Conspiracy theories the alleged election theft in the 2020 presidential elections in the USA has been simmering for years. Tramp recently rekindled them.
However, how did Serbia appear in one of the numerous political spins of some Republicans that the elections were stolen, and that the manipulation of votes was attempted and allegedly prevented in 2024 as well?
It's a long way from Michigan and Georgia to Serbia, but for ardent supporters of this theory, the Serbian servers of a company that provides technology to the election administration were enough "proof" to point the finger at Belgrade. Although there is no concrete evidence, and the courts have established that there never was any, this theory still persists. Why?
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
At the end of 2020, Trump lost the election to Democratic candidate Joe Biden and thus missed the opportunity to secure a second consecutive term. As soon as the victory of the democratic candidate was declared, the story of election fraud began to circulate among the republicans. Trump claimed that his votes were stolen in several states, including Michigan and Georgia. Although the legal team of the Republicans assessed that there were no legal grounds for initiating serious lawsuits, Trump and the goblins gathered around him did not look back, but sent sixty lawsuits, two of which ended up before the Supreme Court. All were eventually dismissed as unfounded.
As is already well known, the frenzy over the stolen election resulted in Trump's supporters storming the Capitol Hill building two months later, while the Congress was in session to confirm Biden's victory.
After the 2024 election, Trump on his Truth Social social network responded to a tweet by a Republican political influencer in which he claimed that Elon Musk had prevented a new attempt to steal the election. The story went as follows: Mask tracked the IP addresses of systems related to Dominion Voting Systems, located servers in Serbia and disabled them a few days before the election in order to prevent "flipping" of votes.
However, it is important to note that in the backroom around the alleged election manipulation, several variants are mentioned, that is, the conspiracy theory of how it was carried out. The thesis about the involvement of people from Serbia and Serbian servers is just one of them. What added fuel to the fire was Trump's speech at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, in which he again brought up the topic of election theft in 2020 and announced that the investigation into the Dominion Voting System is ongoing and that those involved will be held accountable.
Although Trump did not mention Serbia at the forum, some interpreted this statement as a clear message to Belgrade.
Jovana Đurović, a journalist who lives and works in Washington, tells "Vreme" that Serbia is "collateral damage" in this context and that it is mentioned only because Dominion had some servers in Belgrade. He adds that Trump "has the manner of accusing judges of being democratic judges", which, he says, is not true because every president appoints judges, and his judges were also present in those processes. He explains that all processes "have in common that the courts rejected the claims" or if the process was conducted, it was not ruled in Trump's favor. He emphasizes that no court has ruled that the elections were stolen.
Jack Smith, the US federal prosecutor, received a mandate during the Biden administration to investigate Trump's involvement in the intrusion of his supporters into the Capitol, the spread of false information and obstruction of election results, and other crimes. Two indictments were also filed, but the trial was never held. On the eve of Biden's mandate, Smith announced that he would withdraw them if Trump won the election again (in the US there is an unwritten rule that current presidents are not investigated), which he did at the beginning of last year.
Mark Brnović, the unsuspecting US ambassador to Serbia, was the state attorney in Arizona during the 2020 election. And he was asked to initiate an investigation into the alleged vote-stealing. His team spent several months reviewing thousands of documents and came to the conclusion that there was no evidence of this.
photo: ap photo...
WITCH HUNT
Although the allegation of stealing votes via Serbian servers caused a bit of a storm in the domestic public and finger-pointing at the government and security structures, it is an understatement to say that no concrete evidence in support of this has ever come to light.
Moreover, the narratives surrounding the manipulation of elections through the Dominion Voting system in the credible American media have been characterized for years as a "conspiracy theory debunked long ago". Many things are problematic, so much so that there are practically no meaningful ones in favor of this claim, but come on, let's start in order.
As already mentioned, the team gathered around Trump initiated sixty lawsuits after the electoral defeat in 2020. They were all rejected. However, it did not end there. In 2021, a federal judge in the state of Michigan punished lawyer Sidney Powell and several other Trump lawyers from the election campaign for, as the CBS portal wrote, abuse of the court process. Namely, the court assessed that the lawyers filed lawsuits without first collecting any valid evidence.
In the end, Trump's election team also distanced itself from lawyer Powell when she stated during a press conference that millions of votes were stolen in Michigan alone. The fact is that Biden won in this federal state with a margin of 150 votes.
Perhaps the biggest step forward in the conspiracy theory about election manipulation was made by Michigan sheriff Dar Liff, who is pushing the story of Serbia's involvement. He has been conducting an independent investigation for years, interrogating people who participated in the election process in his district, and he also tried to confiscate voting machines. In a letter to a republican congressman, Dar Leaf claims that he has evidence of election manipulation for which "criminals and war criminals from Serbia" are allegedly responsible. He further explains that they were hired by the Dominion company, and that they "interfered" while the votes were being counted. Then, as another piece of alleged evidence in support of his claim, he stated that the war in Serbia ended 25 years ago, and that "criminals and war criminals from Serbia also had helpers in the USA, which they are currently investigating."
All in all, in the memo written on several pages, which can be found in its entirety on the Internet, the sheriff makes claims that he has evidence, but does not cite any concrete ones. In his crusade against electoral manipulation, Dar Leaf also sued the state of Michigan. Of course, the court dismissed the lawsuit. When asked by an American non-profit organization that advocates for freedom of information about the request from the sheriff's office to launch an investigation, the district attorney in which Leaf operates responded by stating that "usually in cases there are some facts to start from, but in this case the prosecutor did not see any."
In addition to the baseless claims he makes - American courts have qualified them as such - his reputation is also controversial. Liff is considered a hard-line conservative sheriff. She is one of the leading figures in the controversial movement that advocates that sheriffs in their districts should represent the highest level of authority, and that they themselves can decide whether to reject a law if they judge it to be "unconstitutional". According to the Guardian, Sheriff Dar Leaf is close to right-wing militant groups and ultra-conservative nationalists. He also stood out as a great opponent of the corona virus and the law on the regulation of firearms.
DOMINION AND SERBIA
The company Dominion Voting Systems has its subsidiary in Serbia and that is not in dispute. More precisely, she had, because last year Dominion was sold and integrated into another company. This is not the only American IT company that uses servers or workforce from Serbia. Furthermore, Dominion is a firm that provides technology – both software and hardware – for the election process. Thus, devices at the polling station, central scanners, as well as a software system for data preparation and processing. This firm provides technology that is managed by local election officials on Election Day. Also, when talking about servers, it should be borne in mind that during the election process local, that is, internal servers in the election administration, and not Dominion's servers in Serbia, are used.
However, as is usually the case with conspiracy theories, the facts are set aside, and unsubstantiated connections are found that are repeated over and over until they start to sound logical. At least to those who want to see logic in them.
That's why the story of election manipulation is still active today - even though the FBI and the US Agency for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security (CISA) in 2024 in a joint statement labeled these claims as "false" and stated that they were placed in order to shake public confidence in the US electoral system.
Because of the unverified information that was published about them on this topic, Dominion sued Fox News and reached an agreement on enormous damages. "Fox" was obliged to pay the sum of 787 million dollars.
PREPARATIONS FOR NOVEMBER
New elections await Donald Trump in November. This time, the entire House of Representatives in Congress is being elected, and by all accounts, the Republicans are not doing very well.
During that time, the Department of Justice asked states that vote for Democrats to hand over voter lists. In Minnesota, which is also a Democrat, migrants have been hunted down the streets and arrested, resulting in the recent death of two activists and a series of protests against Trump's measures. In Fulton County, Georgia – where Trump claimed there was election theft in 2020 – the FBI is conducting searches. It is interesting that the FBI action is overseen by the director of national intelligence services.
To all this, we should add Trump's repeated attempts to revive the story of stealing the election. Therefore, part of the American public fears that Trump could try to manipulate the election results in the November elections, which can bring him a lot of headaches if the Republicans lose them. As things stand, Serbia could once again be collateral damage if some political influencer on X decides to bring the incompatible together, ignite an apparently unextinguished hotbed of conspiracy theories and start a new witch hunt.
