A voting machine company unfounded by President Trump and pro-Trump conspiracy theorists accused of illegally tipping the 2020 presidential contest has teamed up with one of Washington, DC’s most prominent public relations firms to refute the allegations.
Shortly after the election, Dominion Voting Systems hired Hamilton Place Strategies to coordinate a public relations campaign in response to the bizarre claims made by the president, his legal team and their supporters, said Michael Steel, an HPS partner and former spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.
Steel has given media interviews in the weeks since the backlash against the company, including the software’s “switching” votes in major states from President Donald Trump to President-elect Joe Biden. “It’s not physically possible for our machines to switch votes from one candidate to another,” Steel said in an interview with Fox News last month.
Other senior HPS employees have also used their platform to push back such claims. “This doesn’t apply to Dominion voting machines, not a single word. None of that, ” tweeted Tony Fratto, an HPS partner and former George W. Bush spokesman, earlier this month.
Dominion’s hiring of HPS is just one aspect of his campaign to curb attacks on the company, including false allegations of ties to late Venezeulan president Hugo Chavez and alleged attempts to manipulate non-bidding contracts for the Georgia company. The company says those attacks have led to threats to the physical safety of its employees. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Dominion’s director of security has been in hiding for more than a month.
On Wednesday, Dominion lawyers sent a letter to former Trump attorney Sidney Powell demanding that she retract some of her more bizarre claims about the company. The tone of the letter suggested it was a precursor to potential lawsuits against Powell or others who have filed or reinforced the claims.
Another company targeted by Powell and other Trump allies, Smartmatic, sent similar letters to Fox News, Newsmax and One America News this week demanding that those media companies retract “all false and defamatory statements” about the company.