Expert Speaks Out on Lindell’s “Cyber Symposium” and Aftermath

by Sharon Rondeau

(Aug. 28, 2023) — Last week The Post & Email had an opportunity to interview cyber-security expert Joshua Merritt, who was asked to provide an assessment of data to be released at MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s “Cyber Symposium” in August 2021 arising from the results of the 2020 election.

Like then-incumbent President Donald Trump, Lindell has claimed since the election that the presidential outcome was altered by fraud, rendering Joe Biden the declared victor.

Since November 2020, Lindell has proffered evolving claims as to how the election was “stolen” but has failed to follow through on pledges to reveal evidence he claims to have.

The mainstream media has consistently called claims the election was rife with fraud “baseless,” although since 2021, it has come to light that The New York Post‘s story on the Hunter Biden laptop, published October 14, 2020 and censored by social media with FBI and intelligence-community involvement, likely would have made a significant difference in the election of the nation’s chief executive.

Who is Josh Merritt?

A ten-year veteran of the U.S. Army, Merritt, nicknamed “J3ckyl/Spyder,” attended the Cyber Symposium in Sioux Falls, SD from August 10-12, 2021.

Merritt was born in Waco, TX to a military family and “at age 7 was warned by the FBI for hacking Fort Sam Houston’s Main Frame in San Antonio, TX,” according to his bio. He began his career as a CAD design engineer, then enlisted in the Army in 2003, it states, and after discharge attended college to major in “cyber security.”

In addition to his bio, Merritt detailed to this writer his work with various “Hacker groups” for the purpose of “hunting cyber terrorists and gaining informants for passing intelligence up to the US IC.”

Merritt assisted Sidney Powell in her probe of suspected fraud in Georgia in the 2020 election and at one time worked for ASOG

Powell is now a defendant in a case brought by Fulton County, GA District Attorney Fani Willis against 19 Trump advisers and ancillaries alleging widespread ballot fraud in Georgia. All are accused of participating in a RICO conspiracy “to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”

Merritt met personally with members of Congress at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) as well as following through on submitting certain findings to the intelligence community, he told us.

Lindell, Montgomery and “PCAPS”

In June 2021, Lindell announced he would hold the Cyber Symposium to release “PCAPS,” or “packet captures,” he was allegedly provided by former government subcontractor Dennis L. Montgomery showing the 2020 election was commandeered by large-scale Chinese “cyberwarfare.” That claim was first made by Mary Fanning and Alan Jones at The American Report and, although perpetrated in dozens of their articles since then, remains unproved and uncorroborated.

Fanning related the claim to Lindell in a January 9, 2021 phone call in which she introduced Montgomery to Lindell, and six days later, Lindell took Montgomery’s data, which he had not yet vetted, to the White House.

It appears Trump’s inner circle took no action on the materials Lindell delivered, although Trump continues to maintain he was the rightful winner of the election.

In an exclusive with One America News Network (OANN) on June 30, 2021, Lindell announced the Cyber Symposium as the venue at which he would disclose all the evidence he was provided of 2020 election fraud and which he and a bevy of “experts” had spent months “validating.”

Enter the “Red Team”

Prior to our interview with Merritt, he provided a report outlining how he came to be a member of Lindell’s “Red Team” of data analysts. According to the report, Merritt was given a non-disclosure agreement to sign in order to provide an “analysis/validation of the data set” prior to the Cyber Symposium.

Merritt wrote in his report that Col. Phil Waldron (Ret), a Lindell representative and one of two individuals who contacted him about participating, wrote the following in an introductory email:

If and when the members validate and are satisfied as to the authenticity of the data, members of the team would be invited to attend a symposium to share the work processes and data to a larger audience and help a very technically diverse audience understand the data.

The specific information that is available to be released publicly will be provided to the team in an approved talking points memorandum – due to the sensitivity of this project, some specifics will be protected for legal and personal reasons. 

Along with your executed NDA, please “Reply All” to indicate your willingness to: 

1. Participate in the analysis/validation of the data set – team member identity during this phase of participation would be protected.

2. Participate in the symposium as a panel member – your participation and identity would be made public.   

If you are willing to participate, please indicate your standard daily reimbursement rate.  All travel related expenses to the symposium will be covered for those that choose to participate.

According to The Washington Post, Waldron had planned to give a PowerPoint presentation to the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021 outlining alleged fraud in the election “and briefed several members of Congress on the eve of the Jan. 6 riot.”

Merritt said he was promised $30,000 in compensation along with air travel to and from the symposium and hotel accommodations. He never received the $30,000, he said, and his return flight, rather than taking place on Lindell’s private plane as before, was on a commercial aircraft since Waldron told him at the last minute Lindell had given his seat to another individual “and her entourage.”

At the outset of our interview, Merritt confirmed he observed no PCAPS at the Cyber Symposium. His statement is corroborated by an interview The Post & Email conducted with another cyber expert who attended as well as others Merritt mentioned.

Not only were there no PCAPS on display, Merritt said, but “I also found that it was fraudulently created, so when you have Mr. Lindell going on TV saying, ‘No one can forge this,’ that’s absolutely false.”

“We found that Dennis Montgomery was actually making tools that we found on his website to actually be able to forge packet captures,” Merritt added.

Despite his public statements, according to a recent court filing Lindell was aware at the Cyber Symposium that Montgomery provided no PCAPS from the 2020 election. Nevertheless, the filing shows Lindell wrote in a text to Fanning that he rewarded Montgomery with a $2 million home “and another $1.1 million earlier in the year” while decrying Merritt’s alleged criticism of Montgomery.

Evidence of the purchase of the home where Montgomery relocated from Washington State was first reported by Zachary Petrizzo of Salon.com.

Merritt additionally told this writer that J. Kirk Wiebe, an NSA “whistleblower” who has alternately excoriated and praised Montgomery’s credibility, told him at the symposium he was aware Montgomery was “conning” people.

Outwardly, however, Wiebe expressed faith in Montgomery’s proffered data (25:20). Montgomery needed to surmount “the legal process” “so he can release this data,” he told The New American Senior Editor William F. Jasper on the symposium’s final day. “The legal process is slow as molasses, we all know, and who knows what influences — may try to influence that within the legal system.”

While he was speaking with Wiebe, Merritt recalled, a reporter from The Washington Times was with them, “but he didn’t identify himself.” “So I’m outside the facility, and I was talking about what-all was going on,” Merritt continued. “Wiebe had been there talking to the cyber experts about all the stuff that he knew in regards to Montgomery, and then not even ten minutes later, a story comes out on Washington Times about me saying that the whole thing was fraudulent.”

Merritt told The Post & Email he does not deny making those observations. “The event was a fraud, the data provided, fraudulent. The WT report was accurate,” he wrote in a follow-up email.

The Montgomery Backstory

As The Post & Email has reported at length, Wiebe co-signed a 2014 report to then-Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joseph Arpaio stating Montgomery committed a “fraudulent con” by misrepresenting the contents of 47 hard drives on which he loaded data allegedly showing government intrusions into county residents’ bank accounts. However, several years later, Wiebe became a strong advocate for Montgomery, terming him “an American hero” and “the real deal.”

In 2013, Montgomery approached Arpaio’s office claiming to possess evidence of the bank-account breaches of more than 150,000 county residents. Montgomery’s narrative invoked what he described as a government super-computer, “The Hammer,” with massive surveillance capabilities that had been turned on the American population rather than its alleged original purpose of detecting potential terrorist attacks overseas.

In late October 2020, Montgomery began invoking a software package he said he created, “Scorecard,” which the government allegedly utilized in conjunction with “The Hammer” to alter the outcome of the 2020 election.

Fanning and Jones have not mentioned Montgomery’s history with Arpaio’s office nor that in 2009, journalist Aram Roston, then of Playboy, wrote a lengthy expose about Montgomery’s contractual work with the DOD titled, “The Man Who Conned the Pentagon.” That article begins:

The weeks before Christmas brought no hint of terror. But by the afternoon of December 21, 2003, police stood guard in heavy assault gear on the streets of Manhattan. Fighter jets patrolled the skies. When a gift box was left on Fifth Avenue, it was labeled a suspicious package and 5,000 people in the Metropolitan Museum of Art were herded into the cold.

It was Code Orange. Americans first heard of it at a Sunday press conference in Washington, D.C. Weekend assignment editors sent their crews up Nebraska Avenue to the new Homeland Security offices, where DHS secretary Tom Ridge announced the terror alert. “There’s continued discussion,” he told reporters, “these are from credible sources—about near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experienced on September 11.” The New York Times reported that intelligence sources warned “about some unspecified but spectacular attack.”

The financial markets trembled. By Tuesday the panic had ratcheted up as the Associated Press reported threats to “power plants, dams and even oil facilities in Alaska.” The feds forced the cancellation of dozens of French, British and Mexican commercial “flights of interest” and pushed foreign governments to put armed air marshals on certain flights. Air France flight 68 was canceled, as was Air France flight 70. By Christmas the headline in the Los Angeles Times was “Six Flights Canceled as Signs of Terror Plot Point to L.A.” Journalists speculated over the basis for these terror alerts. “Credible sources,” Ridge said. “Intelligence chatter,” said CNN.

But there were no real intercepts, no new informants, no increase in chatter. And the suspicious package turned out to contain a stuffed snowman. This was, instead, the beginning of a bizarre scam. Behind that terror alert, and a string of contracts and intrigue that continues to this date, there is one unlikely character.

The man’s name is Dennis Montgomery, a self-proclaimed scientist who said he could predict terrorist attacks. Operating with a small software development company, he apparently convinced the Bush White House, the CIA, the Air Force and other agencies that Al Jazeera—the Qatari-owned TV network—was unwittingly transmitting target data to Al Qaeda sleepers.

…Montgomery called the work he was doing noise filtering. He was churning out reams of data he called output. It consisted of latitudes and longitudes and flight numbers. After it went to [CIA operative] Sid, it went to Washington, D.C. Then it found its way to the CIA’s seventh floor, to Director George Tenet. Eventually it ended up in the White House. Montgomery’s output was to have an extraordinary effect. Ridge’s announcement, the canceled flights and the holiday disruptions were all the results of Montgomery’s mysterious doings.

The claim he is “muzzled” by the U.S. government from divulging information is one Montgomery has made for years stemming from his work with the U.S. Defense Department at eTreppid Technologies, LLC, a company he co-founded with Warren Trepp in 1998 and detailed in Roston’s article.

In 2006, Montgomery sued Trepp after abruptly leaving the firm. The following year, the government invoked the State Secrets Privilege via a protective order over certain information which could emerge from the litigation, a request granted by then-U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Nevada Philip Pro pertaining to information eTreppid employees exchanged with “any intelligence agency.”

It is the protective order which Montgomery claims bars him from releasing the “PCAPS” he allegedly collected during the 2020 election based on the technology he claims to have invented while under contract with the DOD approximately two decades ago.

Montgomery’s invocation of the State Secrets Privilege spurred Lindell last year to file a Motion to Intervene in the long-settled dispute with Trepp in an attempt to compel the government to lift the protective order. Lindell argued he needed to release the information to defend himself against a lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. and associated entities for alleged defamation. His public statements about the voting machines’ alleged vulnerabilities stemmed from information from Montgomery, he told attendees at his “The Moment of Truth Summit” in August 2022.

After the case was reopened, the government, an interested party in the case, asked the court to maintain the protective order while stating it does not pertain to any election-related information.

On August 9, U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada Miranda Du denied Lindell and Montgomery’s motions to lift the protective order.

The Symposium’s Fallout

On the third and final day of the 2021 conference, Lindell announced he would not be releasing the PCAPS as scheduled as the result of a “poison pill” having been introduced into the data. He detailed that decision several days later on “The Lindell Report” with Brannon Howse, which begins with a portion of “The Pete Santilli Show” of August 16, 2021.

Santilli began his broadcast with a reprise of footage from the symposium while displaying at the bottom of the screen an advertisement from Lindell’s MyPillow and “Promo Code ‘PETE.'” After some symposium technical difficulties were resolved, Waldron appeared on-stage discussing a “forensic analysis.” At 4:19, his remarks are sharply interrupted by a siren and screen introducing Santilli’s broadcast.

On September 9, 2021, The Post & Email reported:

During “The Lindell Report” live broadcast, Lindell asked Howse to play what he said radio host Pete Santilli admitted were conversations he recorded without Merritt’s knowledge in which Merritt intimated Lindell revealed nothing proving association with the 2020 election.

To The Post & Email, Merritt confirmed that his call to Santilli, with whom he said he had long been acquainted, was not intended for broadcast.

Lindell responded to Merritt’s comments to Santilli by branding Merritt “a traitor.” Although Lindell threatened a lawsuit, Merritt said the issue between them was resolved by “arbitration.”

Merritt’s View

We asked Merritt for his opinion on why Lindell went through with the Symposium knowing that he would have no PCAPS to release.

“Based on the people that I know were involved, I think to a certain degree, the whole thing was a setup because what I initially believed happened was that Lindell used the PCAPS to draw people in but he wasn’t certain if it was real, and he was going to use that to drop the information about Tina Peters,” Merritt responded.

Peters, who addressed the Symposium on its first night, is a former Mesa County, CO elected county clerk and recorder who last year was charged with seven felonies and three misdemeanors associated with an update of voting equipment which took place in her office. Her assistant, Belinda Knisley, was charged with six felonies but arrived at a plea deal last year “in exchange for her cooperation and testimony against Peters,” CNN reported.

According a March 9, 2022 NPR article:

The pair is accused of helping an unauthorized person make copies of sensitive voting-machine hard drives and attend an annual software update. Information from the machines and secure passwords were later shared with election conspiracy theorists online. Shortly after the data was leaked, Peters appeared at an event put on by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the leading promoters of the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rigged.

“Something didn’t seem right in our county from years ago to the 2020 election. And they wanted answers. And I said, ‘You know what? If there’s a there there, we’ll find it.’ And I’ve made that pledge to the citizens of Mesa County and all over Colorado,” said Peters during the 2021 event.

In March Peters faced trial on two of the charges after pleading “not guilty” to all. The jury acquitted her of “obstructing a peace officer” but convicted her of misdemeanor of “obstruction of a government operation,” CNN reported. The following month she received a sentence of four months’ home detention, 120 hours of community service and a $750 fine which was stayed due to Peters’ reported intent to appeal.

Further to what he believes Lindell’s motive was in holding the Symposium, Merritt continued, “He came up with this contest to get everybody drawn in. Sitting in the Red Team room when Lindell was talking, he was checking with [his attorney] Kurt Olsen to make sure that the verbiage in his paperwork was done in a fashion to where no one would be able to make claims to the contest.”

Lindell challenged any expert to successfully prove that the data presented at the symposium was not associated with the 2020 election.

“Someone did make a claim,” The Post & Email responded, which was arbitrated in the plaintiff’s favor earlier this year.

“Right; Zeidman,” Merritt responded. “There were two guys who started to make an initial claim and Olsen actually threatened to throw them out of the symposium, saying they were making a scene because of the attitude and the way they were getting treated for saying, ‘No, these aren’t packet captures; this has nothing to do with China.'”

While he believes Peters’s actions unearthed real evidence of election fraud, Merritt said, the methods used resulted in jeopardizing her freedom and could still land her “in jail.”

In regard to Lindell’s highly-anticipated release of PCAPS allegedly showing China as the main culprit in the 2020 election, Merritt said, “My thought process while I was there — the first thing was, if Donald Trump had taken this claim that Lindell had about these packet captures being proof that the Chinese had hacked into the elections, it would have been false and he would have been an even bigger laughingstock, for one. For two, even if the packet captures were legitimate, Hammer and Scorecard is a tool used by the NSA. So if they proved that the packet captures did actually show alterations, it wouldn’t have shown that China altered it; it would have shown that the NSA would have been the ones who altered it.”

“Do you know for a fact that Hammer and Scorecard are real?” we asked.

To be continued.