Thursday, November 19, 2020

OANN LIES: Fact check: Map showing Trump landslide based on false report of seized election servers in Germany

 

OANN LIES! This is why Daffy Don supporters believe he won!
It has developed a reputation for airing baseless conspiracy theories and spreading false information, including about COVID-19.
NewsGuard — a network of journalists that evaluates news sites for reliability — urges readers and advertisers to “proceed with caution” with One America News Network, per The New York Times.
Specifically, it found that OANN “severely violates basic standards of credibility and transparency” and regularly includes “false or distorted information."
It has also spread numerous debunked claims since the election, including about election software by Dominion Voting Systems — which did not delete or change votes, per another fact check by USA TODAY.



Fact check: Map showing Trump landslide based on false report of seized election servers in Germany


Published Nov 18, 2020 


The claim: The actual electoral vote count has Trump at 410, Biden at 128

The state of Georgia is slated to finish its recount this week. If President-elect Joe Biden keeps his lead, he will end the presidential contest with a total of 306 electoral votes versus 232 for President Donald Trump.

But some users on Facebook claim that isn't the real outcome — or even close to it. They based their claims on One America News Network, known as OANN or OAN.

"OANN ran the story...True Electoral Vote," a user wrote. "Trump: 410, Biden: 128."

Another user posted an image of an electoral map that also shows Trump at 410 votes and Biden at 128 votes with the caption, "OAN reporting."

The users have not responded to requests from USA TODAY for comment.

Fact check:Dominion voting machines didn't delete votes from Trump, switch them to Biden

What is One America News Network?

One America News Network is a conservative cable network. It was founded in 2013 by businessman Robert Herring and is led by his son Charles Herring, according to The Guardian.

It has developed a reputation for airing baseless conspiracy theories and spreading false information, including about COVID-19.

NewsGuard — a network of journalists that evaluates news sites for reliability — urges readers and advertisers to “proceed with caution” with One America News Network, per The New York Times.

Specifically, it found that OANN “severely violates basic standards of credibility and transparency” and regularly includes “false or distorted information."

It has also spread numerous debunked claims since the election, including about election software by Dominion Voting Systems — which did not delete or change votes, per another fact check by USA TODAY.

Fact check:Critics satirically redact Trump's tweet to make it falsely appear he admitted defeat


Election workers count ballots at State Farm Arena on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020, in Atlanta.


Why did its map have Trump at 410 and Biden at 128?

The map that showed Trump at 410 votes and Biden at 128 was displayed in the middle of a segment on the conspiracy theory that the U.S. Army conducted a raid in Germany to seize servers with election-related info.

"New reports claim the real results of the 2020 U.S. election were found on a computer server that was seized by the U.S. military in Frankfurt, Germany," the anchor is heard explaining in a clip of the segment on YouTube. 

Then, a tweet with the map flashes on screen as the anchor explains that it is "allegedly based off of the data from that server" (though the tweet is only sourced to a defeated congressional candidate.)

"It shows a landslide victory for President Trump with 410 Electoral College votes, including liberal strongholds California and Minnesota," the anchor concludes.

The conspiracy theory about the seized servers has been previously debunked by USA TODAY.

The U.S. Army confirmed that there was no raid, and the software company in question, Scytl, explained that it does not currently have servers in Germany. 

Chris Krebs — who was the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency prior to his firing on Tuesday — also debunked the claims on Twitter.

"Election-related servers WERE NOT recently seized in Europe by the US Army contrary to #disinfo rapidly spreading across social media," he wrote on Saturday.

More:Trump ousts Homeland Security cyber chief Chris Krebs, who called election secure

Other fact-checkers — including the Associated Press, Reuters, PolitiFact, and The New York Times — have also discredited claims about the raid.

President Donald Trump on Nov. 9, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

Since there was no raid, the map that individuals claimed came from the seized servers, which showed Trump at 410 and Biden at 138, is also fake.

The map is also very unrealistic. As the anchor noted, it shows California turning red— when the state has been won by Democrats in every presidential contest since 1992.

This time around, Biden received 63.7% of the vote in California, compared with 34.2% for Trump, according to the state website.


Fact check:Story of Army raid to seize election servers in Germany is false

Our rating: False

Based on our research, the claim that the actual electoral vote count has Donald Trump at 410 and Joe Biden at 128 is FALSE. Those numbers are based on false reports that the U.S. Army seized servers with election information on them in a recent raid in Germany. USA TODAY and other fact checkers have already debunked those reports.

Our fact-check sources:





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