Bringing Crazy Back

Don’t look now, but they’re trying to release the Kraken again.

Photo courtesy of the New York Times

Remember “Team Crazy”? We first got a glimpse during a startlingly bonkers and much derided press conference starring Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani following the 2020 election.

Powell went before the cameras and the nation to declare, in all seriousness, that software controlling the Dominion voting machines that had flipped votes toward Joe Biden had been “created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chávez.”

Chávez had been dead for seven years, but stay with me here. Powell insisted there was a “massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba and likely China” that had interfered with the election. For weeks afterwards, she famously promised to “release the kraken”—a trove of data that allegedly would back up her claims.

The kraken never surfaced.

Then Rudy Giuliani, hair dye running down his face, had his turn. He baselessly asserted, “Our votes are counted in Germany and in Spain by a company owned by affiliates of Chávez and Maduro.”

These claims were so absurd that Powell and most of “Team Crazy” were sidelined. What happened next, however, is highly relevant and carries disturbing resonance today. On December 18, 2020, Powell, Giuliani, the MyPillow guy Mike Lindell, and for some reason the former CEO of Overstock, Patrick Byrne, wrangled their way into the White House and, in a fateful meeting, urged Trump to seize voting machines.

Cooler heads in the Oval Office intervened, and ultimately Trump declined.

Powell later pleaded guilty to six counts in the Georgia election fraud case, agreeing to testify against her co-conspirators including Trump. Giuliani was found liable for defaming election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, and a jury awarded them $148 million.

But now, Trump’s bringing crazy back. I hate to be the bearer of such absurd news, but we need to pay attention and wrap our heads around it. Because shit’s about to get crazy.

Venezuelan software, redux

The idea that software created 14 years ago in Venezuela was used to infiltrate Dominion voting machines was repeatedly debunked by experts and judges who had had the misfortune of sifting through such wild claims. The theory was that Dominion, which operated voting machines in many parts of the country, had been created or influenced by Venezuela to fix elections. But there was zero support for this. This “Venezuela Lie” was, in fact, the subject of a huge defamation case that the Fox Network ultimately settled with Dominion.

The best attempts at evidence that Powell could muster were screenshots and affidavits circulated widely among “election truthers.” But as the New York Times noted at the time,

It consisted of three screenshots of an affidavit that she said was signed by a former military official from Venezuela about elections there. The screenshots were incomplete and did not include a name or signature, and Ms. Powell did not respond to requests to view the full document.

From these screenshots and that supposed affidavit, Powell asserted that elections software company Smartmatic helped the Venezuelan government rig its elections by switching votes and leaving no trail. The military official quoted in the excerpts claimed that the U.S. election was “eerily reminiscent” of what happened in Venezuela’s 2013 presidential election.

“This person saw, by his own experience, exactly what was happening there was happening here,” Ms. Powell explained on Fox.

And that was it. Powell never backed up any of her claims with any hard evidence that votes had actually been switched in the United States. Hand recounts of ballots in many states—including Georgia—confirmed the vote tallies of the machines were accurate. All Powell had were snippets from a purported affidavit and a huge inferential leap that what happened in Venezuela looked to someone like what happened here.

Leaps of logic aside, this fanciful story falls apart right out of the gate. As the Times wryly observed, “Smartmatic does not provide technology to the battleground states that sealed President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.”

Despite this claim being entirely unsupported, and affirmatively ruled false by a judge in 2023 in the Dominion defamation case, Trump has never let it go. In November of last year, his Justice Department got involved again. According to reporting by The Guardian, investigators began interviewing people who had tied Venezuela to 2020 election fraud claims:

Two promoters of the conspiracy theory have repeatedly briefed the US attorney for the district of Puerto Rico, W Stephen Muldrow, and have shared witnesses and documents with officials, according to four sources. Muldrow declined to comment.

In addition to the Puerto Rico talks, people pushing the conspiracy have been interviewed by federal investigators for a federal taskforce in Tampa which is looking at Venezuelan drug trafficking and money laundering, four sources told the Guardian. The US attorney’s office in Tampa declined to comment.

So what’s this all about? Walk through the looking glass with me. You’ll see some very strange threads start to weave together.

Wait, Tren de Aragua? Really?

According to The Guardian, the story of Venezuela and claims of stolen elections are still kicking around the Justice Department primarily because of two private figures: Gary Berntsen, a former CIA officer and outspoken Trump supporter, and Martin Rodil, a Venezuelan expatriate who claims long experience working with U.S. law enforcement.

For years, Berntsen and Rodil have promoted two related claims: 1) that Venezuela’s government is linked to the gang Tren de Aragua (yup, that one!), and 2) that Venezuela helped rig elections internationally, including in the U.S.

A U.S. intelligence memo concluded that the Venezuelan government does not control Tren de Aragua, despite claims by the White House used to support its Alien Enemies Act declaration and continued war on that country.

Even though the second theory about Venezuela rigging other countries’ elections has been widely debunked, Berntsen and Rodil have continued to collect documents and refer witnesses, passing things along to investigators.

The two men developed a close working relationship with Muldrow, the U.S. attorney in Puerto Rico, who is a strong Trump ally. Muldrow allegedly held multiple briefings with them and shared their materials with a federal task force known as Panama Express. That group has now shifted its focus toward Venezuela and is reportedly working directly with Berntsen and Rodil.

Fun fact: Rodil was previously investigated in Spain over allegations of extortion related to influencing U.S. authorities. Berntsen presents himself as a patriotic professional and rejects accusations that he’s a conspiracy peddler.

Maduro’s capture—for what exactly?

The White House claims the attack on Venezuela and abduction of Maduro were about interdicting drugs, despite Venezuela not being a major supplier to the U.S. Then it said it was about all the oil, but oil executives pushed back saying it would take years to develop.

We shouldn’t discount the notion, however crazy it sounds, that the kidnapping of Maduro by U.S. forces was also about false election conspiracies. Days before the mission to seize Maduro was launched, Trump began posting videos promoting debunked claims about Dominion machines. Maduro was captured just days later.

Some prominent figures on the right, including a top DOJ official, openly suggested that Trump captured Maduro because he supposedly has key evidence that his country helped rig voting machines in the 2020 election. Democracy Docket took note:

“Dominion was bought by a Republican company. Maduro was captured & is sharing evidence w/federal prosecutors,” Rogan O’Handley, a notable conservative commentator and lawyer, posted on social media Monday. “President Trump is posting videos about Dominion election rigging & says 2020 election fraud will be exposed in 2026. Yeah I’d say the dominoes are being lined up.”

Sean Davis of The Federalist joined in, suggesting Maduro would proffer evidence of a stolen 2020 election—a claim Ed Martin, the former DOJ official in charge of the so-called “weaponization” task force, then reposted.

Conspiracy pusher Alex Jones went with similar points on his own show. “It’s about Venezuela being the base of election fraud,” Jones said. “Folks, when this house of cards starts falling perfectly this year, the 250th anniversary of this country, what a present,” Jones added.

We should not surprised if the regime later trots out Maduro with a “confession” as evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. In fact, we should get ahead of this move by warning voters that this absurdity is quite possibly on the table and could very well happen.

As Trump himself said yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast, he’s never gotten over his loss in 2020. We continue to pay the price for his malignant narcissism. In his warped mind, they “rigged the election.” He even said the quiet part out loud: “I had to win it. I needed it for my own ego. I would have had a bad ego for the rest of my life.”

Tulsi went down to Georgia looking for some votes to steal

There’s another big unanswered question. What the hell was the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard even doing in Fulton County, Georgia as the FBI hauled away millions of paper ballots and voter roll data before shocked county election officials?

Trump originally told NBC News that he didn’t know why Gabbard was there. Trump’s No. 2 at the DOJ, Todd Blanche, implausibly claimed she just “happened to be in Atlanta.” Then in a letter to Congress, Gabbard clarified that she was there at the request of Donald Trump, writing that “the president specifically directed my observance of the execution of the Fulton County search warrant.”

But yesterday, Trump changed his story again, saying that Gabbard was there at the request of Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Regardless of who dispatched her, Trump has now claimed, without basis, that Gabbard was present because Russia, China or one of five other countries had “something to do” with the 2020 election there.

This is a good time to remind ourselves that Trump’s M.O. is to invent investigations to gain political advantage and punish his enemies. That’s what he did with Ukraine and the Bidens. It’s what he directed toward James Comey, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, Lisa Cook and Jerome Powell. And it’s what he will do with the 2020 election claims, using as much “evidence” as his FBI can gather or seize.

This will serve two purposes.

First, Trump hopes to cause his base to froth in anticipation of more “revelations” about the 2020 election, which many somehow remain obsessed with, and through that ruse distract from the Epstein files where Trump’s name appears over 38,000 times.

Second, renewed claims of fraud in the 2020 election will fuel doubts about the security and fairness of the 2026 midterms. Trump knows he must now seek to discredit or nullify the upcoming election because the GOP is facing a historic wipeout.

But zooming out a bit, it’s clear that Trump is off his game here. As someone familiar with how entertainment works, Trump should recognize that it’s a mistake to attempt a rehash of storylines from Season One. The base won’t find it nearly as compelling, and everyone will sense the White House writers are out of ideas and simply trying to milk old narratives for more eyeballs. That doesn’t work in Hollywood, and it won’t work well here.

Moreover, those who carried election denial water for Trump in the past, such as Fox, are going to be much more careful now or risk getting sued for billions once again. Good luck finding major networks willing to put guests on to spout the same theories Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell once did.

Epilogue—where are they now?

Speaking of those three, how are they doing these days? We rarely hear from Rudy, except when he’s pleading poverty and begging for support. Sidney Powell is still fighting to hang on to her bar license in Texas. And I hear Mike Lindell is running for governor of… Minnesota?

Yeah, you go with that one, Mike. You’re just the man to meet this historic moment of crisis there.