The Atlantic on the right’s most idiotic (and possibly most consequential) conspiracy theory:
In the days after American commandos raided Nicolás Maduro’s compound and whisked him out of Venezuela, Mike Lindell wasn’t ruminating about the dramatic military operation or oil prices—he was reviving a long-dead conspiracy theory.
Lindell, better known as the “MyPillow guy,” was celebrating because, in his telling, a possible witness to the theory that Venezuela conspired with election-equipment companies to rig the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump was now in U.S. custody. “I’m hoping now that Maduro will actually come clean and tell us everything about the machines and how they steal the elections,” Lindell, who has long espoused election falsehoods, told me the day after the Venezuelan dictator’s arraignment.
The supposition boils down to this: Venezuela plotted with election-equipment and -technology companies to engineer Trump’s defeat in 2020. There is no credible evidence to support this. But with Maduro in U.S. custody months before the midterms and the Trump administration investigating the 2020 election, an idea that had been disproved by facts and debunked in lawsuits has been revived, with a newsy twist: Now Maduro will prove from a New York jail that Trump defeated Joe Biden.
Since Maduro’s capture, Trump has shared a raft of discredited election-fraud claims on his Truth Social site, including one tied to a company central to the Venezuela conspiracy. A top Justice Department official helped harden the narrative: Ed Martin, the United States pardon attorney (who also directs the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group, which pursues retribution against Trump’s perceived political enemies), promoted the idea that Maduro could offer crucial information to substantiate the stolen-election theory once and for all. Martin reposted on X a claim that Maduro could try “to plead to lesser charges by proffering evidence that the 2020 election was stolen,” adding “!”
The right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson, an extremely online Trump-administration ally, claimed that Maduro “is in possession” of evidence against election-equipment companies. “Maduro might be Trump’s final revenge for the election theft of 2020,” Johnson told his audience. “If he begins to sing like a canary—which he will; they always do—then who will he give up?” Johnson added: “This is why they took him alive.”
I mentioned this before but it really seems to be getting legs on the right. I’m sure you recall that this bs was the basis of the lawsuit that cost Fox New almost a billion dollars. But they just keep going.
I do wonder why Maduro wouldn’t just make some stuff up. He’s clearly being given a free shot at doing so and I’m quite sure he knows about it. Bondi and Blanche might even give him a plea deal or Trump could pardon him outright.
It just never ends.