James' World 2

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You’re not going to believe this, but it turns out Donald Trump wanted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Have you heard about this?

It’s hard to believe — what, with all of the reporting suggesting that he called for voting to stop during the election, pushed false stories of unverified fraud, asked about deploying the military to overturn the results, and put a crackpot conspiracy theorist in charge of investigating claims of voter fraud. Oh, and then there’s the fact that he straight up said his vice president, Mike Pence, should have simply declared Trump the winner.

So it’s a real shock that, according to the latest report from The New York Times, Trump tried to push the Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines from several important swing states. Other than fitting in perfectly with Trump’s multi-year campaign to try to baselessly invalidate the election results, it’s pretty out of character!

Per the Times, Trump started to get antsy in December 2020, fearing that all of the evidence — including the initial vote count, recounts, and early audits — all pointed to him losing. Because that simply could not be right, Trump tapped his personal lawyer and vampire who somehow has been allowed out in the daylight, Rudy Giuliani, to call the acting deputy secretary of DHS. Giuliani asked if the agency could take the voting machines from several states, with the goal of auditing the systems and discovering the supposed widespread fraud that resulted in more people voting for Joe Biden.

The plan got shot down pretty quickly. Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy homeland security secretary at the time, told Giuliani that the agency didn’t have the authority to impound the machines. Turns out, without any actual evidence to suggest there was fraud, federal agencies aren’t enthused about the idea of overturning election results or casting doubt on the integrity of the country’s electoral process.

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The former president’s liaison for the mastermind plan? Rudy Giuliani, of course. Joshua Roberts/Getty Images News/Getty Images

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The Lincoln, Nebraska-based company is often the first choice of law enforcement looking to keep tabs on the communications of criminal suspects. It’s probably best known, if it’s known at all, for its work helping convict Scott Peterson, who murdered his wife Laci and their unborn son in a case that fomented a tabloid frenzy in the early 2000s. Nowadays the company has been helping cops keep tabs on suspected wrongdoing by users of Google, Facebook, and WhatsApp – whatever web tool that law enforcement requests.

With $20 million revenue every year from U.S. government customers such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), and almost every other law enforcement agency in the federal directory, PenLink enjoys a steady stream of income. That doesn’t include its sales to local and state police, where it also does significant business but for which there are no available revenue figures. Forbes viewed contracts across the U.S., including towns and cities in California, Florida, Illinois, Hawaii, North Carolina, and Nevada.

“PenLink is proud to support law enforcement across the U.S. and internationally in their effort to fight wrongdoing,” the company said. “We do not publicly discuss how our solution is being utilized by our customers.”

Sometimes it takes a spy to get transparency from a surveillance company. Jack Poulson, founder of technology watchdog Tech Inquiry, went incognito at the National Sheriffs’ Association’s winter conference in Washington. He recorded a longtime PenLink employee showing off what the company could do for law enforcement and discussing the scale of its operations. Not only does the recording lift the lid on how deeply involved PenLink is in wiretapping operations across the U.S., it also reveals in granular detail just how tech providers such as Apple, Facebook and Google provide information to police when they’re confronted with a valid warrant or subpoena.

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PenLink works closely with U.S. government agencies in tapping phones and in collecting data from interceptions of social media giants like Facebook, Google Snapchat, and WhatsApp. (Photo by Muhammed Selim Korkutata/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Getty Images

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