Election deniers think Maduro’s capture will expose plot to steal 2020 vote

When President Donald Trump authorized an overnight military action Saturday in Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro, he said the goal was to bring the Venezuelan leader to the United States to stand trial on drug trafficking charges — and to take control of the country’s oil fields.

But some prominent far-right figures — as well as a top U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) official — are suggesting Trump actually captured Maduro for another reason: Because the Venezuelan strongman has key evidence to support a fringe conspiracy theory that his country helped voting machine companies rig the 2020 election.

Even Trump himself appears to be flirting with the conspiracy. The president has posted several videos on social media promoting false claims about Dominion voting machines since Maduro’s capture. 

“Dominion was bought by a Republican company. Maduro was captured & is sharing evidence w/federal prosecutors,” Rogan O’Handley, a notable conservative commentator and lawyer, posted on social media Monday. “President Trump is posting videos about Dominion election rigging & says 2020 election fraud will be exposed in 2026. Yeah I’d say the dominoes are being lined up.” 

Sean Davis, the founder and CEO of the right-wing news outlet The Federalist, pushed a similar line. “It’s gonna be wild when Maduro tries to plead to lesser charges by proffering evidence that the 2020 election was stolen,” he wrote on social media.

Ed Martin, a Trump loyalist and prominent election denier who heads the U.S. Department of Justice’s vague “weaponization” task force, reposted Davis’ message. 

Even Alex Jones, the notorious far-right conspiracy theorist and political commentator, joined the fray, echoing similar talking points on his show Sunday night. 

“It’s about Venezuela being the base of election fraud,” Jones said. He further explained that Trump captured Maduro to force the Venezuelan leader to hand over evidence that he colluded with Democrats to help steal the 2020 election. 

“Folks, when this house of cards starts falling perfectly this year, the 250th anniversary of this country, what a present,” Jones added. “And Trump intends all of this to be going and done by July 4th.”

Dumb as it may be, the conspiracy theory connecting Venezuela with American voting has deep roots. It stretches way back to the days after the 2020 election, when prominent Trump figures like Rudy Giuliani and lawyer Sidney Powell falsely claimed that voting machine vendors Dominion and Smartmatic were secretly Venezuelan companies that were founded to rig elections for the country’s former leader, Hugo Chávez. 

Since then, conspiracy theorists have claimed that the companies somehow disguised themselves as American vendors and used secret programming to flip votes in the 2020 election from Trump to former President Joe Biden.

Both companies’ origins are public information and well documented: Dominion Voting Systems was founded in 2002 in Toronto, Canada. In 2025, it was purchased by a former GOP election official and rebranded as Liberty Voting. Smartmatic was incorporated in Delaware in 2000 by three Venezuelan-born engineers. 

Both Dominion and Smartmatic sued Giuliani and Powell over the false claims. The pair both settled their lawsuits with Dominion — and Powell even admitted in a filing in federal court that “no reasonable person would conclude that [her] statements were truly statements of fact.” Litigation is ongoing in Smartmatic’s defamation lawsuits against both Giuliani and Powell. 

Despite Powell acknowledging that her claims about Venezuela and the 2020 election were bogus, Maduro’s capture has reignited the conspiracy. 

“This is why you see the globalists around the world bricking in their pants,” right-wing influencer Benny Johnson said on his popular YouTube show, which has millions of viewers.  “They’re terrified because Venezuela was ground zero for election theft.”