, collectively called ‘The Navarro Report’ (‘The Immaculate Deception’, ‘The Art of the Steal’ and ‘Yes, President Trump Won’), which incorrectly stated claimed there was widespread voter fraud. and irregularities that tipped Trump’s election to Biden.
Friess recently made headlines when her name surfaced as part of a visit by a Giuliani-affiliated forensics team that traveled to Antrim County, Michigan in November to copy voter data in connection with a local lawsuit against district officials. The Pick up Eagle reported that Friess “bragged” about having recently dined with Trump and Rudy Giuliani to local officials, but Friess says she has never eaten with Trump and “certainly” has “never claimed to have done so”.
Friess says she joined Trump’s legal team as a “volunteer attorney, to ensure election integrity, just like hundreds of other volunteer attorneys across the country.”
According to Kerik, “she helped prepare legal documents, interviews and reviewed affidavits; and coordinated travel, legislative hearings and meetings, as directed by the mayor or myself. “