Former president Trump’s campaign quietly commissioned a second firm to study election fraud claims in the weeks after the 2020 election, and the founder of the firm was recently questioned by the Justice Department about his work disproving the claims.
Ken Block, founder of the firm Simpatico Software Systems, studied more than a dozen voter fraud theories and allegations for Trump’s campaign in late 2020 and found they were “all false,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post.
“No substantive voter fraud was uncovered in my investigations looking for it, nor was I able to confirm any of the outside claims of voter fraud that I was asked to look at,” he said. “Every fraud claim I was asked to investigate was false.”
Block said he recently received a subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith’s office and met with federal prosecutors in Washington, but he declined to discuss his interactions with them. Block said he contemporaneously sent his findings disputing fraud claims in writing to the Trump campaign in late 2020.
“I just don’t believe it’s appropriate at this point in time to discuss anything related to the grand jury process,” he said.
Prosecutors have obtained extensive information about Block’s efforts, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation.
Federal records show the Trump 2020 campaign paid Block’s firm more than $750,000 in six different payments. The first for $390,000 came three days after the election, records show, and the final payment came around Thanksgiving of that year. The payments were labeled “Recount.”
Separately, prosecutors have interviewed multiple employees from the Berkeley Research Group in recent weeks, another Trump-paid firm that produced a 29-page report ultimately undermining many of Trump’s fraud claims, according to three people familiar with the matter. Berkeley’s study contradicted claims made by Trump and his advisers that there were extensive numbers of dead voters and cases of fraud in states such as Georgia and Nevada.
The prosecutors have obtained records from the firm and its employees through subpoenas, two people who worked on the Berkeley project said. They have learned that the firm’s work was given to a number of top Trump aides, and that Trump was briefed on the research himself by Berkeley employees, people familiar with the project said.
Firm employees have told the Justice Department that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and other top administration and campaign officials were aware of the Berkeley research and findings, the people said.
https://wapo.st/3HfVau3
