Dominion Voting CEO Tells Anderson Cooper His Kids Still Aren’t Allowed to Get Any Packages That Are Delivered to Their Home Because of Threats
Screenshot via 60 Minutes.
Anger sparked by baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election was so bad, said Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos, his family and employees were still dealing with major security concerns and threats “every single day.”
Poulos sat down with 60 Minutes’ Anderson Cooper for an interview that aired Sunday evening regarding the multiple defamation lawsuits his company has filed in response to accusations that they had helped steal the 2020 election from former President Donald Trump.
The claims began “just days” after the 2020 election, narrated Cooper to begin the segment. Trump’s lawyers were “spreading unsubstantiated claims” that Dominion “had rigged the election,” were “backed by Venezuela,” and “its machines and software switched millions of votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.”
“They never showed any evidence,” Cooper added, “but that didn’t stop pro-Trump attorneys from making baseless claims, or conservative news networks from giving them plenty of airtime.”
Dominion has filed eight lawsuits so far seeking a total of $10 billion in damages from defendants that include media outlets Fox News, One America News, and Newsmax; Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani; and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
As Chris Krebs, the former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Trump Administration, told Cooper, “none of these lies [about Dominion] have been substantiated to any extent…every single one of them has been debunked.”
Poulos as “remained largely silent — until now,” said Cooper, who introduced the CEO to talk “about the lawsuits, the lies, and the irreparable damage he says they’ve caused to his company and his employees”:
POULOS: People have been put into danger. Their families have been put into danger. Their lives have been upended and all because of lies. It was a very clear calculation that they knew they were lies. And they were repeating them and endorsing them.
COOPER: It’s important to you people admit what they said was wrong?
POULOS: It’s important to me. It’s important to all the people whose families have been impacted by this. Anderson, my kids still are not allowed to get any package from the front door — until we verify that it’s actually from — from a trusted sender.
COOPER: You’re that concerned about somebody sending something to your house?
POULOS: It’s not unfounded concern.
COOPER: People have done that —
POULOS: People have done this. People are warning that they will continue to do this.
Cooper, who also anchors a prime time show on CNN, played several audio clips from threatening voicemail messages that were left for Dominion employees.
“Every single person at Dominion’s going to end up in an orange jumpsuit in handcuffs, you f*cking whores,” a woman said in one message. “You cheating f*cking pigs.”
“Yeah, good afternoon, scumbags,” said a man. “We’re going to blow your f*cking building up. Piece of f*cking sh*t.”
The threats continued to be a real and current danger, Poulos told Cooper.
POULOS: I don’t wish to sit here and, and say that this is something that happened 18 months ago. This is something that continues to happen every single day for us. Last Friday we had an office on lockdown. Two days prior to that, I was on a phone call with one of our employees who’s a mother of two, um, very upset and crying — it’s hard to talk about.
COOPER: Had something been said to her personally?
POULOS: A very disgusting death threat in detail.
COOPER: Received?
POULOS: — on her personal cellphone.
Fox News issued a statement to 60 Minutes, Cooper reported, “citing freedom of the press protections and stating it was reporting on a newsworthy allegation made by the then-president, and aired segments fact-checking the allegations against Dominion.” Fox has also argued that “Dominion’s financial demand is unsupported.”
Watch the video above, via CBS News.
