We’ve already documented how WorldNetDaily columnist James Zumwalt may have drawn a lawsuit to himself and WND through a Dec. 2 column in which he repeated unsubstantiated, defamatory claims about Dominion Voting Systems official Eric Coomer, who has sued numerous right-wing media outlets and personalities — including Joe Oltmann, whose claims about Coomer Zumwalt uncritically repeated. But let’s take a closer look at that column to see what other questionable claims he made. Like this one:
Other circumstantial evidence will follow from the testimony of a U.S. Navy veteran and data scientist in Pennsylvania.
“I personally observed USB cards being uploaded to voting machines by the voting machine warehouse supervisor on multiple occasions,” he said. “This person is not being observed, he’s not a part of the process that I can see, and he is walking in with baggies of USBs.”
That allegation came from a poll watcher named Greg Stenstrom, and his claims quickly spread across right-wing media. We’ll let FactCheck take it from here:
Stenstrom did not provide any evidence that the cards were used to upload fraudulent votes or that Biden benefited from this purportedly illegal upload.
Delaware County officials explained to us that the vCards are used to transfer data from the paper-ballot scanning machines at each precinct to the central vote tabulating system. Uploading data from the vCards is part of the regular process for tallying votes — there’s nothing untoward about it. Other parts of his claim are also false, they said.
“The allegation that someone from the voting machine warehouse uploaded anything from any vCards is utterly false,” Adrienne Marofsky, the county’s spokeswoman, told us by email.
Nobody from the warehouse is trained to use the software that uploads the data from the vCards, she said. That job is done by staff in the bureau of elections department or the information technology liaison.
“This is not a system designed for mass use and it is not intuitive such that a new user with no training on the system could manage to navigate their way through it,” she wrote, noting that it’s possible Stenstrom might have mistaken the IT liaison for a warehouse worker.
Zumwalt also wrote: “Biden’s support base should have mirrored Hillary Clinton’s in 2016, but he underperformed in every major metro area around the country, except in Democratic-controlled cities where fraud allegedly was rampant.” Not true — even the conservative National Review found that Biden actually overperformed compared to Clinton in 31 out of 36 urban counties.
Zumwalt then wrote:
And on election night, as Trump led in all battleground states, five (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada) stopped counting votes for some inexplicable reason, simultaneously. During the next three hours, no votes were counted. When the count continued, Biden shockingly had overcome significant Trump leads in the five states, which all have Democratic governors.
Take it away, Reuters:
The posts start with the claim that these five states took a three-hour shutdown in which they “found enough votes for Biden to catch Trump.” There is no evidence to show that any of these states took a three-hour break from counting votes.
Wisconsin did not stop counting on election night. In an elections update video posted on YouTube by PBS NewsHour (here), Meagan Wolfe, administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, can be heard saying at the 1:18 minute mark: “Our municipal and county clerks have worked tirelessly throughout the night to make sure that every valid ballot has been counted and reported accurately.”
Michigan did not stop counting ballots. Politifact reported that Tracy Wimmer, director of media relations for the Michigan Secretary of State, said: “At no point has the counting process stopped since it began at 7 a.m. yesterday morning (Nov. 3), which was when, per Michigan election law, it could begin.” (here)
Misunderstandings over tally updates stopping temporarily on election night in Philadelphia are explained in a Reuters Fact Check (here).
North Carolina did stop counting votes on election night, but it was not due to voter fraud. Local television station WSOC-TV reported that Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the state elections board, said: “North Carolina stopped counting votes on election night because there were no more votes to count that night” and added: “With very few exceptions, North Carolina’s election results will not change until November 12 or 13, when all mail-in ballots are received and counted by each county.” (here)
The Nevada Secretary of State released a statement explaining that the state did not stop counting ballots and that the “counting of ballots is ongoing and will continue until every cast ballot is counted.” (here)
Zumwalt even claimed that “Among other evidence that recently has come to light is SEC filings that reveal the firm owning Dominion received $400 million from a Swiss bank with close links to the Chinese government less than a month before the election.” Dominion CEO John Poulos testified at a hearing in Michigan that the claim is “bizarre and completely unfounded.”
Zumwalt asserted that “Yet more circumstantial evidence is the involvement, with Dominion and other players, of two anti-Trump billionaires, George Soros and Bill Gates,” citing a fringe-right blog as evidence. One of the claims Newsmax issued under threat of lawsuit in a statement posted on its website and read on Newsmax TV is that Dominion has no “relationship with George Soros.” The blog’s sole evidence of a Gates tie is a 2015 tweet from Smartmatic — which is a separate company that has no relationship with Dominion — featuring a picture of Gates touring the company with Smartmatic’s CEO.
Zumwalt’s history of factual accuracy has always been dubious. Now that he’s repeated false claims that are drawing lawsuits in a column filled with numerous other false claims, both Zumwalt and WND would be best advised to lawyer up real soon.