Machine Fraud: Real or Ghost Story?
ANALYSIS: When Flynn network operatives run a suspected Russian active measures operation. A crisis of confidence. Your vote matters.
On February 9, I published an exclusive report based on materials provided by Michigan attorney Matt DePerno, documenting a January 2025 phone call and Signal group chat in which Flynn-linked operatives attempted to recruit DePerno into expanding a baseless Puerto Rico voting machine investigation to every swing state. DePerno warned U.S. Attorney Stephen Muldrow that he was “dealing with a fraudster” in Patrick Byrne-linked consultant Martin Rodil, and told Bigger Truth that when he pressed the participants for evidence, “the case clearly fell apart.”
Two weeks later, in my February 24 follow-up, I connected this network of attorneys—Kurt Olsen, Stefanie Lambert, Peter Ticktin—to a pattern of alleged legal malpractice so consistent it looks like design: grand promises of courtroom vindication, followed by conduct so deficient it guarantees defeat, which then becomes the next round of grievance content for the Flynn network’s active measures narrative machine.
This week, Reuters published an extensively sourced investigation that validates both reports in granular detail—and reveals that the problem is even worse than I described.
The Puerto Rico Investigation Found Nothing
Reuters confirms what my reporting laid out months ago: the entire Puerto Rico voting machine investigation (and Tulsi’s claims that they were investigating foreign interference in our election systems) was built on the long-debunked conspiracy theory that Venezuelan-designed code from Smartmatic, a company founded over 20 years ago, somehow persists inside Dominion Voting Systems machines.
The administration seized Puerto Rico’s Dominion machines in May 2025, among much fanfare from the Flynn network, and hired Mojave Research, a Virginia cybersecurity firm, to scour them for months. Mojave found software vulnerabilities—similar to those identified years earlier by University of Michigan professor Alex Halderman and a 2022 CISA advisory—but no evidence the machines had ever been hacked or manipulated.
Mojave recommended a solution to the vulnerabilities and also recommended a further investigation to see if those vulnerabilities persist in other states. Following these recommendations would have helped to build confidence for all Americans in our election systems.
Instead, Olsen engaged in what is best described as a coverup.
Olsen Turned on His Own Contractor
When Mojave failed to find the Venezuelan ghost code that Olsen was certain existed, he didn’t accept the results. According to Reuters, Olsen sent a message to Trump accusing Mojave of blocking his work, serving the “deep state,” and secretly taking money from George Soros. Mojave called Olsen’s Soros theory “patently absurd and ridiculous” and opened its books to prove they had no connection to Soros. The Open Society Foundations confirmed to Reuters they had never heard of the firm.
According to Reuters, Olsen repeatedly told the Mojave team it was “clearly doing it wrong” when it failed to find suspicious code—a line that would be funny if it weren’t coming from a man with the full weight of the federal government behind him. Reuters also reports that Mojave’s CEO said Olsen fixated on allegations like vote rigging in Arizona but never detailed any evidence, losing count of the number of times Olsen declared that “Maricopa is a crime scene.”
Rather than accept the contractor’s findings, Olsen advocated for Mojave’s termination. The contract was ended in October 2025. Around that same time, Trump appointed Olsen as Director of Election Security and Integrity—effectively rewarding him for rejecting the evidence.
The Real Election Security Threat They’re Ignoring
Here’s what should infuriate every American who cares about election security: Mojave actually found real vulnerabilities. The firm recommended a plan to address them—more machine analysis, a task force to advise states on software patches, financial aid for implementation, and penalties for states that refused. One source told Reuters the recommendations needed to begin implementation by May 2026 to be completed before the November midterms.
As of this writing, there is no indication the administration has acted on any of these recommendations. The White House did not respond to Reuters’ questions about whether it planned to address anything Mojave flagged.
Let that sink in. Olsen’s and Gabbard’s own contractor found genuine security issues and proposed concrete fixes. Kurt Olsen’s response was to accuse the contractor of being a Soros front and get them fired—because they didn’t find the specific imaginary code he needed to validate a conspiracy theory that has been debunked at every turn, in every court, by every credible analysis.
And while the Flynn-led “election integrity” influencer network played ad nauseum Gabbard’s sound bites insinuating there was a real investigation into alleged foreign interference into Dominion machines, they kept the results of the investigation a secret from the public.
The Smartmatic Theory Is “Technically Incoherent”
Reuters quotes Professor Halderman, calling the idea of Smartmatic code persisting in Dominion machines “technically incoherent,” because the two companies’ products are built on different platforms with different programming languages.
This is the theory Kurt Olsen has bet everything on. It is the same theory that Martin Rodil pitched to Matt DePerno in late 2021, that DePerno immediately recognized as recycled and debunked “Project Foot Patrol” material. It is the same theory that Emerald Robinson used to claim Flynn and Patrick Byrne saved the 2024 election for Trump by stopping Venezuelan election interference through Serbian servers by paying $15 in Bitcoin to a “Japanese anon.”
Was this hairbrained theory just their own invention? I’ve long speculated that this a Russian/CCP foreign influence op.
In this clip from the Association of Former Intelligence Officers podcast, author Sean Weswisser describes from his own experience as CIA Station Chief in Moscow why he believes this particular theory is a Russian active measures operation, intended to weaken the United States.
The Ticktin Letter Revisited
In my February 24 report, I highlighted the extraordinary November 2025 email that attorney Peter Ticktin sent to Eric Coomer’s lawyers, claiming federal investigations for treason were “underway” and offering to arrange “full immunity” and witness protection for Coomer — if he would only just provide what their claims lack: evidence of a tie between Venezuela and Dominion. At the time, I noted how remarkable it was that Ticktin appeared to speak with the authority of federal investigations he should have had no involvement in—while Olsen was simultaneously operating inside those same agencies.
Reuters’ reporting now provides additional context: at the very moment Ticktin was writing that email, Olsen had access to classified intelligence from the CIA, was directing FBI referrals, and was pushing Mojave to find evidence that didn’t exist. The Ticktin letter reads even more ominously in this light. Either Ticktin had inside knowledge of what Olsen was doing and was using it to pressure a litigation opponent, or he was fabricating claims of federal prosecution to intimidate a witness. Neither option looks good for Trump’s administration.
And as I’ve been showing for two years, isn’t one of the main objectives of the Flynn network operations to damage Trump?
The Virginia Special Election and the “Rigged” Playbook
Last week also brought a vivid demonstration of where this all leads. After Virginia voters narrowly approved a troublesome redistricting referendum on April 21, Trump posted on Truth Social that it was “A RIGGED ELECTION” stolen through “a massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop!’”
The reality is far more mundane. The Virginia results show that absentee and mail-in ballots favored the “Yes” side by roughly 3:1—almost the identical ratio we saw in the 2024 presidential race in Virginia, where Harris carried early mail votes 73% to 25%. This isn’t evidence of fraud. It’s evidence that Democrats vote by mail at vastly higher rates than Republicans, and that mail ballots are typically counted after election day votes, which means the results shift as those ballots are tabulated.
This is the real damage the Flynn network’s election fraud operations do to the Republican Party. By convincing Republican voters that mail-in voting is inherently fraudulent, they have created a structural disadvantage that shows up in race after race. If we lose absentee ballots by 2:1 or 3:1, we simply cannot mathematically win elections.
But the Flynn network continuously tells their mind controlled followers, who are Republican voters, not to vote absentee “because it tells the cheaters how many votes they have to steal.” And millions of Americans believe this slop, despite the lack of any evidence to support it.
GOP Disenfranchisement and Losses Are the Point
If you want more secure and transparent election systems, there is only one constitutional solution: elect state legislators and governors who will pass legislation to do so. Since Democrats have demonstrated only the desire to do the opposite, electing Republicans is the only solution.
Instead of helping get out the Republican vote, the Flynn network has followed the following formula since 2020: make grand claims of election fraud, launch investigations that find nothing, lie to their audience and claim falsely that they’ve proven something they haven’t, use their lies and lawsuits based on lies to raise money for lawsuits, when they lose said lawsuits blame “corrupt courts” and “RINOs,” and use the resulting grievance to radicalize and disenfranchise their audience.
They use the following KGB-style active measures narratives to cause Republican losses:
“It’s all rigged so what’s the point in voting.”
“Republicans are no better than Democrats (uniparty) so let the Dems win to teach the GOP a lesson.”
Mike Lindell told people his attorneys promised him the Supreme Court would vote 9-0 to reinstall Trump in 2021—months after Biden was inaugurated.
Which attorneys were telling him this? Kurt Olsen and Stefanie Lambert.
Olsen was sanctioned by Arizona courts for making false statements in Kari Lake’s case. He helped engineer the legal strategy that put Tina Peters in prison for nine years by arranging for Conan Hayes to access election management systems and then running a defense designed to turn her trial into a 2020 election show trial rather than mount an actual defense. And now, with the full resources of the federal government at his disposal, he has spent nearly a year and so far has produced nothing.
But the investigation keeps expanding. The DHS, FBI, ODNI, and DOJ are all devoting significant resources into investigating the 2020 election. I think this is a good thing if the investigations are used to help Americans understand that our votes count.
John Solomon with Just the News has been making prediction after prediction about what’s about to come. We’ve been told since the January raid on Fulton County, Georgia that “in the next few weeks” the hammer will drop and we’ll see indictments. Where there is genuine evidence of wrongdoing, that is good news.
What Should Actually Happen
I am all for making our election systems more secure and transparent. There are real vulnerabilities in voting infrastructure that deserve serious attention. Mojave found some of them and proposed fixes. According to Reuters’ sources, which include the CEO of Mojave, that advice has been ignored.
The constructive path forward is to address these vulnerabilities through the boring, technical work of software patches, security audits, and improved procedures. This is work that requires trust between federal agencies, state election officials, and the vendors who build the systems.
Kurt Olsen’s approach—accusing everyone who doesn’t confirm his theories of being a Soros-funded deep state operative—makes this work harder, not easier. He is actively undermining election security while holding the title of Director of Election Security.
Todd Blanche: A Professional Under Fire
One positive development in this landscape is Todd Blanche’s elevation to acting Attorney General following Pam Bondi’s departure in April. Blanche has shown himself to be a professional operator—which I believe is precisely why the Flynn network has targeted him relentlessly.
In September and October 2025, Ticktin launched a coordinated campaign against Blanche across Lindell TV, Steve Bannon’s War Room, Infowars, and other Flynn-adjacent platforms, calling Blanche “a fox in the henhouse” and accusing him of “blocking Trump’s agenda at DOJ.” Ticktin claimed Blanche was intentionally stalling pardons, blocking access to whistleblowers, and suppressing justice for “election integrity fighters like Tina Peters.”
This campaign tells you everything you need to know. The Flynn network attacks anyone who operates within professional norms—because professional norms are the enemy of an operation designed to produce chaos and grievance content rather than results.
Meanwhile, Ed Martin—the Flynn ally who was installed to lead Trump’s Weaponization Working Group—was quietly removed from that role in early 2026 after a DOJ review reportedly found he had leaked grand jury material. Multiple sources told CBS News that little was accomplished during Martin’s tenure running the working group, and that he had clashed with Blanche’s office over his “lack of productivity” and controversial social media posts. The weaponization group was supposed to review cases from the Biden era, but appears to have produced more leaks and disruptive headlines than results.
The Catch-22 and the Only Way Out
There is one form of election interference/fraud that has been definitively proven (HINT: it’s not Venezuelan ghost code in voting machines). It is coordinated psychological operations that convince one group of voters to stay home while motivating the other side to turn out and vote.
The Flynn network is a witting and unwitting insurgency aimed at causing Democrat wins through the relentless promotion of the idea that elections are hopelessly rigged and that voting is therefore pointless. Every time a Republican voter decides not to vote because “it’s all rigged so what’s the point,” that is a vote stolen—not by the machines, but by propaganda. The Virginia results this week show the consequences in stark relief. Turnout from both sides was comparatively low. Had Republicans stepped up their AV ballot chasing game we could have won that easily.
Our election systems are a mostly trustworthy work in progress. They will never be perfect, but they have real vulnerabilities that deserve real attention. Making them better requires electing officials who are willing to do the hard, unglamorous work of improving security and transparency—and that requires showing up to vote so we can win elections.
Trump proved in 2024 that Republicans can win when they turn out in force. The solution to whatever imperfections exist in our election systems is not to stay home and complain that the game is rigged. It is to be too big to rig.
The Flynn network’s influencers and attorneys aren’t fixing our elections. They aren’t building investigations and legal cases with any chance at success. They’re building a revolution—from Russia with love.