A former White House aide, Joanna Miller, is reportedly responsible for authoring a report that served as the basis for ex-President Donald Trump’s sweeping attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The Guardian first reported the alleged connection on Thursday, citing anonymous sources who have reviewed the original materials. The document at issue was entitled “Overview 12/2/20 — History, Executives, Vote Manipulation Ability and Design, Foreign Ties” and it proposed that President Joe Biden’s win was only the result of corrupt Dominion Voting Systems voting machines.
A public version of this report has been circulating since 2020 and, according to The Guardian, Miller was listed on the document’s pages and metadata as its original author before her name was curiously scrubbed and replaced with lawyer and lobbyist Katherine Friess.
Investigators on the Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed Friess on March 2, noting her reported involvement in drafting an executive order that directed the seizure of voting machines. Other committee targets like Bernie Kerik, the former New York Police Commissioner who regularly met with Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani before Jan. 6 at Trump's “war room” at the Willard, told the panel Friess was instrumental in preparing legal documents for the reelection campaign.
[Related: Coterie of Trump’s election fraud lawyers hit with Jan. 6 subpoenas]
The decision to replace Friess with Miller was reportedly rather abrupt. Historically, Friess has told the press that she has no idea how the name change happened.
From this week’s reporting:
“It was not clear why Miller’s name was removed from the report, which was sent to Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani on 29 November 2020, or why the White House aide’s involvement was obfuscated in the final 2 December version.”
The Dominion report was rife with conspiracies, often drawn on by many of Trump’s most ardent promoters of his lies about the outcome of the 2020 election, like Rudy Giuliani and ex-trade adviser Peter Navarro. The report featured debunked claims that Dominion utilized purposefully glitchy Smartmatic software to run its machines, and also quoted anonymous Venezuelan officials who alleged Smartmatic had ties to state-run Venezuelan businesses.
The claims about Smartmatic ultimately prompted the company to sue “news” companies, like One America News—a pro-Trump propaganda channel—and the right-leaning Newsmax, for defamation.
An unnamed source told The Guardian on Thursday that the Dominion report also incorporated into much of what was produced about so-called election fraud reports written by officials like Peter Navarro.