Lou Dobbs brings on an expert to fact-check his own election reporting

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs stepped back and let an expert do the talking about the many criticisms of election voting machines and voting software and their effects on last month’s results.

Dobbs set up a segment on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” Friday noting the number of varying “opinions” on the integrity of the U.S. election in November. The Fox Business host offered no commentary of his own other than the introduction of the expert in the segment who appeared to fact-check many of the accusations Dobbs and others have leveled at the Smartmatic company.

“There are lots of opinions about the integrity of the election, the irregularities of mail-in voting, of election voting machines and voting software,” Dobbs said.

“One of the companies is Smartmatic, and we reached out to one of the leading authorities on open source software for elections, Eddie Perez, for his insight and views,” he added, as the segment cut to video clips of Eddie Perez, the Global Director of Technology Development & Open Standards for the Open Source Election Technology Institute.

(Source: Fox Business)

The Florida-based voting technology company threatened legal action earlier this month, issuing notices and letters demanding retractions from Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network while citing comments from Dobbs and others.

Allegations about the 2020 presidential race being fraught with irregularities and fraud repeatedly took aim at the Smartmatic company and Dominion Voting Systems in the weeks following the election as President Donald Trump continued to challenge the results in several key states.

“They have no evidence to support their attacks on Smartmatic because there is no evidence. This campaign was designed to defame Smartmatic and undermine legitimately conducted elections,” Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica said in a statement at the time.

“Fox News has engaged in a concerted disinformation campaign against Smartmatic,” the letter stated, accusing the network of using “anchors and on-air guests, including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, to spread lies.”

On his show Friday, Dobbs told viewers that Perez was asked “for his assessment of Smartmatic and recent claims about the company,” as the segment went on to essentially debunk many of the accusations that had been leveled.

“I have not seen any evidence that Smartmatic’s software was used to delete, change, alter anything related to vote tabulation,” Perez replied bluntly when asked if he had “seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to flip votes anywhere in the U.S. in this election.”

“Smartmatic says its software was never used outside of L.A. County in 2020. Do you know whether or not that’s true?” he was asked.

“That is my understanding,” Perez responded.

“Smartmatic functioned as the contract manufacturer for the Los Angeles County voting system, and that was a customized system that was effectively built to the county’s order. I am not aware of them having any other direct customers, direct relationships with election officials in the United States,” he said, seeming at times to be responding from a prepared script.

He was also asked whether there was any connection between Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems Corporation, a company selling electronic voting hardware and software, including voting machines and tabulators, that has also been under scrutiny following the November elections.

“Both Dominion and Smartmatic have individually and respectively put out very clear statements from their corporate headquarters, each of them indicating they are independent companies, they are not related to each other. It is my understanding that neither one of them has an ownership stake in the other or anything like that. They are, again, for all intents and purposes, two completely separate companies,” Perez responded.

He pushed back on theories of ties between the company and leftist billionaire George Soros, saying he is “not aware of any direct connection,” though he acknowledged that a Smartmatic executive has “some sort of relationship with one of Soros’ foundations.”

“That’s the extent of my knowledge,” Perez added.

He was asked to weigh in on claims about votes allegedly being tabulated in foreign countries, saying that he is not aware – outside of Los Angeles County –  of any instances where this occurred.

“In the United States the ballots that are cast in the United States are tabulated in the United States,” he said, adding later that Smartmatic “has no presence in the voting technology marketplace in the United States.”

As the video clip ended, Dobbs’ show broke away to commercial without any return to the Fox Business host for commentary.

According to Mediaite, the “same fact check will be airing on Jeanine Pirro’s show Saturday night and Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show on Sunday.”

While liberals applauded the segment as an embarrassing display of Dobbs having to admit he was wrong about claims of vote fraud in the election, other viewers found problems with the remarks by Perez.

 

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