Who Let a Foreign Regime Into America's Voting System?

A little-known U.S. diplomatic cable, classified by the Embassy in Caracas and later released, tells us something extraordinary: Smartmatic, the company that helped Hugo Chávez survive a highly contested recall vote in 2004, quietly entered the United States election system immediately afterward.

The cable states plainly:

• Smartmatic is Venezuelan-owned, despite public claims of U.S. origin.
• Its ownership structure was deliberately hidden behind shell companies in the Netherlands and Barbados.
• Its rapid rise was fuelled by involvement in Chávez's disputed elections.
• Its machines were widely suspected of being susceptible to fraud.
• And as soon as that job was done, Smartmatic shifted focus to the United States through its subsidiary, Sequoia.

So we have a foreign-aligned election company, financially tied to a hostile regime, embedding itself into the American electoral infrastructure, right as the U.S. entered a period of radical political transformation.

Smartmatic's founders moved corporate headquarters to Florida, but most operational control stayed in Caracas. Silent partners included individuals closely tied to the Venezuelan government. Investments came from Chávez-linked funds. Even children of senior regime officials were involved in its registration and corporate handling.

• Foreign-developed code was counting American votes.
• The vulnerabilities were known before Smartmatic was allowed into U.S. elections.
• Private companies with opaque ownership avoided the rigorous audits that would detect manipulation.

This is what election interference looks like.

To restore a sovereign republic, you must confront every foreign hand that ever reached into its ballot box and that's exactly what Trump is doing now.