Hidden logo of mysterious ‘Kraken Intel’ group discovered in Trump team’s election fraud PowerPoint
The logo appears to have been clumsily redacted from a PowerPoint file drawn up by allies of Donald Trump just before the Capitol insurrection
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Your support makes all the difference.An unknown group called "Kraken Intel" may have contributed to the PowerPoint presentation used by Donald Trump’s advisers to plot ways of overturning the 2020 election, it has emerged.
The PowerPoint, which was handed over to Congress by Mr Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, is dated one day before the Capitol insurrection and describes various ways the former president’s allies could negate his election defeat.
Yet an editable version seen by The Independent contains the logo of Kraken Intel on the bottom-right corner of one page, hidden behind a white box that can be deleted by the user.
The file was posted on a right-wing Spanish language news site in January 2021, credited to the pro-Trump entrepreneur and former treasure hunter Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, and is almost identical to other versions of the PowerPoint that are circulating publicly.
It was first discovered by Trapezoid of Discovery, a newsletter focused on cybersecurity and disinformation, which theorised that "Kraken Intel" might refer to the unofficial intelligence operation assembled by pro-Trump businessman Patrick Byrne to investigate claims of election fraud.
The editable PowerPoint appears to be authentic, since other versions show the tip of the Kraken logo peeping out from behind the white box, as if it had been redacted in a hurry.
The word "kraken" was a common buzzword among Trump supporters and members of the QAnon movement in the run-up to January’s attack on the Capitol, inspired by Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell’s promise to "release the kraken".
In her telling, the "kraken" was a series of lawsuits and documents purporting to prove that the election result was fraudulent, but her claims were largely conspiracy theories backed by little or no evidence and were repeatedly shot down in court.
The PowerPoint, titled "Election Fraud, Foreign Interference and Options for 6 JAN", was reportedly intended to persuade Congress that the election result should be overturned and has been described by Democrats as "a plan for a coup".
It alleges, with scant evidence, that the Chinese government had "systematically gained control" over the US election system through compromised" electronic voting machines and "fixed" the vote for Joe Biden.
The PowerPoint then recommends that Mr Trump declare a national security emergency, declare all electronic voting results invalid, bring state National Guard units under federal control, and use them and the Department of Homeland Security to seize all paper ballots and conduct a recount.
It suggests that then vice president Mike Pence could negate election results from battleground states won by Mr Biden or replace the states’ electors with Republicans who would back Mr Trump – exactly what the Capitol rioters had wanted him to do.
The Kraken Intel logo, featuring a stylised image of a10-armed octopus or squid, appears on page 29 of one version of the document, showing the supposed "true" margins of Mr Trump’s victory once "fraudulent" votes are removed.
Trapezoid of Discovery wrote that Kraken Intel may refer to the hotel room command centre described in Mr Byrne’s book The Deep Rig, which he describes as a "central organ" to process and analyse claims of election fraud for Mr Trump’s legal team.
They speculated that Mr Pulitzer, who posted an uneditable PDF version of the PowerPoint on the alternative social media site MeWe on 13 January, might have accidentally uploaded the editable PowerPoint file first, leading it to be archived on the Spanish language news site even after he deleted his original post.
A spokesperson for Mr Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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