Election deniers and MAGA influencers are confident that the US capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has nothing to do with oil or drug trafficking. Instead, they’re sure it’s all linked to unfounded claims that the Venezuelan government rigged the 2020 election in former president Joe Biden’s favor.
President Donald Trump and his administration appear to have boosted these conspiracy theories.
In the days after Maduro’s capture on January 3, Trump shared a flurry of posts on his Truth Social platform about election fraud, including ones related to Dominion Voting Systems. Other MAGA influencers posted about Smartmatic, another election company.
Both Dominion and Smartmatic, companies that make voting machines and the software that runs on them, became central targets of disinformation campaigns following the 2020 election, with election deniers claiming the machines were part of a supposed conspiracy to elect Biden. These claims were continuously disproven: In 2023, Fox News agreed to pay Dominion almost $800 million to settle a defamation lawsuit about Fox’s claims about Dominion’s voting machines.
But across the internet, conspiracy theories about these voting companies are back, with election deniers and MAGA loyalists claiming that Venezuela’s government conspired with Smartmatic to steal elections. This, some conspiracy theorists claim, is partially why the US was compelled to invade Venezuela.
QAnon influencer Chad Vivas, who has been pictured with Trump in the past, flagged a post from Trump on January 3 about Dominion, writing: “You think the timing is coincidence? A Venezuelan Military Intelligence whistleblower confirmed the CIA outsources election rigging technology like Smartmatic and Dominion from Venezuela.”
Trump later shared a screenshot of Vivas’ X post on Truth Social. “Confirmation from the Boss,” Vivas wrote in response.
Sean Davis, the CEO of the Federalist, a conservative magazine, wrote on X: “It’s gonna be wild when Maduro tries to plead to lesser charges by proffering evidence that the 2020 election was stolen.” In response, Ed Martin, a pardon attorney at the Justice Department, responded by quoting Davis’ post and adding an exclamation mark. “Drugs may be an issue in Maduro’s capture, but I think the real reason is that Venezuela was being used to launder election rigging technology by the Deep State,” Jordan Sather, a prominent QAnon promoter, wrote on his Telegram channel.
The White House did not respond to questions about whether alleged election-rigging factored into the decision to invade Venezuela.
In the days and weeks after the 2020 election, Trump and his legal team pushed wild conspiracy theories in a bid to overturn the results of the vote, despite Trump’s own officials at the time saying the election was the most secure in history.
Leading that charge was Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s lawyers who was among the first to push claims about Venezuelan involvement. In November 2020, Powell cited anonymous and unverified affidavits from a former Venezuela military official to claim that voting company Smartmatic helped the Venezuelan government rig elections in that country, while suggesting the company had done something similar to help Biden win.
In recent days, Powell has been celebrating Trump’s action in Venezuela and promoting claims that Venezuela was behind unproven vote rigging in 2020, including an X post from Emerald Robinson, who hosts a show on LindellTV, a streaming platform owned by election denier Mike Lindell.
Robinson has continually promoted the Venezuela election conspiracy theory. This week, Robinson claimed that she had been targeted for pushing these claims, along with Powell, Lindell, and Rudy Giuliani, all of whom have also claimed that the 2020 election was rigged.
