Iowa Caucus Conspiracy Theory, Fact vs. Fiction

For a brief moment, Pete Buttigieg was the front runner for the Democratic nomination. He was also the kind of strong, charismatic candidate the Vladimir Putin hated.

So, online Russian trolls constructed a narrative around Mayor Pete that involved CIA conspiracy theories and shady backroom meetings that never happened. They even constructed an online group called #QueersAgainstPete, designed to disseminate false information against the candidates and disrupt his events.

As part of Greater & Grander’s ongoing mission, we unraveled the Russian-led character assassination of a rising star in the Democratic Party.

FICTION: The DNC rolled out a malfunctioning app on the eve of the Iowa caucus with no training or testing.

FACT: The DNC had nothing to do with the app, or the caucuses. The whole thing was administered by the Iowa state party.

FICTION: Pete Buttigieg was the only candidate in those Stop Bernie meetings with the billionaire Democratic donors.

FACT: No such meeting ever took place.

FICTION: Pete Buttigieg was a decisive vote in getting Tom Perez elected as DNC chair.

FACT: Tom Perez won the DNC chair with 35 votes (an 8% margin), there was no decisive vote, and Buttigieg did not endorse any candidates in that race.

FICTION: Pete Buttigieg got the Des Moines Register poll, which traditionally comes out the night before the caucus and gives the front-runner a big boost, spiked.

FACT: The Buttigieg campaign asked that the poll be cancelled because his name was not on it, erasing the only LGBTQ candidate in the race.

FICTION: Pete Buttigieg along with the Iowa and Nevada Democratic parties paid to develop the faulty caucus counting app called Shadow (you can’t make these things up).

FACT: The company that developed the app is a well-known Democratic tech development company. Having worked for political firms before, I can say that the political vendor world is very bifurcated. You have right-wing vendors and left-wing vendors, but it is very rare to have bipartisan vendors. Buttigieg’s campaign paid Shadow $42,500 for “software rights and subscriptions” related to a separate text-messaging app they were developing. They had no role in the app used by the Iowa Democratic Party.

FICTION: Pete Buttigieg all but claimed victory in Iowa tonight when he was barely viable in most precincts.

FACT: Each team had their internal numbers and knew roughly where they were last night and were just waiting for confirmation. The allegation that Buttigieg was not viable in most precincts has not been substantiated.

FICTION: Either way, he’s a lying slimy scumbag using CIA tactics to overthrow the votes of 3 million Iowans and the work of 31,000 volunteers who came to Iowa on their own dime to help shepherd in a better world for all of us.

FACT 1: Pete Buttigieg NEVER worked for the CIA, this has been well documented. He worked for Naval Intelligence. The difference is while the CIA focuses on some covert activities, Army and Navy Intelligence agencies focus only on intelligence gathering.

FACT 2: The number of people who participated in the Iowa caucuses were only around 170,000, not 3 million. In fact, according to the Iowa Secretary of State’s office, there are only 2.16 million registered voters in Iowa. https://sos.iowa.gov/elections/pdf/VRStatsArchive/2020/CoJan20.pdf