Gabbard testimony on Puerto Rico voting machines raises questions about role of Venezuela conspiracy theory
Source: The Guardian
Gabbard testimony on Puerto Rico voting machines raises questions about role of Venezuela conspiracy theory
National intelligence director said voting machine seizure was requested by US attorney in Puerto Rico – who’s been trying to revive 2020 election conspiracy theory
Aram Roston in Washington
Fri 20 Mar 2026 17.50 GMT
Last modified on Fri 20 Mar 2026 21.04 GMT
When the US director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, testified on Thursday that her office seized voting machines from Puerto Rico, she said it was at the request of the office of the US attorney in Puerto Rico. Left unsaid was that the prosecutor, as the Guardian previously reported, has been the center of a push by Donald Trump supporters to revive a long discredited conspiracy theory purporting to link Venezuela to Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat.
Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, the conspiracy theory maintains, controlled electronic voting machines worldwide and remotely manipulated results in 2020 to deprive Trump of a presidential victory.
It was just one of the theories and grievances pushed by Trump and his supporters. Other complaints involved dead voters, stolen ballots, mail-in ballot fraud and mass voting by noncitizens.
A judge in 2023 ruled the voting machine conspiracy involving Dominion Voting and Venezuela was false, and some news organizations that made the allegations have retracted them and paid what amounted to hundreds of millions in defamation claims.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/20/puerto-rico-voting-machines-trump-2020-election-loss-venezuela