Opinion | Inside the Billion-Dollar War Against Right-Wing Conspiracists

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If you’re looking for a through line from our drawn out election to the mob attack on the Capitol, it’s right-wing conspiracy theories. And perhaps no one knows this better than John Poulos. His company, Dominion Voting Systems, is one of the big three voting machine vendors in the United States. It’s also the subject of baseless conspiracy theories thrown around by Fox Business and Fox News, OAN, Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and the president himself, all in their effort — and I do not say this lightly — to overturn democracy.

But Poulos isn’t sitting back. He’s fighting this crazy talk with a powerful weapon — defamation lawsuits. His threats of litigation have brought some right-wing media outlets to heel — temporarily, at least. So I thought the clarifications were, frankly, pathetic. And now, Dominion has logged a $1.3 billion defamation suit against former Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell. Yes, the Kraken Lady.

So, John, let’s start with the suit. You sued Sidney Powell, the former Trump lawyer. Your suit says that she acted in concert with Trump allies to cause, quote, “unprecedented harm.” Were you talking about harm to your company or to the country?

I was talking about harm through the entire electoral process. The last two months has, frankly, been devastating for our company and our employees. We have 300 families that have staked their livelihood and reputation on the company. We have thousands more election officials that have been responsibly using our technology and have chosen our technology in large part because of the transparency with our paper ballots that can be voter verified. And this malicious campaign of lies against us in the electoral system in general has just been devastating for everyone.

How do you look at the growth of these conspiracy theories, and do you think there’s a direct linkage between what happened at the Capitol and these conspiracy theories?

Well, I believe that the recent attacks were a direct consequence to the emotions that were stoked in large part because of the malicious campaign that was orchestrated by Sidney Powell. To the question in terms of the reaction that we have seen since the election, it strikes me how voters still don’t understand how their voting system works and the power of a voter verified paper ballot. And this lawsuit is really just the first step in trying to reclaim our reputation, the reputation of our employees and the reputation of our election officials that use our technology.

OK, let’s address some of these conspiracy theories.

Sure.

Dominion Voting System machines were used to cast votes in 28 states in the November election. But there are a lot of baseless rumors following the election, many being amplified by Trump’s campaign and Sidney Powell. I’d like you to quickly set the record straight on a few of them. So, first, does the company have any link to the Venezuelan government?

No, we have no ties —

No ties.

— to Venezuela.

Venezuela. Is it partly owned by the family of the late president Hugo Chavez?

Absolutely not. The company was founded in 2003 in Toronto, Canada. It was closely held by friends and family of the company. In 2018, we sold the company to U.S. investors, to a New York private equity company. And all of the investors are American citizens.

Next one, do you have links to Nancy Pelosi, George Soros, or Hillary Clinton?

No, we have no links to any of those people. The source that has been floating around the internet for some time is, we participated in a conference in New York City that was held by the Clinton Global Initiative.

Yeah. Was Nancy Pelosi there? George Soros?

Nancy Pelosi was not there.

So you haven’t been hanging out with this trio.

That’s correct.

Do you know either of them?

No, I don’t.

Did Dominion voting machines delete votes from Trump or somehow switch them to Biden in November?

No, absolutely not. So let me be very clear on this point. Dominion does not run elections. Dominion provides technology that helps count ballots and specifically count paper ballots to the election officials that do have the accountability and responsibility to run elections. The other part of that allegation that just boggles my mind at how it still persists is that votes somehow are transported out of the country. One of the allegations was that votes were transported to Spain. At one point I think it was Germany. These are paper ballots. These are paper ballots that are in the physical custody of election officials that are held in front of bipartisan pollwatchers. These paper ballots don’t go anywhere outside the county. They don’t cross county lines, they don’t cross state lines, and they definitely don’t leave the country.

And you don’t have some magic switch where you can take the paper ballots and, say, transport them to yourself?

No, absolutely not.

OK, so you cannot switch them between Trump and Biden?

Absolutely not. So aside from the checks and balances of how you can’t switch — and I haven’t even begun to talk about certification and how we actually don’t touch our own technology. But even hypothetically, if somebody makes the allegation, as people have, you still have the paper ballots —

OK, I’m going to ask you a specific question. Trump alleged in Georgia that Dominion might have, quote, “took out machines or moved machinery or gone in there and switched machinery inside the machines.” You did not do that, correct?

Well, that is absolutely false. We did not switch out any parts or any machines in Georgia. The equipment that was delivered to Georgia has been in the secure custody of each county. Dominion doesn’t have access to that.

The picture he was painting for some reason was like, it was like a carburetor you take in and out— that’s hard to take in and out. But to move around these machines, they’re quite delicate instruments.

Absolutely, and it’s simply access that we don’t have. This is nothing even remotely possible.

Nothing that you can do. Now, in Antrim County, Michigan, which skews heavily Republican, Biden showed momentarily a lead on Trump. Trump used this to say there were defects in the voting machines. Was there?

No, absolutely not. The case that we have in Antrim County is slightly different. It is a series of human errors. Human errors happen in elections because we have humans running them. These election officials have been working around the clock all year. It’s not that crazy to happen.

Right, and so you need to go through these every time you get one of these ridiculous allegations. I don’t even want to call them allegations. They’re conspiracy theories.

Well, at this point, I will say that the error did happen, and I would not call this a conspiracy theory. This was a legitimate question. Why —

This was an error that you solved the problem.

Yes, but what does not — where this now departs is, voters need to understand that those physical ballots never left the custody of the county.

So they’re still there.

And they’re still there, and they were hand counted. And just like the hand count in Georgia, just like the hand counts in Florida and Colorado, everywhere, where we have done hand counts and for audits and recounts, they reaffirmed the original result.

So let me move you on to the last one. Was Dominion Voting Systems compromised by the Solar Winds hack, the Russian attack that breached federal agencies, including the U.S. Treasury? Were you compromised by them?

No, the Solar Winds Orion platform is a product that we don’t use.

We don’t use, so no. So, let’s talk about what you’re going to do about all these things. I know you sent legal notices, cease and desist letters, preservation letters to a number of people. But former Trumpler Sidney Powell is the first person you sued. So why start with her?

Oh, quite simple. She’s been the most prolific creator of these lies and certainly the most egregious spreader of these. And she’s been promoting these on a variety of media platforms with the purpose of defaming Dominion and our customers.

And do you know why?

That’s a great question. I don’t want to speculate. This is something that we really seek to understand through our litigation.

Through your litigation. Now you won’t settle — you said you won’t settle with Powell. You told that to the Washington Post. You want to go to trial. Why?

We feel like we have to go to trial, Kara. In the absence of anyone going on the record and anyone releasing the so-called evidence that they keep touting, we have no choice. We have no choice. This has to go in front of a judge. And a jury needs to rule on the verdict of all of the merits.

Right, so you want people to see how she came to her dubious conclusions.

We feel like we have to. The damage has been catastrophic for the company.

Right, OK. So the defamation lawsuit, speaking of catastrophic, you filed against Powell was for $1.3 billion in damages. How did you come to that number?

It was a very deliberate calculation that our finance folks worked together with our legal team. I will profess I’m not an expert as to the different categories. I know we’ve spelled it out in the statement of claim.

Right. When you say catastrophic, is it a financially catastrophic problem, or is it a — with your families?

Oh, absolutely. And as I’ve told many friends in the last few hours, I would give anything to go back to our reputation from November 1st before these lies were spread. I would trade that in a second.

You sent letters to Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, and White House counsel Pat Cipollone. Will you be suing either of them?

Well, what I will say, Kara, is that this is the first step.

Right, you said first step. I want to know what the second step is.

Our second step will be very carefully measured with our legal team in terms of the who and where and when.

What about Donald Trump? That’s the big question. I really want to push you here. Will you rule out suing President Trump?

We are ruling out nobody. But I will not make a statement as to making a decision on anyone.

Is there a calculation of waiting until he’s out of office to sue him?

You have to understand, Kara, we work hard to maintain a nonpartisan stance. We do business with red states—

Well, he’s the one trafficking in these conspiracy theories specifically about Dominion.

Well, as I said, we’ll weigh that very carefully, but we have a nonpartisan stance in this. Our job is not to fill out the ballots. Our job is just to accurately tabulate the paper ballots. We don’t want to be biased, and we want to rise above any political fray. And there is always part of the electoral process losers losing candidates, trying to raise concerns. We saw that in 2016, where allegations were made against us on the other side. And our competitors — I mean, we’ve seen this before. What’s new about this is the complete fabrication and the unwillingness to go in front of a court and to go under oath and releasing evidence.

Well, under oath, they stopped saying it. You know, they said it wasn’t fraud. When you saw those tweets by President Trump specifically about Dominion, tell me your emotions at that moment.

Well, it was surreal. And it’s been extremely difficult.

Where were you when you saw that first one?

Well, I was in my office. And soon after, I started getting calls from employees, who were telling me variants on the same theme, that friends and family were distancing themselves from them. They’ve lost lifelong friends. They’ve seen insult and aggression from even extended families, from people that have bought into these malicious, malicious lies.

Anyone in your family?

Yes, as a matter of fact.

What did they say to you? Who was it?

Yeah, it was a family member in a jurisdiction that we actually do business in and use our tabulation systems. And the question was actually, are we from Venezuela? And this is an in-law. But they actually asked my wife, is this company actually from Venezuela?

And?

[LAUGHS] There is a very clear 18-year record —

Did they believe you? Did they believe you?

Oh, I would hope so. I wasn’t — I mean, this is the problem, where it’s almost like the truth and reality suspends when you want to believe something, and the purveyors of these lies go on national TV, and they say it as if it’s factual with such authority. And there’s no reservation. It really resonates, unfortunately, with a lot of people that want to believe the underlying message. And they just don’t know, and they just say, maybe it’s true. There is a very clear record that it’s not true.

Yeah, you’re talking to a gal whose mom told me coronavirus was just like the flu. So, that took a while to get out of her head. And you yourself have gotten death threats.

We’ve all gotten death threats.

Yeah, how do you react to them? Do you respond to people, or do you just ignore it?

Oh, it’s frightening. It’s terrifying. It’s maddening. It evokes feelings of anger, especially when it’s towards our employees, who are continuing to travel into public places and supporting elections that were still going on. And the support and the dedication of our employees was unwavering, even in the face of this.

So if the attorney general or states pursue criminal charges against Powell and others, Trump, Powell, would you drop legal action?

No.

No, OK. Do you think there should be criminal charges?

Oh, that’s not for me to say.

OK. Now let’s get to the media outlets. Will you be pursuing lawsuits against any media outlets?

[LAUGHS] Kara, this is the first step, and so, I’m not comfortable making a statement on something that we haven’t yet filed. But I will say, Sidney Powell was not alone in the dissemination and how she amplified her messages and how they were presented to so many millions of voters as fact, when, clearly, they were so demonstrably false.

So, Fox News and Newsmax, in this case, didn’t apologize or retract these unsubstantiated and outrageous claims about Dominion. Instead, they aired what I felt was bizarre segments designed to clarify. It felt like they were a hostage reading.

Was that enough for you?

No.

What did you think when you saw these?

I found them to be bizarre. I found them to be wholly unsatisfying. And they said nothing about what I feel was very inappropriate for a variety of different platforms.

What about social media companies? Are you considering lawsuits against them, and how do you think they performed here?

Well, it’s been frustrating. We’ve had one platform would not let us even try to —

Which one?

— post our own setting the record. I’m not going to state that, but it was because we have the word “voting” in our name. And so, we were precluded from doing this. And it was very upsetting, and we felt that we had our hands tied behind our back. And we were getting comments from our customers —

Does it rhyme with Nacebook?

Kara, what I will say, we’re getting a lot of feedback from our customers, saying, why aren’t you fighting back? And we pointed them to the setting the record straight document on our website, which we endeavored to use third party sources that were easily verifiable in each of the falsehoods that were made about us. But we were specifically asked —

So you couldn’t post those on a social media site.

We had a lot of difficulty posting on the same platforms as our detractors.

Are you worried about the chilling effect of suing news organizations and social media? Is that what’s holding you back from being another step?

I’m far past that point. As I said, we’ve been backed in the corner. We have no other recourse. All of the allegations, the entirety of it, have to be presented in a court of law and have a jury rule on it with a verdict.

OK, so let’s talk about the power of lawsuits. Litigation has been a big driver. We just talked big change in America, from safety in cars to limits on big tobacco. When companies are sued, they actually do change their behaviors. You think about cars, for example, and other areas. Disinformation, outright lying by people in power, has been a problem nobody has figured out. Do you think your legal action is going to be a game changer? And is that how you’re thinking of it?

Well, I’m thinking about it, actually, as our only available recourse in this type of situation. If there’s another avenue open to us, I’m not aware of it, and neither are any of our legal advisors. In terms of changing behavior, I think that there’s a reality that everything is going to change. But we are doubling down, as our vision and mission of the company was always to provide transparent voting technology to help voters vote privately and independently, with a paper ballot. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We submit every line of source code to federal and state authorities for line by line code review. We disclose every part of our business to members of Congress and the federal government through the E.A.C. And we will continue doing that. We operate as an open book.

But you feel litigation is your only avenue here.

Well, how else do you litigate against evidence that is not released that you know to be completely false and that is clearly, knowingly false, and spread with a malicious intent. And not only that, but that is continually spread. I mean, the response from Sidney Powell was, this stops nothing.

Yeah. What did you think of Sidney Powell’s response when she said that, this changes nothing?

Well, which one? The one that I have a better memory of is her response to our letter, asking her to correct the record. And her response was something along the lines of, I haven’t even bothered to read the letter, nor will I. And I will not be stopping anything.

Aha, and this is her attitude right now with this.

I feel so, yes. [MUSIC PLAYING]

We’ll be back in a minute. If you like this interview and want to hear others, hit Subscribe. You’ll be able to catch up on Sway episodes you may have missed, like my conversation with Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and you’ll get new ones delivered directly to you. More with John Poulos after this break.

So, let’s move to election officials and how we deal with security concerns with machines and where they’re going. Because I think there is some — people are always worried about elections and should be, and should be worried about cyber security and all kinds of things, especially with the Solar Winds attack. How many hacks have Dominion voting machines or Dominion employees have been attempted this year?

Zero, to my knowledge.

OK, zero. Zero hacks.

Zero.

Zero. Were there more attempted hacks in 2016 than 2020? Are you subject to hacks?

As a company or technology that is warehoused inside of the election officials?

Both, because you would get reports on this.

Oh, well, from a company standpoint, our security posture from the corporate standpoint is, we see the same types of cyber attempted hacks as probably any other company does. And we have not had any breaches certainly that we are aware of. We also have a very big distinction between our voting system and any corporate asset. And the election equipment that sits in, for example, a local county’s warehouse is not connected to the internet.

What changes did you make between 2016 and 2020 to make your technology more secure? What was the most critical part of that?

Oh, we invested heavily in security experts that were helping us strengthen our corporate posture, as well as our software and safeguards. We have worked together with our customers on coordinated vulnerability testing from white hat hackers and testers. We have worked collaboratively with various state agencies to the same end. And we are constantly working through how to strengthen and identify vulnerabilities in the effort to minimize them and evolve with technology.

Well, what keeps you up at night then? I ask this to a lot of technology cybersecurity officials. What makes you the most nervous in this area?

Well, the first thing is, I want to make sure that there’s a paper ballot that is voter verified for every voter that’s cast a ballot, and that that physical custody remains intact at the local election official, preferably overseen by bipartisan poll watchers.

And this is not Dominion’s job in any way.

It has absolutely nothing to do with us.

Right. So, one other issue is concentration. Three companies handle 92% of the voting machines in America, election systems, and software — your company, Dominion, and Hart Intercivic. What type— do you worry about this type of concentration?

Well, there’s not three, first of all. You can go to the E.A.C. website and see the full list of companies.

Sure.

And —

But this is 92% with three.

Oh, I’m well aware in terms of the amount of contracts. And I’ll play it back to you a different way, Kara. How many companies want to go through what I just went through?

[LAUGHS] Good point.

And you’re only as good as your last election.

Yeah.

And for us, that means you’re only as good as your last recount. That’s why we take such pride —

Than not get it at all.

— in effort to making sure that our recounts always reaffirm results.

Right. Voting in America has gone through evolutions. Obviously, we had voice voting up until the late 1800s. By the 1890s, most states adopted secret ballots. And recently, it’s become all about machine voting. What’s the next big shift in voting?

Well, I think it’s all variants around paper ballots and how a paper ballot is created by voters. A lot of people still herald the hand-marked paper ballot as the gold standard. Others say, as long as you have a paper ballot, that’s the gold standard. There’s pros and cons, Kara, to every system. We tend and we try hard not to be prescriptive on any of it.

Although, presumably, you’re the innovative coming up with these. Will we see secure phone voting, for example?

Well, I think that you have to remember that voting is a fundamentally different transaction than a lot of transactions in our daily lives, like online banking, whereas it has to be secure, but it also has to be private. So, when we do an internet banking transaction or a transaction on our phone, and we have a question about it or we don’t remember making that transaction, there is a means to describe to you how that happened. And usually, it comes back to your pin and identifying you in some way. That is something that you can’t do with electors.

Will fingerprints, eyes?

Well, put a fingerprint on a ballot? Some countries —

Yeah.

— that would be acceptable. For that, the country would first and voters would first have to accept getting rid of the private part of the election process. If your fingerprint was on your ballot, then the whole world would arguably know how you voted.

Right, exactly. So, do you imagine, though, phone voting happening? It would create more people voting.

Well, to be clear, it has happened. And it’s declined. And the reason why I think it’s declined is because of what I just said — privacy issues. So —

Because you can link the phone. There’s ways possibly. Are there innovative ways to do that?

Well, I’m sure there are. But then I come back to a situation like the one we’re dealing with right now. How do you convince millions of voters— in the case of Georgia, would Georgia have been able to definitively prove the result was accurate if there wasn’t a paper ballot to go through and hand count?

So, flash forward, then, to 2060. What will voting look like in that election?

I suspect a voter will come in to a polling location, wherever that is, and will get verified by some method—

Not a hologram of a person?

— and make their selections. Uh — you got me on that.

All right. OK, they make the same thing. It’s going to look the same, in other words.

I think it’s going to be a variant of the same thing.

So, paper ballots forever is the way you look at it?

Certainly, as far as my crystal ball can look out to.

All right, I just want to ask you. You’re Canadian, right? Can America learn anything from Canadians in terms of democracy?

Oh, I would say it works both ways. I think the rest of the world can really learn from America on how they reacted post the 2000 election with the creation of a bipartisan federal commission that wrote the definitive standards on voting technology and how it should be tested and implemented. And if you look at how far the country has come in rolling out new technology that features voter verified paper ballots, certainly over 90% of the country now votes on a system that produces some sort of a voter verified paper ballot that can be audited or recounted. I think it’s tremendous.

As you look at the spectacle of the U.S. elections getting dragged through the mud, has it been worth it for you?

Absolutely, and I measure that by the type of support that we’re getting through recounts and being vindicated through the headcount audits and recounts. And I look at what if we were still in an age where our voting systems did not have a voter verified paper ballot, how would any election system, an election official have fared in that type of environment?

And right now, President Trump is here. He’s the one that has been amplifying these allegations against Dominion the most. What would you say to him if you could look him in the eye?

I would say, Mr. President, look to the paper ballots. And if there’s concerns at any jurisdiction, go through the paper ballot records.

OK. All right, John Poulos, thank you so much.

Thank you. Nice to be here.

All right, bye.

Take care. Bye bye.

You just hit the Leave Session on the top corner. Well, you’re a geek. You know that. [MUSIC PLAYING]

“Sway” is a production of New York Times Opinion. It’s produced by Nayeema Raza, Matt Frassica, Heba Elorbany, Matt Kwong, and Vishakha Darbha; edited by Paula Szuchman; with original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Erick Gomez; and fact checking by Kate Sinclair. Special thanks to Renan Borelli, Liriel Higa, and Kathy Tu. If you’re in a podcast app already, you know how to subscribe to a podcast. So, subscribe to this one. If you’re listening on The Times website and want to get each new episode of “Sway” rather than your daily dose of conspiracy theories — and mom, put down your phone — download a podcast app like Stitcher or Google Podcasts, then search for Sway, and hit Subscribe. We release every Monday and Thursday. Thanks for listening. By the way, Sidney Powell probably doesn’t know what happened in the end to the Kraken- – at least in the movie, Clash of the Titans. But let me just say, it wasn’t pretty. Sorry, Sidney Powell. Not sorry.