Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Colbeck Letter
Colbeck Letter
MEIER
April 2, 2021
Via Email
Patrick Colbeck
Email: [email protected]
Mr. Colbeck:
We write again on behalf of US Dominion, Inc.1 Since the November 2020 election, you
have repeatedly and falsely claimed that the election in Michigan (and elsewhere) was stolen through
the manipulation of vote counts in Dominion machines, including before Michigan’s Republican-
led State Legislature and in Mike Lindell’s false and defamatory “documentary,” Absolute Proof.
You have now taken your disinformation campaign on the road, touring Michigan, giving a
PowerPoint presentation titled, “Case for MI Decertification” (the “Presentation”), and falsely
blaming Dominion for stealing the election from former President Trump. You are knowingly
sowing discord in our democracy, all the while soliciting exorbitant amounts of money—totaling
over $1 million so far—from your audiences paid directly to your personal business. Throughout
the many stops on your disinformation campaign across Michigan, you have regurgitated the failed
arguments put forward by, among others, Sidney Powell, Mike Lindell, Patrick Byrne, Russell
Ramsland, Josh Merritt, Navid Keshavarz-Nia, Mellissa Carone, and other proven liars, passing off
your and their widely ridiculed and already dismissed claims as “new evidence” to deceive your
audiences for money.
So there is no doubt whatsoever that your claims are not just false but have been repeatedly
debunked by bipartisan election officials, actual election security experts, judges, and numerous
Trump administration officials and allies, we have included links to the four separate lawsuits
Dominion has filed against Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, and Fox News Network,
LLC for broadcasting the same lies about Dominion.2 Because your demonstrably false claims have
caused and continue to cause enormous irreparable harm to Dominion, its employees, and
1
We also represent and write on behalf of its subsidiaries, Dominion Voting Systems, Inc., and Dominion Voting
Systems Corporation (collectively, “Dominion”).
2
Dominion v. Powell et al, No. 1:21-cv-00040 (D.D.C. Jan. 8, 2021),
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29090821/1/us-dominion-inc-v-p; Dominion v. Giuliani, No. 1:21-cv-00213
(D.D.C. Jan. 25, 2021), https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/41955367/1/us-dominion-inc-v-giulia; Dominion v. My
Pillow, Inc. et al, No. 1:21-cv-00445 (D.D.C. Feb. 22, 2021), https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59670901/1/us-
dominion-inc-v-my-pillow-inc/; Dominion v. Fox News Network, LLC, No. 21C-03-257 (Del. Super. Ct. Mar. 26, 2021),
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20527880-dominion-v-fox-news-complaint.
American democracy, we write to demand that you retract your false claims and set the record
straight, as set forth below.
I. Your Presentation Relies on Proven Liars and Discredited Individuals, and Utterly Fails
to Meaningfully Source Any of the Data or Statistics in It.
As an initial matter, throughout your Presentation, you reference and rely on the same
proven liars and discredited individuals that courts and (actual) experts alike have thoroughly
discredited, including:
• Mellissa Carone. You likewise claim that Mellissa Carone—someone who was hired
through a staffing agency for one day of work on election day to clean glass on machines
and complete other menial tasks—is a source of “evidence” that Dominion’s machines
were connected to the internet while tabulating votes. Carone, as you know, notoriously
went viral—in the bad way—when Rudy Giuliani had to “shush” her for leveling unhinged
accusations at Republican officials in Michigan who asked her follow-up questions about
her dubious claims. But more importantly, Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy
Kenny determined that her accusations—as well as yours—were “simply not credible.”5
• Josh Merritt aka “Spyder”. On page 65 of your Presentation, you refer to a 305th Military
Intelligence Battalion Analyst as providing evidence both for foreign control of
Dominion machines and that Dominion machines were connected to the internet. And
on page 82, you published a screenshot from that same analyst’s affidavit.6 As you are
aware, that so-called analyst is Josh Merritt, code-name “Spyder,” who was outed as a total
fraud by the Washington Post because he admitted to knowingly signing, under penalty
of perjury, a “misleading” declaration falsely claiming he was a “military intelligence
expert” even though he has never worked in military intelligence and even though a
3
John Savage, Texas Tea Partiers Are Freaking Out Over ‘Deep State’ Conspiracy Theories, Vice (Sept. 30, 2018),
https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbwgxx/texas-tea-partiers-are-freaking-out-over-deep-state-conspiracy-theories.
4
Louis Jacobson & Noah Kim, Giuliani cites affidavit with crucial errors in press conference, PolitiFact (Nov. 20, 2018),
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/nov/20/rudy-giuliani/giuliani-cites-affidavit-crucial-errors-press-conf/.
5
See Op. & Order at 7, Constantino v. City of Detroit, No. 20-014780 (Mich. 3d Jud. Dist. Ct. Nov. 13, 2020).
6
Affidavit of Josh Merritt, King v. Whitmer, No. 20-cv-13134 (E.D. Mich. Nov. 25, 2020) [Dkt. 1-15] (“Merritt
Declaration”).
2
spokesperson for the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence said he “kept washing
out” of courses.7
But your Presentation doesn’t just promote and endorse knowingly unreliable sources; you
also largely fail to provide your audience with any sourcing for the incendiary—and flat-out wrong—
data you reference throughout. For example, in your series of slides on the “Big switch” in Kent,
Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne Counties (pages 26-30), you simply cut-and-pasted unsourced
screenshots of random data and passed it off as legitimate. 9 Tellingly, after you posted your
Presentation and summary to your website on January 6, 2021, you promised your readers that, “A
link to the evidence cited in this post will be provided as soon as all of the materials have been uploaded to the
site.” But of course, you have never posted any evidence to your website or made any actual evidence
public.
II. There was no “Little Switch” in Antrim County and no “Big Switch” in Kent, Macomb,
Oakland, or Wayne Counties.
As part of your disinformation campaign across Michigan and starting on page 24 of your
Presentation, you cite to and repeat the false claims from both Ramsland’s Antrim County report
and his deeply flawed affidavit filed in Sidney Powell’s sham lawsuit in Michigan to claim that there
was both a “Little Switch” in Antrim County and a “Big Switch” in Kent, Macomb, Oakland, and
Wayne Counties. In other words, you are spreading the lie that Dominion machines manipulated
vote counts in all five of those counties to steal Michigan from Trump.
As an initial matter, voters in Antrim County, Michigan used pens and pencils to hand mark
paper ballots, which remain in the custody of Republican election officials in Antrim County.
Dominion machines simply counted the votes on those paper ballots. If foreign countries, hackers,
Democrats, space aliens, or anyone else had hacked into the Dominion machines in Antrim County
7
Emma Brown, Aaron C. Davis & Alice Crites, Sidney Powell’s secret ‘military intelligence expert,’ key to fraud claims in election
lawsuits, never worked in military intelligence, Washington Post (Dec. 11, 2020), available at,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/sidney-powell-spider-spyder-witness/2020/12/11/0cd567e6-3b2a-
11eb-98c4-25dc9f4987e8_story.html.
8
Zach Montellaro and Kyle Cheney, Pro-Trump legal crusade peppered with bizarre blunders, Politico (Dec. 3, 2020), available
at, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/03/sidney-powell-trump-election-lawsuit-442472.
9
However, you—and we—know that the data from pages 26 and 30 were pulled directly from Ramsland’s affidavit. See
Affidavit of Russell James Ramsland, Jr., King v. Whitmer, No. 20-cv-13134 (E.D. Mich. Nov. 25, 2020) [Dkt. 1-14]
(“Ramsland Affidavit”).
3
and manipulated the vote tallies in those machines, then the machine tallies would not match the
votes on the paper ballots in the possession of the Republican county officials. In fact, they do
match, as confirmed by a hand recount of the paper ballots.10 Therefore, your claim on page 24 of
your Presentation that “If you Count the Paper Ballots In Each State Trump Wins Overwhelmingly”
is false, including as to Antrim County, and you must immediately retract it.
But above and beyond the fact that the hand recount conclusively disproves Ramsland’s (and
your) false accusations, Ramsland’s report also contains a staggering number of inaccuracies; obvious
misrepresentations about election procedures, hardware, and software; and other obvious indicia of
unreliability. It is fraught with errors and gross misrepresentations of election security and voting
machines and software. For example:
• The report references the “allowable election error rate established by the Federal
Election Commission.” The FEC does not regulate voting machines or software. It
regulates campaign finance. The authors of the report apparently confused the FEC
and the Election Assistance Commission (“EAC”) because they lack basic familiarity
with election security and the regulations pertaining to it. Dominion’s election
voting system suite is, as you know, certified by the EAC.
• The report also says that a “forensics team” “perform[ed a] forensic duplication of
the Antrim County Election Management Server running Dominion Democracy
Suite 5.5.3-002.” But there is no Democracy Suite 5.5.3-002. Instead, 5.5.3-002 is
the version of the ImageCast Precinct tabulator (i.e., the actual scanner), not the
election management server or software. This demonstrates that the report’s creators
don’t even know the difference between the relevant hardware, software, and servers
involved.
• The report also claims that “all adjudication log entries for the 2020 election cycle
are missing” and must have been “manually removed.” In fact, Antrim County only
purchased (and therefore only used) certain components of Dominion’s voting
system suite; they neither purchased nor used nor possessed the hardware required
to use the adjudication software. Therefore, no adjudication log entries were
“manually removed” because there were no adjudication log entries to begin with.
10
Trump still wins small Michigan county after hand recount, Associated Press (Dec. 17, 2020),
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-michigan-elections-
07e52e643d682c8033a0f26b0d863387.
4
“warnings,” it offers no explanation of how its authors identified or defined an
“error” or “warning.” The report references three settings—“reverse,” “divert,” and
“override”—as examples of these so-called “critical errors” or “warnings.” But these
are not “errors.” They are parameters used in the tabulator to handle ballots that,
for example, include write-in candidates or ballots that contain votes for two
candidates for the same office. Calling these “errors” is analogous to claiming that
the low fuel indicator light turning on in a car is an “error”—it is of course not an
error; the car is operating precisely how it is supposed to. Similarly, just because the
tabulator recorded, for example, “divert,” does not mean that there was an error with
the ballot or the vote; precisely the opposite—it means that the machine operated
properly in response to that ballot.
People who are actually knowledgeable about election security and procedures in Antrim
County promptly, publicly, and forcefully rebutted Ramsland’s report. Antrim County officials
determined—and publicly announced—that the report was “riddled with false and unsupported
claims, baseless attacks, and incorrect use of technical terms.”11 Similarly, the former acting director
of the EAC’s Voting System Testing and Certification program said that the report showed a “grave
misunderstanding” of Antrim County’s voting system and “a lack of knowledge of election
technology and process.” 12 Michigan’s Attorney General and Secretary of State issued a joint
statement that the report was “critically flawed, filled with dramatic conclusions without any
evidence to support them.”13 And the Republican county clerk for Antrim County stated that the
report contained “many misleading statements” and was “simply not accurate.”14
As you are well aware from numerous credible sources in the public domain, the issue in
Antrim County was caused by human error, not Dominion machines:
• The Office of Michigan’s Secretary of State publicly announced that the “erroneous
reporting of unofficial results in Antrim county was a result of accidental error on the
part of the Antrim County Clerk. The equipment and software did not malfunction
and all ballots were properly tabulated.”15
11
See Ali Swenson, Report spreads debunked claims about Dominion machines in Michigan county, Associated Press (Dec. 15,
2020), https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9847904839.
12
See Todd Spangler, Former election security chief for Trump knocks down Antrim County report, The Detroit Free Press (Dec.
16, 2020), https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/16/antrim-county-report-debunked-by-
former-trump-election-official/3923499001/.
13
AG, SOS: Plaintiff’s Report in Antrim County Election Lawsuit Demonstrates Lack of Credible Evidence in Widespread Fraud
or Wrongdoing, Michigan Dep’t of Attorney General (Dec. 14, 2020), https://www.michigan.gov/ag/0,4534,7-359-
92297_47203-547422–,00.html.
14
Craig Mauger, Michigan election officials slam report on votes in Antrim County, The Detroit News (Dec. 14, 2020),
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/14/michigan-judge-allows-release-report-antrim-county-
voting/6537394002/.
15
The Office of Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, False claims from Ronna McDaniel have no merit (Nov. 6, 2020),
https://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127-1640_9150-544676--,00.html.
5
• A spokesperson for the Michigan Secretary of State confirmed, “We have not seen any
evidence of fraud or foul play in the actual administration of the election … What we
have seen is that it was smooth, transparent, secure and accurate.”16
• Following a bipartisan investigation into the vote in Antrim County, Michigan, the
state’s Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey announced, “Our investigation,
which has been very intense, discovered none, none of the allegations and accusations
against Dominion [are] true.”17
B. There was no “Big Switch” in Kent, Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne Counties—
two of which are counties Dominion does not even operate in.
Just as damning as your knowingly false claims about the “Little Switch” in Antrim County
are your completely fabricated claims about the “Big Switch” in Kent, Macomb, Oakland, and
Wayne Counties on page 25 of your Presentation. For starters, Dominion does not operate in
Macomb or Oakland county. And the scanning capacity of the machines used in Wayne County
alone exceeds 200,000 ballots during the so-called “Spike Duration”—far more than you claim in
your false Presentation. It is not surprising that the statistics you cite on page 25 of your Presentation
are completely wrong—they were entirely made up by Ramsland in his affidavit for Powell’s sham
Michigan lawsuit.18
Therefore, your claim that “At least 289,866 ballots illegal votes [sic] were cast” is
demonstrably false, and you must cease making it and retract it immediately.
Similarly, you claim on page 30 of your Presentation that Dominion’s machines used a
“Rank Choice Voting Module” to weight votes for Biden over Trump. Your claim is based on
random numbers you swiped from Ramsland’s affidavit showing decimals of total votes. Just like
your (and Ramsland’s) other claims, this one also falls apart under the slightest amount of scrutiny.
First, there is nothing at all nefarious about the idea of ranked choice voting. Indeed, it is
precisely how certain jurisdictions in the United States elect their leaders. However, as you well
know, Michigan does not use ranked choice voting for its elections and no Dominion machines in
Michigan had this feature. Your and Ramsland’s ranked choice voting fear mongering is a complete
red herring.
16
Nick Corasaniti, Reid J. Epstein & Jim Rutenberg, The Times Called Officials in Every State:
No Evidence of Voter Fraud, N. Y. Times (Nov. 10, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/us/politics/voting-
fraud.html.
17
Abigail Censky, How Misinformation Lit The Fire Under A Year Of Political Chaos In Michigan, NPR (Jan. 1, 2021),
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/01/952528193/how-misinformation-lit-the-fire-under-a-year-of-political-chaos-in-
michigan.
18
See Ramsland Affidavit.
6
Second, there is absolutely no evidence that the random “excerpt” Ramsland pasted into his
affidavit—and you co-opted for your Presentation—is at all accurate (it is not), and the only indication
as to where he got that data from is a vague reference to a “direct feed to news outlets.” Notably, in
your Presentation, you altered that source to “Dominion’s Direct Feed to Edison,” but it has been
publicly reported that Edison Research refuted any claims that its data shows any vote
manipulation.19
Third, you have repeatedly peddled the lie that rank choice voting was used in Michigan to
anyone who will listen, including and specifically Michigan’s Republican-led State Legislature. But
those legislators rejected your claims and you have refused to produce to those legislators (or anyone
else) the evidence or actual sources showing this fractional voting—because as you know, none exists.
Lastly, and most importantly, if your data is indeed from Edison Research, it is not at all
proof that there was any fractional voting used. As Edison Research notes in descriptions of its
methodology, its National Election Pool (NEP) is explicitly not a real-time tracker of actual vote
counts—instead, the NEP reports “the status of the vote count as a percentage of total expected
vote.”20 That is why, if your numbers are even real, Edison Research’s data might show fractional
numbers rather than whole ones. As an “aerospace engineer,” this fact certainly did not escape your
knowledge, but you recklessly disregarded your own knowledge in order to falsely claim that a rank
choice module that does not exist on Michigan’s Dominion machines must have been implemented.
Indeed, if you actually had evidence of any fractional voting or any vote manipulation, you
would provide it. The fact that you have repeatedly refused to publish or publicly provide any of
your evidence—whether it is to the Michigan State Legislature or to visitors to your website—proves
that you have none and that you are knowingly spreading lies about Dominion.
* * *
Your continued efforts to falsely undermine the results in Michigan (and elsewhere) by
claiming that votes were manipulated, flipped, deleted, or weighted in favor of Biden over Trump
for money has caused irreparable damage to Dominion in Michigan and beyond, and must stop
immediately.
III. Dominion Machines Were Not Connected to the Internet During Vote Tabulation.
On page 17 of your Presentation, you falsely claim that “Tabulators, Adjudicators, and
Detroit Election Official computers were networked together on a network connected to the
internet,” which led to the systems being hacked by nefarious foreign actors from Iran, China, and
elsewhere. But yet again, you have absolutely no evidence to back up these false claims and indeed,
19
Alec Dent, Did Edison Research Find That Dominion Deleted Trump Votes or Switched Votes to Biden?
No., The Dispatch (Nov. 12, 2020), https://factcheck.thedispatch.com/p/did-edison-research-find-that-states. Even
OAN, which has similarly peddled lies about Dominion, retracted a story connecting Edison Research with claims that
Dominion software manipulated vote counts.
20
Joe Lenski, NEP Methodology for total expected vote, Edison Research (Oct. 19, 2020),
http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/data/election-assets/img/NEP_ExpectedVoteMethodology.pdf.
7
you have deceptively manufactured and mischaracterized publicly available information to fit your
false narrative about Dominion.
First, on page 21 of your Presentation, you state that your false claim about internet
connectivity is based on “Exhibit 19 in Sidney Power [sic] Michigan lawsuit,” which is Navid
Keshavarz-Nia’s affidavit.21 But, as noted above and as you well know, he is a wholly unreliable
source and his affidavit is a work of fiction. Here are just a few highlights:
• He touts the nonexistent “Hammer and Scorecard tools” as the means by which
Dominion’s machines can be penetrated, attributing that information to, among others,
Dennis Montgomery—the “maestro behind what many current and former U.S. officials
and others familiar with the case now believe was one of the most elaborate and
dangerous hoaxes in American history.”22 The fact is that the “Hammer and Scorecard”
conspiracy theory has been publicly debunked by actual experts like Trump appointee
and election security expert Chris Krebs and other credible sources.23
• He claimed that “In another case for Edison County, MI, Vice President Biden received
more than 100% of the votes at 5:59PM EST on November 4, 2002, and again he
received 99.61% of the votes at 2:23PM EST on November 5, 2020,” which he claimed
“indicate fraud.”24 But there is a huge problem with this claim: there is no “Edison
County” in Michigan or anywhere in the United States.
• He claimed—without any evidence at all—that Dominion transferred data to Scytl for vote
counting in Spain, Germany, and other places in Europe. But of course, all votes are
counted in the U.S. by local election officials–not by Dominion—and Dominion’s voting
systems are, by design, meant to be used as closed systems that are not networked, and
therefore it is technologically impossible to access or manipulate votes remotely through
Dominion machines. Furthermore, Scytl has expressly noted that (1) it has no “servers
or computers in Germany,” (2) any Scytl technologies used in the U.S. “are hosted and
managed within the United States by our local subsidiary, SOE Software, based in
21
See Affidavit of Navid Keshavarz-Nia, King v. Whitmer, No. 20-cv-13134 (E.D. Mich. Nov. 25, 2020) [Dkt. 1-19]
(“Keshavarz-Nia Affidavit”).
22
Travis Daub, How a Reno casino con man duped the CIA and pulled on the of the ‘most dangerous hoaxes’ in American
History, PBS (Oct. 14, 2014), available at, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/reno-casino-conman-pulled-greatest-
hoax-american-history.
23
Chris Krebs (@CISAKrebs), Twitter (Nov. 7, 2020),
https://twitter.com/CISAKrebs/status/1325188644966117376; Jon Greenberg, Debunking the ‘Hammer and Scorecard’
election fraud conspiracy theory, PolitiFact (Nov. 10, 2020),
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/nov/10/pamela-geller/debunking-hammer-and-scorecard-election-fraud-
cons/; Angelo Fichera & Saranac Hale Spencer, Bogus Theory Claims Supercomputer Switched Votes in Election,
FactCheck.org (Nov. 13, 2020), https://www.factcheck.org/2020/11/bogus-theory-claims-supercomputer-switched-
votes-in-election/.
24
Keshavarz-Nia Affidavit at 7.
8
Tampa, Florida,” and (3) Scytl did not provide any products in the U.S. for the 2020
election that did or could “tabulate, tally or count votes.”25
• He claimed that “In 2019, a computer laptop and several USB memory cards containing
the cryptographic key to access [Dominion] systems were stolen in Philadelphia.” But as
both you and Keshavarz-Nia are surely aware from information that was readily available
in the public domain, Dominion does not operate in Philadelphia26 and the claimed
theft occurred in October 2020 and was from an ES&S system—not Dominion.27
Second, on page 22 of your presentation, you claim that the National Institute for Standards
and Technology (NIST) posted information about Dominion’s machines that provided hackers with
all the information they needed to gain access to Dominion’s machines and manipulate votes. But
again, you knew that this information—which Dominion and all other voting machine companies
are required to provide to NIST—in no way gives anyone the information they need to hack or gain
access to the machines listed. Indeed, as NIST notes on the very website you linked to in your
Presentation, the very reason NIST provided this information is so that the jurisdictions using these
machines can “verify that voting software files have not been modified”to ensure safe and secure
vote tabulations—the exact opposite purpose you have baselessly asserted.28
Third, you claim in your Presentation that Iranian, Chinese, and/or Russian hackers gained
access to Dominion’s machines and cite again to Merritt’s and Keshavarz-Nia’s wholly unreliable
statements to support those claims. But more tellingly, on page 65 of your Presentation, you cited
two CISA Alerts for the prospect that Iran gained access to Dominion’s machines and manipulated
vote counts. But those two CISA Alerts say no such thing. CISA Alert AA20-304A noted that an
Iranian actor had targeted and potentially accessed “publicly available state websites,” which were
mostly “false positives” anyway, and the information obtained resulted in “the mass dissemination
of voter intimidation emails to U.S. citizens and the dissemination of U.S. election-related
disinformation in mid-October 2020”—not in the acquisition of any information remotely related
to hacking or manipulating actual votes.29 And CISA Alert AA20-296B stated that the Iranian actors
were spreading “misinformation about voter suppression, voter fraud, and ballot fraud.” 30
Ironically, CISA was warning the public of the precise conduct you are engaging in: spreading false
25
Scytl strongly denies the false information related to the U.S. elections, Scytl (Nov. 13, 2020), https://www.scytl.com/en/fact-
checking-regarding-us-elections-debunking-fake-news/.
26
See Verified Voting, https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/search/year/2020/state/42/county/101; Ali
Swenson, Philadelphia does not use Dominion Voting Systems technology, Associated Press (Nov. 22, 2020),
https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9798361760.
27
Frank Bajak & Claudia Lauer, Laptop, USB drives stolen from Philly election-staging site, yahoo!money (Oct. 1, 2020),
https://money.yahoo.com/laptop-usb-drives-stolen-philly-185734653.html.
28
Voting Software Reference Data Set, NIST (Jan. 29, 2020), https://www.nist.gov/itl/ssd/software-quality-
group/voting-software-reference-data-set.
29
Alert (AA20-304A): Iranian Advanced Persistent Threat Actor Identified Obtaining Voter Registration Data, CISA (Oct. 30,
2020), https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/alerts/aa20-304a.
30
Alert (AA20-296B): Iranian Advanced Persistent Threat Actors Threaten Election-Related Systems, CISA (Oct. 22, 2020),
https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/alerts/aa20-296b.
9
and baseless claims about voter and ballot fraud in order to sow discord in the 2020 election and,
in your case, to solicit over $1 million in “donations” from your audiences.
Fourth, the information and screenshots on pages 80 and 81 of your Presentation do not
show that Dominion’s machines were connected to the internet while tabulating votes, such that
anyone could or did gain access and manipulate vote counts; rather they demonstrate two entirely
different circumstances. The information you portray on page 80 refers to an external modem that
Dominion is required to provide to jurisdictions that mandate momentary internet access to
transmit unofficial results to the county clerk (while a paper tally is actually hand-delivered to the
county clerk). But that connection is only established and those unofficial results are only
transmitted after the results have been tallied and printed in hardcopy. Furthermore, that limited
and momentary connection is done in plain sight of poll watchers—a fact you know because you
were present when it happened in Wayne County. Therefore, your claim that there was some sort
of covert or constant internet connectivity in Wayne County or elsewhere is bogus, and you know
it.
And on page 81, you copy and pasted a page from Dominion’s manual that represents a
completely different circumstance—a closed loop system that is not connected to the internet. As
an “aerospace engineer,” surely you understand the difference between machines being connected
and networked locally to each other and an open internet connection. Nonetheless, you have
intentionally mischaracterized these features to peddle lies that Dominion machines were hacked by
nefarious foreign actors to manipulate votes and steal the election from Trump.
* * *
The fact is that all of the sources you listed as “evidence” that Dominion’s machines were
connected to the internet and therefore hacked on page 65 of your Presentation do no such thing.
Both Ramsland’s report and affidavit are riddled with errors and demonstrable falsehoods;
Keshavarz-Nia’s and Merritt’s affidavits include lies and completely made up claims; Carone has
grossly mischaracterized the role she had on election night; NIST has not provided any information
to the public that allows or invites hacking, or otherwise compromises any machine’s security; and
Dominion’s manuals show only what you already knew and observed—that Dominion’s machines
were only connected to the internet after votes had been tabulated and the results were recorded
through hardcopy paper tallies. That leaves you as the lone “source” for these bogus claims. But of
course, as you were repeatedly told by county officials on election night at the TCF Facility because
you repeatedly asked, Dominion’s machines were not connected to the internet during the vote
tabulation process. And, as you know, Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny determined
specifically that “No evidence supports Mr. Colbeck’s [your] position.”31 Nonetheless, you have lied
repeatedly to your audiences that Dominion’s machines were connected to the internet during the
vote tabulation process, which allowed foreign actors to hack the systems and manipulate vote counts
in order to dupe your audiences into giving you money.
31
See Op. & Order at 7, Constantino v. City of Detroit, No. 20-014780 (Mich. 3d Jud. Dist. Ct. Nov. 13, 2020).
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IV. Dominion is Not Owned or Controlled by China, Venezuela, or Any Other Enemy of the
United States.
As you well know, Dominion was not founded in Venezuela, is not owned by China, and is
not manipulated by agents in Iran, Russia, or any other enemy of the United States. It was founded
in 2002 in John Poulos’s basement in Toronto to help people with visual impairments vote on paper
ballots. By 2009, Dominion’s business had grown in the United States, and a subsidiary company,
Dominion Voting Systems, Inc., was incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Denver,
Colorado. By 2018, the majority of the business’s customers and employees were in the United
States, so Poulos sold the majority stake of the business to U.S. investors. Dominion is now
headquartered in Colorado. Its systems are certified under standards promulgated by the EAC,
reviewed and tested by independent testing laboratories accredited by the EAC, and were designed
to be auditable and include a paper ballot backup to verify results. Dominion’s source code was not
designed to steal elections; it is on file with federal and state agencies and is reviewed regularly by
third-party labs that are federally accredited by the EAC and NIST.
Dominion and Smartmatic are competitors; neither is owned by the other. Nor is Dominion
owned by a company you claim is a front for Smartmatic, SVS Holdings. Indeed, the crude graphic
you used on page 67 of your Presentation puts forth no evidence for your grasping attempt at
claiming that not only does Smartmatic own Dominion, but that actually China owns them all,
including known Dominion competitor, ES&S. You even cite a Delaware Chancery Court case
between Smartmatic and Dominion as evidence that they “share the same software.” But, as that
lawsuit that you cite notes, Dominion and Smartmatic once both serviced an election in the
Philippines, in which Dominion’s software was licensed to Smartmatic for use in the Philippines—
not the other way around. And, after the Department of Justice blocked Smartmatic’s acquisition
of an American voting machine company, Sequoia Voting Systems, Dominion purchased Sequoia’s
assets, which did not contain any Smartmatic software, source code, or “algorithms.” But as you are
well aware from your admitted review of the relevant legal documents, Smartmatic’s software and
source code was not used in Dominion’s machines in the 2020 election. Your attempts to falsely
tarnish Dominion by connecting it to Smartmatic—and ultimately Venezuela and China—
demonstrate that you understood the relevant documents and that you know your accusations about
Dominion are false.
Unsurprisingly, these wild and false allegations appear to be based on the say so of proven
liars Merritt and Keshavarz-Nia. But that didn’t stop you from using them to misleadingly bolster
your claim that the Chinese Communist Party—through UBS and now HSBC—owns and controls
Dominion. You even copy-and-pasted Merritt’s blurry screenshot showing a patent assignment from
Dominion to HSBC Bank Canada (as Collateral Agent), falsely labeling it as evidence that the
Chinese Communist Party owns Dominion’s security patents.32 But of course, as the AP pointed
out, this is yet another “bogus theory promoted by conspiracy websites that stems from a
misrepresentation of an SEC filing.”33 And a subsequent fact check by USA Today showed that not
only have people like you falsely conflated UBS’s New York affiliate with a Chinese counterpart, but
32
See Merritt Affidavit.
33
Ali Swenson, Lengthy video makes false claims about 2020 election, Associated Press (Dec. 24, 2020),
https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9900544617.
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the “U.S.-based bank” only “brokered an exchange of securities between institutional investors and
private equity firm Staple Street Capital III L.P., but it did not invest in the company.”34 No Chinese
entity—let alone the Chinese Communist Party—played any role in either the security exchange or
any patent assignment and you have been lying to your audiences throughout your disinformation
campaign across Michigan in order to solicit over $1 million in “donations” to your personal
business.
You successfully duped thousands of people across Michigan into believing that the 2020
election was stolen through the manipulation of vote counts in Dominion machines, and you have
reaped the benefits from it. You claim to be a University of Michigan-educated aerospace engineer
who worked on and helped design the International Space Station.35 You had the precise education
and background to know that the data you were looking at was bogus, manipulated, and
manufactured out of whole cloth, and to know when a machine is connected to the internet and
when it is just plugged into another machine in the same room. And even after your false claims
about Dominion were rejected at every turn, you nonetheless took your disinformation campaign
on the road.
We do not yet fully understand why someone of your intelligence, academic pedigree, and
experience would deliberately mislead the world about the integrity of an American election. We
strongly suspect that you maintain political aspirations and will run for governor again in Michigan
in 2022, and we know the lengths you are willing to go to try and get what you want, including by
falsely accusing a political opponent of ties to terrorism simply because he is a Muslim American.36
But what we do know is that you are raising exorbitant amounts of money—reportedly more
than $1 million to date—from your audiences and followers during your disinformation campaign
across Michigan. Indeed, when soliciting “donations,” you direct people to donate via PayPal to
your privately-owned, for-profit business, Perspective Shifts LLC.37
34
Chelsey Cox, Fact check: Claim of Chinese investment in Dominion Voting Systems confuses UBS subsidiaries, USA Today
(Jan. 23, 2021), https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/01/23/fact-check-dominion-voting-systems-
foreign-investment-claim-false/4038654001/.
35
Patrick Colbeck, LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickcolbeck/.
36
Alice Yin, Michigan candidate criticized over anti-Muslim remarks, Associated Press (Apr. 26, 2018),
https://apnews.com/article/95e1bf8c8812426e9ac2aeba1dffad0f.
37
PayPal, Perspective Shifts LLC, https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=GNX9S63EGWQD8.
12
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And we have reason to believe you are not disclosing to those you have duped into giving
you money that once received, you can do anything you want with their over $1 million in
“donations.”
* * *
The harm you have caused Dominion in Michigan and beyond is irreparable. Each day that
passes and you continue to spread lies about Dominion, the more likely it becomes that Michigan
and other states decide not to do business with Dominion—not because what you are saying is true,
but because you will have fomented such vitriol that election decision makers have no choice but to
abandon Dominion. Make no mistake—Dominion will hold you accountable for these lies.
To that end, as we notified you in December, you have a legal obligation to preserve and
retain any and all communications about Dominion—including all text messages, emails, drafts,
electronic data, and documents relating in any way to the matters discussed above—for pending and
future litigation relating to these matters. We trust you are honoring that legal obligation.
In light of the information that has long been known to you and is additionally set forth
above, the only responsible thing for you to do at this point is to publicly and forcefully retract your
false claims about Dominion and set the record straight regarding the fake evidence and fake experts
you have put forward.
But let us be perfectly clear. There is nothing you can say or do at this point to undo the
damage that has been done to Dominion. The company must therefore expressly reserve all legal
rights against you and remind you of your ongoing obligation to preserve all materials that relate in
any way to these matters.
Regards,
Megan L. Meier
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