Here’s Why Trump Posted About Iran ‘Stealing’ the 2020 Election Hours After the US Attacked

At 2:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, President Donald Trump posted a video to his Truth Social account announcing that the United States had joined Israel in launching attacks against Iran.

His next post, just two hours later, seemed to suggest that the attacks were, at least in part, motivated by a far-fetched claim that Iran helped rig the 2020 US election. “Iran attempted to interfere in the 2020 and 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces a renewed war with the United States,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

The post linked to an article on Just the News, a pro-Trump conspiracy media outlet that offered no explanation for its claim beyond the vague claim that Iran carried out “a sophisticated electoral influence effort” in 2020.

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 was.

Trump has spent the years since 2020 fueling numerous baseless conspiracy theories about rigging the 2020 election. Since returning to the White House last year, he has allowed his administration to use these debunked conspiracy theories to inform decision-making, from raids on election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, to lawsuits over unredacted voter rolls.

It’s unclear exactly what alleged Iranian interference Trump was referring to in his Truth Social article, but Patrick Byrne, a prominent conspiracy theorist who urged Trump to seize voting machines following the 2020 election, tells WIRED that it is linked to a broader conspiracy theory that also involves Venezuela and China.

Like most election-related conspiracy theories, this one is convoluted and not based on any concrete evidence. In broad terms, the conspiracy theory, which first emerged in the weeks and months following the 2020 election and has become more complex over the years, claims that the Venezuelan government has been rigging elections around the world for decades by creating the voting software company Smartmatic as a way to rig elections remotely. (Smartmatic has repeatedly denied all allegations against it and successfully sued right-wing media outlet Newsmax for promoting conspiracy theories and defaming the company.)

Byrne laid out the entire conspiracy theory in a 45-minute presentation published on X in 2024. His claims have been widely shared within the election denial community since its publication.

Iran’s role in all this, Byrne claims, was to hide the money trail. “They act as payers. They keep certain payments that would reveal this. [operation] “This is done through an Iranian-run transfer pricing mechanism in oil.”

When asked for evidence of Iran’s role in this conspiracy theory, Byrne did not respond. In fact, none of Byrne’s claims have ever been verified and most have been repeatedly refuted. Smartmatic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There have, however, been two documented cases of Iranian election interference: In 2021, the Justice Department indicted two Iranians for conducting an influence operation to target and threaten American voters. And in 2024, the three Iranian hackers working for the government were accused of compromising the Trump campaign in an attempt to disrupt the 2024 election.

Byrne’s allegations, however, are entirely different. And while Byrne’s claims have circulated for years in online conspiracy groups, they were sent 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 elections official turned election denial superstar Tina Peters.