Here’s Why Trump Posted About Iran ‘Stealing’ the 2020 Election Hours After the US Attacked | WIRED

Overview

Here’s Why Trump Posted About Iran ‘Stealing’ the 2020 Election Hours After the US Attacked

At 2:30 am Eastern time on Saturday, President Donald Trump posted a video to his Truth Social account announcing that the US had joined Israel in launching attacks on Iran.

Details

His next post, just two hours later, appeared to suggest that the attacks were, at least in part, motivated by a wild claim that Iran had helped rig the 2020 US elections. “Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with United States,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

The post linked to an article on Just the News, a conspiracy-filled, pro-Trump outlet that offered no explanation for its claim beyond the vague assertion that Iran operated “a sophisticated election influence effort” in 2020.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether the alleged interference factored into the decision to attack Iran or what exactly the so-called interference amounted to.

Trump has spent the years since 2020 boosting numerous baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being rigged. Since his return to the White House last year, he has empowered his administration to use those debunked conspiracy theories to inform decisionmaking, from election office raids in Fulton County, Georgia, to lawsuits over unredacted voter rolls.

It’s not exactly clear what supposed Iranian interference Trump was alluding to in his Truth Social post, but Patrick Byrne, a prominent conspiracy theorist who urged Trump to seize voting machines in the wake of the 2020 election, claims to WIRED that it is related to a broader conspiracy theory that also involves Venezuela and China.

Like most election-related conspiracy theories, this one is convoluted and based on no concrete evidence. In broad terms, the conspiracy theory, which first emerged in the weeks and months after the 2020 election and has grown more complex in the years since, claims that the Venezuelan government has been rigging elections across the globe for decades by creating the voting software company Smartmatic as a vehicle to remotely rig elections. (Smartmatic has repeatedly denied all allegations against it and successfully sued right-wing outlet Newsmax for promoting conspiracy theories and defaming the company.)

Byrne laid out the entire conspiracy theory in a 45-minute-long presentation posted to X in 2024. His claims have been widely shared within the election-denial community since it was posted.

Iran’s role in all of this, claims Byrne, was to hide the money trail. “They act as paymasters. They keep certain payments that would reveal this [operation] out of the banking system, out of the Swift system so you can’t see it,” claimed Byrne during this presentation “It’s done through a transfer pricing mechanism run through Iran in oil.”

When asked for evidence of Iran’s role in this conspiracy theory, Byrne did not respond. In fact, none of Byrne’s claims have ever been verified, and most have been repeatedly debunked. Smartmatic did not immediately respond to a request to comment.

There have been two actual documented instances of Iranian election interference, however: In 2021, the Justice Department charged two Iranians for conducting an influence operation designed to target and threaten US voters. And in 2024, the three Iranian hackers working for the government were charged with compromising the Trump campaign as part of an effort to disrupt the 2024 election.

Byrne’s allegations, however, have been wholly different. And while Byrne’s claims have been circulating online conspiracy groups for years, they have been emailed directly to Trump in recent months by Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who has known Trump since they attended the New York Military Academy together. Ticktin also represents former Colorado election official turned election denial superstar Tina Peters.

That email contained a 17-page draft executive order that Ticktin, Bryne, and other election deniers have worked on for years. The order, which has been dismissed by legal experts, falsely claims that Trump can declare an emergency based on foreign interference in elections and cease control of US elections. The Washington Post first reported last week that Ticktin was advocating for the White House to adopt this draft order. While Trump told reporters that he is unaware of the draft executive order, he has recently indicated that he may be willing to bypass Congress and issue an order to allow him to take control of elections.

“There are many people [within government] who are looking at this and who are advocating for the executive order to be signed, and it has to be one that declares an emergency,” Ticktin claims to WIRED. He declined to identify any individuals involved.

While it remains unclear what role Trump believes Iran played in the 2020 election, he is much clearer on what role the country’s leaders played in the 2024 election.

“They tried twice,” Trump told ABC on Sunday, referring to two alleged plots to target and possibly kill him during the 2024 election campaign that prosecutors have claimed were Iranian-backed. “I got him before he got me,” Trump added, in reference to news that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed in the US and Israeli attacks.

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Key Takeaways

Here’s Why Trump Posted About Iran ‘Stealing’ the 2020 Election Hours After the US Attacked
At 2:30 am Eastern time on Saturday, President Donald Trump posted a video to his Truth Social account announcing that the US had joined Israel in launching attacks on Iran
His next post, just two hours later, appeared to suggest that the attacks were, at least in part, motivated by a wild claim that Iran had helped rig the 2020 US elections
The post linked to an article on Just the News, a conspiracy-filled, pro-Trump outlet that offered no explanation for its claim beyond the vague assertion that Iran operated “a sophisticated election influence effort” in 2020
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether the alleged interference factored into the decision to attack Iran or what exactly the so-called interference amounted to