A shady “audit” of the 2020 presidential election has concluded early, with the company behind the recount handing over thousands of dollars and announcing a finding of “no election fraud.”
Now the company’s allies are accusing it of “bailing” on the audit, and branding each other as liars and pedophiles.
Despite voting overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2020, Otero County, New Mexico became a hub for conspiracy theorists who falsely claimed that election fraud had cost Trump his reelection. Otero County’s three commissioners (one of whom would later be convicted for his role in the Capitol riot), hired the company EchoMail to work on an “audit” of the district’s 2020 election. That audit came under state and federal scrutiny after EchoMail’s CEO and allies were found to have promoted wild election conspiracy theories. But after a financial dispute with the county, EchoMail packed its bags up early.
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“EchoMail fulfilled their obligations under the Contract and found No Election Fraud as a result of their services,” EchoMail’s attorney told The Daily Beast via email.
EchoMail’s founder and CEO is Shiva Ayyadurai, a popular right-wing election truther who, earlier in 2020, falsely claimed election fraud when he lost his own Senate primary race in Massachusetts. After Trump’s defeat in November, Ayyadurai and EchoMail were hired to work on a chaotic audit of Maricopa County, Arizona’s election. Although that audit upheld President Joe Biden’s victory in Maricopa, EchoMail released a report claiming to find discrepancies in the vote. Actual Arizona elections experts debunked those claims, writing that they revealed Ayyadurai’s “lack of understanding” of local election procedures.
Undeterred, Ayyadurai offered his services in Otero County in early 2022 and won a nearly $50,000 contract to work on an audit of the area’s ballots.
That contract quickly came under suspicion. New Mexico’s state auditor, Brian Colón, opened an investigation into whether the deal was in taxpayers’ best interests. He and other officials also set their eyes on one of EchoMail’s close allies: a conspiracy-peddling Telegram group called the New Mexico Audit Force (NMAF) that at times appeared to operate as an extension of EchoMail.
Two NMAF leaders presented on EchoMail’s behalf at an Otero County commission meeting, where they also laid out a plan for NMAF members to “canvas” the county’s voter rolls by knocking on doors and asking residents about their 2020 votes.
Though the NMAF claimed its door-knocks would be nonpartisan in nature, the tactic soon landed the group in legal trouble. Locals accused the NMAF of intimidation and falsely posing as county officials. Those allegations prompted rebukes and another round of investigations from state officials.
Other Otero County residents pointed to violent rhetoric from NMAF members. One of the group’s leaders, David Clements, has repeatedly called for the deaths of people he believes engaged in “treason.” “I want arrests, I want prosecutions, I want firing squads,” Clements said at an event about the audit this year.
In March, the House Oversight Committee cited those comments when it announced an investigation into EchoMail’s work in Otero County. In a response letter, EchoMail denied having a relationship with the NMAF—a claim the Oversight Committee described as dubious, noting that NMAF leaders had used EchoMail’s name to request state records, had repeatedly described themselves as working with EchoMail, and had listed EchoMail’s address as their own. (A recent draft resolution, which was signed by all three Otero County commissioners but never ratified, also described the NMAF and EchoMail as business partners working “in furtherance of the 2020 Election Audit directed by this commission.”)
The Oversight Committee requested EchoMail turn over communications with the NMAF and county officials. As of late March the company had declined to do so.
But two weeks after Congress’s March 31 deadline for the documents, EchoMail began pulling out of Otero County, a new settlement shows. The document details a financial dispute between EchoMail and Otero County. (Otero County’s three commissioners, its county manager, and its financial director did not return requests for comment.)
Under its initial agreement, Otero agreed to pay EchoMail $49,750: half upfront and half upon completion of its contract. The county sent EchoMail its first $24,875 payment in late February. By March 17, EchoMail was requesting the rest of its money—a sticking point for the county, which said EchoMail hadn’t even earned its first payment.
“The County believes the value of the services received from EchoMail is $9,750,” the settlement reads. “EchoMail disputes this claim.”
The financial dispute escalated through April 15, when Otero County refused to make another payment and requested EchoMail return $15,125 from its first paycheck. On April 28, the two parties settled with each other, on the conditions that EchoMail return the cash and that the payment “shall not be construed as an admission of liability by either Party.”
The settlement reaffirmed EchoMail’s audit findings. “It is the position of EchoMail they fulfilled their obligations under the Contract and found No Election Fraud as a result of their services,” the document reads.
News of the settlement was slow to reach EchoMail’s allies.
On Tuesday, Clements described Ayyadurai as having “partnered with the NM Audit Force” in Otero County, but having recently cut off contact with the NMAF.
“After failing to hear from Shiva for an extended period of time, I feared the worst,” Clements wrote on Telegram. “However, I was finally able to speak with his attorney Tim Phelan. I gathered from that conversation that Shiva would not be communicating to anyone associated with the audit due to congressional subpoenas targeted to get any and all communications between members of the audit team.”
Clements, Ayyadurai, and EchoMail did not return requests for comment. Phelan, EchoMail’s attorney, told The Daily Beast that “Mr. Clements is neither a contractor or employee of EchoMail, nor a ‘colleague’ of Mr. Ayyadurai. Any statements attributed to this office should come directly from this office and not a third party to be deemed credible, accurate and reliable.”
Although EchoMail’s audit came at the expense of Otero taxpayers, Clements and other Ayyadurai allies had promoted their own outside fundraising for the stunt. The most prominent of those fundraisers came from the “FightBack Foundation,” a conservative group run by the conspiracy-hyping lawyer Lin Wood. Wood claims to have raised more than $50,000 for the Otero County audit.
But Ayyadurai’s exit from Otero County appears to have driven a wedge into the lucrative partnership, with Wood accusing Clements of misrepresenting Ayyadurai’s work.
“The pledge by #FightBack to help in Otero was based on David representing that Shiva would run that audit and was the right man for the job,” Wood wrote in a Tuesday Telegram post. “Then Shiva bailed.”
Wood (who did not return a request for comment) announced that Clements and another ally, far-right podcaster Joe Oltmann, were leaving FightBack’s board. Wood also accused Clements of associating with freemasons (a grave sin in certain conspiratorial corners of the internet), and wrote a cryptic post urging followers to research the “Red Shoe Club,” a reference to a bogus conspiracy theory that claims people who wear red shoes secretly torture children. Wood’s fans were quick to share a photograph of Clements wearing red shoes.
Clements denied the insinuation. “I’ve tried my best to answer questions relevant to my fiduciary duty to ensure financial transparency on behalf of #FightBack,” he wrote on Thursday. “I've been implicitly accused of being a freemason, a thief, a liar, and a pedophile with absolutely no evidence, from someone I love.”
He added that the NMAF still intends to present its audit findings before the Otero County commission. Despite EchoMail’s findings of no election fraud, Clements wrote that he believes the district’s voting machines were “not worthy of use in Otero county.”
The Otero County commission is scheduled to meet on Monday to discuss the audit’s findings.
