{"id":1448,"date":"2026-03-03T23:21:47","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T23:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=1448"},"modified":"2026-03-04T10:22:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T10:22:37","slug":"heres-why-trump-posted-about-iran-stealing-the-2020-election-hours-after-the-us-attacked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=1448","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s Why Trump Posted About Iran \u2018Stealing\u2019 the 2020 Election Hours After the US Attacked"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

At 2:30 am<\/span> 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<\/a> on Iran.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cIran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with United States,\u201d the president wrote on Truth Social<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The post linked to an article on Just the News<\/a>, a conspiracy-filled, pro-Trump outlet that offered no explanation for its claim beyond the vague assertion that Iran operated \u201ca sophisticated election influence effort\u201d in 2020.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Trump has spent the years since 2020 boosting numerous baseless<\/a> conspiracy<\/a> theories<\/a> 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<\/a>, Georgia, to lawsuits over unredacted voter rolls<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> 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<\/a> against it and successfully sued right-wing outlet Newsmax for promoting conspiracy theories and defaming the company.)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s role in all of this, claims Byrne, was to hide the money trail. \u201cThey 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\u2019t see it,\u201d claimed Byrne during this presentation \u201cIt\u2019s done through a transfer pricing mechanism run through Iran in oil.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked for evidence of Iran\u2019s role in this conspiracy theory, Byrne did not respond. In fact, none of Byrne\u2019s claims have ever been verified, and most have been repeatedly debunked. Smartmatic did not immediately respond to a request to comment.<\/p>\n

There have been two actual documented instances of Iranian election interference, however: In 2021, the Justice Department charged<\/a> 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<\/a> with compromising the Trump campaign as part of an effort to disrupt the 2024 election.<\/p>\n

Byrne\u2019s allegations, however, have been wholly different. And while Byrne\u2019s claims have been circulating among 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.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[331,329,330],"tags":[328,323,324,200,107,327,326,325],"class_list":["post-1448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-extra-extra","category-politics","category-politics-disinformation","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-iran","tag-politics","tag-social-media","tag-truth-social","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}