Former president Trump’s campaign quietly commissioned a second firm to study election fraud claims in the weeks after the 2020 election, and the founder of the firm was recently questioned by the Justice Department about his work disproving the claims.
Ken Block, founder of the firm Simpatico Software Systems, studied more than a dozen voter fraud theories and allegations for Trump’s campaign in late 2020 and found they were “all false,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post.
“No substantive voter fraud was uncovered in my investigations looking for it, nor was I able to confirm any of the outside claims of voter fraud that I was asked to look at,” he said. “Every fraud claim I was asked to investigate was false.”
Block said he recently received a subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith’s office and met with federal prosecutors in Washington, but he declined to discuss his interactions with them. Block said he contemporaneously sent his findings disputing fraud claims in writing to the Trump campaign in late 2020…
The prosecutors have signaled extensive interest in experts who were paid with Trump’s own money and whose research was disseminated to campaign advisers and Trump himself.
Block, 57, was previously unknown to Trump’s political orbit. He formerly ran for governor in Rhode Island as a Republican and owns a company called Simpatico Software Systems, which he founded in 2001.
He said his firm has been used by other states and companies to look for fraud, and that he has acted as an expert witness in court cases involving fraud. Block said he was a computer engineer by training and had worked in technology for decades. He had also previously formed the Moderate Party in Rhode Island.
Block said he was sitting on his porch in Rhode Island with his family the day after the election when a Trump adviser called one day. “Would I be willing to look for voter fraud?” he said, describing the request. At first, his family would not give him the “immediate green light,” but he said he convinced them it would be OK to work for Trump’s campaign.
Soon, Block said, he was sent fraud claims by Trump’s campaign to study. Some came from the campaign itself, but others originated from sources outside the campaign and informal advisers to Trump, which the campaign passed along.
The claims were all without evidence, he said, and some were more ridiculous than others. He declined to specify the claims, saying they were part of the ongoing Justice Department investigation. Block also declined to identify what outside advisers were responsible for some of the claims, saying that was also part of the investigation.