President Donald Trump's legal team Thursday laid out a laundry list of claims on the 2020 election, including election systems flipped votes, German servers were storing U.S. voting information and election software had been created in Venezuela.
In a nearly two-hour news conference, Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and others alleged a widespread Democratic election conspiracy involving multiple states and suspect voting machines.
Election officials across the country have said repeatedly there was no widespread fraud.
Many of the allegations of fraud stem from poll watchers who filed affidavits included with lawsuits in battleground states aimed at delaying vote certification. Those affidavits lean into innuendo and unsupported suggestions of fraud, election officials have said.
For example, the allegations refer to suitcases in a polling place but make no suggestion ballots were being secretly counted. There are allegations of ballots being duplicated and claims partisan poll watchers were too far away to observe.
Giuliani cited a few sworn affidavits he said showed a vast Democratic conspiracy but added he could not reveal much of the evidence. One he cited was from Jessy Jacob, identified as a city employee in Detroit who said she saw other workers coaching voters to cast ballots for Biden and the Democrats.
A judge who refused to block certification of Detroit-area results noted Jacob's claims included no "date, location, frequency or names of employees," and she only came forward after unofficial results indicated Biden had won Michigan.
Trump legal adviser Jenna Ellis, who joined Giuliani, said more evidence would be forthcoming, and Trump's allies would have more success in courts going forward.
At the news conference, Trump attorney Sidney Powell alleged: "The Dominion Voting Systems, the Smartmatic technology software, and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election after one constitutional referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out."
A voting technology expert refuted those claims.
Dominion does not have any ties to Venezuela, nor does it have a partnership with Smartmatic, said Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert at the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan election technology research and development nonprofit.
Smartmatic is an international company incorporated in Florida by Venezuelan founders. But the company states on its website it's not associated with governments or political parties of any country.
Powell also alleged the Smartmatic technology software flipped votes from Trump to Biden.
"One of (the software's) most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes," she said. "It can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden."
A statement released by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, a federal agency that oversees U.S. election security, says there's no truth to claims that votes cast for Trump were switched to count for Biden or deleted.
Powell alleged a U.S. voting server was in Germany.
"It's somehow related to this, but I do not know whether good guys got it or bad guys got it," Powell said.
Last week, Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert, of Texas, claimed "U.S. Army forces" seized a server from a Frankfurt office. An Army spokesman described allegations the Army had recovered servers in Germany as false.
Voting software companies Scytl and Dominion have released statements denying the claims.
Chris Krebs, the Trump administration election official fired last week over the comments about the security of 2020, tweeted: "That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history. And possibly the craziest."
In Pennsylvania, where the Trump campaign is challenging the election results in federal court, a legal team led by Giuliani suggested in a filing Wednesday the judge order the Republican-led state legislature to pick delegates to the Electoral College, potentially throwing the state's 20 electoral votes to Trump. A judge canceled an evidentiary hearing in the case.
In Arizona, the Republican Party is pressuring county officials to delay certifying results. The GOP lost a bid Thursday to postpone certification in Maricopa County, the state's most populous. In northwestern Arizona, Mohave County officials postponed their certification until next week.
Judge John Hannah ruled without explanation, except to bar the party from refiling the case. The judge promised a full explanation in the future.
Maricopa County officials are expected to certify elections results today.
Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes, and Maricopa County put him over the top. The county performed a hand count of some ballots the weekend after the election, which showed its machine counts were 100 percent accurate. The same was found Wednesday during routine post-election accuracy tests.