While chatter still flies around social media regarding the role of voting machines in any alleged 2020 election fraud — and if there was any connection between Dominion voting machines used in the election and Smartmatic election software (the companies have unequivocally denied those claims) — news broke Friday that Smartmatic CEO Mark Malloch-Brown is being tapped to head George Soros’ Open Society Foundation as current head Patrick Gaspard steps down.

NEW: Chairman of Smartmatic to become president of Soros's Open Society Foundations https://t.co/zZLk9k7reo

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 5, 2020

If nothing else, the timing is interesting to say the least. Malloch-Brown, a former UN deputy secretary‐general and UK minister, had been serving on the Foundations’ Global Board and had been the subject of some wild claims following the 2020 election as his relationship to Soros became news and attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood began to claim connections between Dominion and Smartmatic as part of their investigations into vote fraud.

Seeking to address those claims, Smartmatic revealed a page at their website to answer some of the questions posed about their ownership and connections to the billionaire progressive financier.

George Soros does not have and has never had any ownership stake in Smartmatic.

•    It is no secret that our Chairman Lord Mark Malloch-Brown is a member of a number of non-profit boards addressing global issues from poverty reduction to conflict resolution, including the Global Board of the Open Society Foundation. This is stated clearly in his official biography. Lord Malloch-Brown is a highly respected global figure whose credentials include former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and former Vice-Chairman of the World Economic Forum. He also served in the British Cabinet, as Minister of State in the Foreign Office.

Smartmatic has been linked to what the U.S. thought were questionable elections in Venezuela and was even, along with a subsidiary company called Sequoia, under federal investigation in 2006, according to The New York Times.

The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez.

The inquiry is focusing on the Venezuelan owners of the software company, the Smartmatic Corporation, and is trying to determine whether the government in Caracas has any control or influence over the firm’s operations, government officials and others familiar with the investigation said.

The inquiry on the eve of the midterm elections is being conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, the same panel of 12 government agencies that reviewed the abortive attempt by a company in Dubai to take over operations at six American ports earlier this year.

The committee’s formal inquiry into Smartmatic and its subsidiary, Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, Calif., was first reported Saturday in The Miami Herald.

Malloch-Brown is set to begin his new position with Open Society Foundation on January 1, 2021.