US Gov’t Cites Groups it Funds to Allege Electoral ‘Fraud’ in Venezuela

The US State Department, which has backed several coup attempts in Venezuela, claimed opposition candidate Edmundo González won the July 28 presidential election. But as supposed “evidence”, it cited unverifiable accusations made by groups funded by the US government.

By Ben Norton – Aug 3, 2024

The US State Department, which has sponsored several coup attempts in Venezuela, has claimed that the US-backed right-wing opposition candidate won the country’s presidential election, supposedly defeating incumbent President Nicolás Maduro.

As purported evidence, Washington only cited groups that are funded by the US government.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has overseen US-backed coups against democratically elected governments in Peru and Pakistan, published a statement on August 1 claiming that “Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election”.

Not a single one of the sources that Blinken cited to make this accusation is independent; all are funded by his own government.

On August 2, Blinken held a phone call with both González and with the power behind his coup-mongering campaign: María Corina Machado, a far-right Venezuelan opposition leader whose political organizations have been funded by the US government, and who has openly called for US military intervention in her country.

The Biden administration has essentially revived Donald Trump’s coup attempt against Venezuela. In 2019, Trump recognized a little-known right-wing opposition politician, Juan Guaidó, as supposed “interim president” of the country, despite the fact that he had never participated in a presidential election.

Five years later, the Biden administration has launched its own coup attempt in Venezuela, replacing Guaidó with González.

Venezuelan opposition publishes vote “tally sheets” with fabricated signatures and names of dead people
In his statement claiming Edmundo González won the election, Blinken cited alleged vote “tally sheets” that the Venezuelan opposition has published on a website it created, hosted on a US-based server.

There is no way to independently verify the validity of these alleged “tally sheets” (actas, in Spanish) that have been released by the opposition; belief in their authenticity is entirely based on faith.

In fact, some of the alleged “tallies” released by the opposition lack the obligatory name of a witness, which is needed to prove they are legitimate. Furthermore, many of the “signatures” on these “tallies” consist of illegible scribbles or mere initials of unknown people.

Some of the alleged “members” of the electoral table listed on the tally sheets don’t have their full name. Others don’t have their full ID (cédula, in Spanish), rather just a few numbers, making it impossible to confirm if they even exist at all.

The following screenshots of fabricated “signatures” of “witnesses” come directly from the Venezuelan opposition-controlled website. (Links here, here, and here.)

The Venezuelan government held a press conference in which it showed many irregularities and fabrications in this supposed “vote tally” released by the opposition.

A Venezuelan lawyer revealed that opposition groups had fabricated signatures, including those of her own family members who died years ago.

The US government has not acknowledged any of these irregularities in the supposed “tally sheets”. It is simply regurgitating the uncorroborated claims of opposition groups that it funds and supports.

Edmundo González la estafa electoral más grande de la historia de Venezuela.
Vean estos detalles en las actas publicadas en su página web. pic.twitter.com/Ed3owVnYGM
— Roi Lopez Rivas (@RoiLopezRivas) August 3, 2024

Venezuela’s supreme court, the Supreme Justice Tribunal (TSJ), has tried to verify the results of the election, but González has refused to cooperate. He boycotted a mandatory meeting with the TSJ, which was attended by Maduro and the other eight opposition candidates who ran in the July 28 election.

This obstructionist tactic follows the extremist Venezuelan opposition’s longtime strategy of rejecting all government institutions, and even trying to create new parallel ones. (Right-wing political groups in Venezuela at one point had two separate opposition-controlled “national assemblies” that competed with the official one.)

With US backing, the Venezuelan opposition is creating a political stalemate, one in which it is impossible to verify any of its accusations and alleged “evidence”.

Machado has a long history of crying “fraud” after opposition losses. She previously ran an opposition group called Súmate that was funded by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a notorious CIA cutout that has interfered in the internal political affairs of countries around the world.

Súmate was dedicated to trying to discredit previous votes in Venezuela. When the opposition was defeated in a 2004 referendum that unsuccessfully sought to impeach President Hugo Chávez, Machado’s US-funded organization made unsubstantiated allegations of “fraud” that were later shown to be false.

Jorge Rodríguez Presents Evidence Refuting Opposition Claims About Voting Records

US ignores exit polls that predicted Maduro’s victory
In the State Department statement, Blinken cited unnamed “independent observers” and “election day exit polls” that allegedly showed González getting more votes than Maduro.

The US secretary of state did not identify any examples of these supposed sources.

One of Venezuela’s leading independent polling firms, Hinterlaces, in fact found the opposite to be true. It published an exit poll on the day of the vote that predicted that Maduro would win with 54.57%, compared to 42.82% for González.

This was quite similar to the final results of 51.95% for Maduro and 43.18% for González. (The remaining votes were split among the eight other opposition candidates.)

🗳️ Elecciones Presidenciales 28 de Julio 🇻🇪
HINTERLACES
EXIT POLL / 12:00 mediodía
📊 Participación proyectada: 61,5%
🔴Nicolás Maduro: 54,57%
🔵Edmundo González: 42,82%
⚪️Otros: 2,61% pic.twitter.com/PEtFijomsD
— Hinterlaces (@Hinterlaces) July 28, 2024

Blinken did not acknowledge the existence of exit polls that accurately predicted Maduro’s victory.

Instead, the secretary of state was apparently referencing an exit poll that had been done by a suspicious New Jersey-based firm called Edison Research.

Geopolitical Economy Report showed how Edison works closely with CIA-linked US state propaganda outlets and previously did dubious polling in Ukraine, Georgia, and Iraq – areas that, like Venezuela, have been targeted in Washington’s meddling campaigns.

US, UK, EU, Gulf monarchies fund Carter Center
The only other source that Blinken cited in his statement on Venezuela was the Carter Center.

The Carter Center said on July 30 that it “cannot verify or corroborate the results of the election declared by the National Electoral Council (CNE)”.

But what the State Department did not disclose was a clear conflict of interest: It bankrolls the Carter Center.

The Carter Center was founded and is named after former US President Jimmy Carter. It is funded directly by the US State Department and US Agency for International Development (USAID), a notorious CIA cutout that used so-called “humanitarian flights” to send weapons to the far-right Contra death squads in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

Other funders of the Carter Center include the European Union, the UK’s Foreign Office, the government of Canada, and the US-dominated World Bank.

Most ironic of all is that the Carter Center is financed by numerous brutal Persian Gulf monarchies, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.

Why would hereditary dictatorships fund a group ostensibly dedicated to election monitoring? What is clear is that, if perhaps the Carter Center had in the past been dedicated to genuine election monitoring, over time it has become a tool of political influence that serves the interests of the governments and corporations that invest in it.

On the other hand, independent observers from the US National Lawyers Guild, who were on the ground on election day in Venezuela, reported that they had “observed a transparent, fair voting process with scrupulous attention to legitimacy, access to the polls, and pluralism”.

The National Lawyers Guild denounced the Venezuelan opposition’s “attacks on the electoral system as well as the role of the US in undermining the democratic process”.

US backs dictatorship in Pakistan and Peru
It is deeply ironic that the Biden administration is echoing unsubstantiated accusations of “electoral fraud” in Venezuela, because it has sponsored numerous coups against democratically elected governments, including documented electoral fraud in Pakistan.

In 2022, Pakistan’s democratically elected Prime Minister Imran Khan was overthrown in a political coup d’etat, which behind the scenes was supported by the country’s powerful military.

A classified Pakistani government document proves that the US State Department had threatened Khan over his improved relations with Russia and his neutrality in the war in Ukraine. Washington conspired with Pakistani officials to remove the elected leader from power.

Pakistan’s authoritarian coup regime subsequently barred Khan from running in the 2024 election, and imprisoned him on fabricated charges.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of relations between the U.S. and 🇵🇰 Pakistan. It was my pleasure to host Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, to the Pentagon where we discussed our long-standing defense partnership and areas of mutual interest. pic.twitter.com/ptiZDiqc8I
— Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@SecDef) October 5, 2022

In a brutal military-backed campaign, the Pakistani coup regime cracked down hard on Khan’s supporters, killing and imprisoning many, while seeking to criminalize and destroy his political party, the Pakistan Movement for Justice (PTI).

A top Pakistani official even publicly admitted that they had rigged the election in order to keep notoriously corrupt US-backed leader Shehbaz Sharif in power.

Throughout this process, the Pakistani coup regime and its de facto military leaders enjoyed the full support of the US government.

Senior Pakistan official admits election rigging as protests grip country https://t.co/gRS2U9mKuK
— The Guardian (@guardian) February 17, 2024

The Biden administration sponsored a similar coup in Peru, also in 2022.

Right-wing forces overthrew Peru’s democratically elected left-wing President Pedro Castillo and imprisoned him without trial. The coup regime then proceeded to massacre dozens of peaceful pro-democracy protesters, during months of demonstrations.

Today, Peru is run by a right-wing coup regime that is notorious for its blatant corruption – and is rejected by more than 90% of the population.

Peru’s unelected leader Dina Boluarte formed a de facto political alliance with the far-right Fujimoristas, who had lost the election to Castillo. She even released former fascist dictator Alberto Fujimori from prison, after he had been sentenced for crimes against humanity. Fujimori committed genocide against Peru’s indigenous communities, with USAID backing.

While hypocritically expressing concern over “democracy” in Venezuela, the Biden administration has supported the brutal Peruvian dictatorship of Boluarte and her military backers.

In fact, the biggest irony of all is that Peru’s unelected coup regime was the first country to officially recognize Venezuela’s opposition leader Edmundo González as supposed “president-elect” of the country.

It is deeply symbolic that a blood-soaked right-wing Latin American dictatorship was the first regime to try to legitimize the Venezuelan opposition’s “fraud” allegations.

✅La jefa de Estado, Dina Boluarte, se reunió con el presidente de los Estados Unidos, @JoeBiden, con quien trató temas relacionados a la cooperación entre ambos países y el apoyo que Perú recibe de su nación. La mandataria invitó a su homólogo a visitar Perú próximamente. 🇺🇳🇵🇪 pic.twitter.com/Kx72jFw06D
— Presidencia del Perú 🇵🇪 (@presidenciaperu) September 20, 2023

Furthermore, as it cynically appeals to “democracy” and “human rights”, the Biden administration has also unflinchingly supported Israel as it has carried out crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The top UN expert on the rights of Palestinians has clearly and repeated said that Israel is committing genocide. Yet Washington has continued backing Israel, without hesitation.

In fact, when the International Criminal Court accused Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, the US government responded by threatening to impose sanctions on the Hague.

Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, on the other hand, wholeheartedly supports Palestinian human rights. He has urged the International Court of Justice to act to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

I met with @IsraeliPM Netanyahu in Israel today to reiterate ironclad U.S. support for Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas’ terrorist attacks. pic.twitter.com/hhuqRS3UrA
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) October 12, 2023

(Geopolitical Economy)