Sidney Powell trial alleges voting problems in non-existent county

• A Michigan trial pushed by allies of President Donald Trump seeks to fight what voters have decided and declare him the winner of the state’s electoral votes.
• To bolster his thesis, he includes an affidavit from Navid Keshavarz-Nia, a cybersecurity expert who alleges election data points to widespread fraud (extensive research and other experts refute such claims).
• The affidavit says President-elect Joe Biden won “over 100% of the vote” in a county that doesn’t exist.
• Keshavarz-Nia also said he did not actually analyze the voting machines used in the 2020 election.
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A witness in a lawsuit filed by allies of President Donald Trump trying to overthrow democracy in Michigan said the vote count in Edison County “is concerning and indicates fraud” because President-elect Joe Biden won “more than 100% of the votes.”

There’s only one problem: There is no Edison County in Michigan, the Detroit Free Press noted.

In fact, there is no Edison County in the whole of the United States of America.

The claim comes from Navid Keshavarz-Nia, who describes himself in the affidavit as a cybersecurity expert working for a defense contractor and has received training from several government agencies. The affidavit is included as an attachment to a lawsuit filed last week by people working with Sidney Powell, a former member of the Trump campaign legal team.

Keshavarz-Nia’s absurd claim about Edison County caught public attention with a tweet from Jonathan Oosting, a reporter with the non-profit Bridge Michigan news organization.

—Jonathan Oosting (@jonathanoosting) November 30, 2020

The typo-peppered lawsuit makes many of the same fiercely conspiratorial arguments Powell made at a press conference that led to his ousting from Trump’s legal team: That the now-deceased Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has used voting machines to manipulate the election results in his own country, and the same machines are now used to manipulate the 2020 election results. There is no evidence of the claim, and the companies named in the lawsuits Powell’s lawsuits debunked the arguments made in his lawsuits.

Witness says he did not actually look at the voting machines

In the affidavit, Keshavarz-Nia states that he did not analyze any of the voting machines used in the 2020 election, but argued that there was “evidence of fraud” based on his analysis of electoral data.

Most of this data is simply false or based on a misunderstanding of how election data is reported.

It is not known if Keshavarz-Nia had another county in mind by referring to a vote count over 100% in “Edison County”, but some internet detectors have made claims over 100% of some. counties voting relying on obsolete voters. log information or just use the wrong data sets, USA Today and Reuters reported.

In another part of the affidavit, Keshavarz-Nia writes that President Donald Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania has fallen at a faster rate than the votes can be counted. But the votes were simply reported by the constituencies in the time period he indicates, not actually counted at that time.

Photo AP / Jacquelyn Martin

Even though Keshavarz-Nia testified that he did not analyze the machines used in the 2020 election, Powell’s lawsuit cites his affidavit to claim that “hundreds of thousands of votes cast for President Trump in the 2020 general election were transferred to former Vice President Biden. “- which is not true.

The lawsuit ultimately calls on a federal judge to force Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to ignore voters and “provide certified election results indicating that President Donald Trump is the winner of the election.”

Michigan has already certified its election results, giving Biden its 16 electoral votes. The Trump campaign itself has withdrawn a federal lawsuit attempting to challenge the state’s election results, and three other lawsuits by Republican-aligned groups have failed, as judges overseeing the cases finding no evidence of fraud.

Keshavarz-Nia could not be reached for comment, and Powell did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.