A witness in Trump ally Sidney Powell's lawsuits says the voting results in 'Edison County' indicate fraud. No such place exists.

• A lawsuit in Michigan pushed by allies of President Donald Trump is seeking to fight what voters decided and declare him the winner of the state's electoral votes.
• To bolster its case, it included an affidavit from Navid Keshavarz-Nia, a cybersecurity expert who alleged that election data indicated widespread fraud. (Extensive research and other experts have refuted such claims.)
• The affidavit said President-elect Joe Biden won "more than 100% of the votes" in a county that doesn't exist.
• Keshavarz-Nia also said he hadn't actually analyzed the voting machines used in the 2020 election.

A witness in a lawsuit from allies of President Donald Trump trying to overturn democracy in Michigan said the votes in Edison County "are cause for concern and indicate fraud" because President-elect Joe Biden won "more than 100% of the votes."

There's just one problem: There is no Edison County in Michigan, the Detroit Free Press pointed out.

In fact, there is no Edison County in the entire United States of America.

The claim came from Navid Keshavarz-Nia, who describes himself in an affidavit as a cybersecurity expert working at a defense contractor who has received training from several government agencies. The affidavit is included as an exhibit appended to a lawsuit filed last week by people working with Sidney Powell, a former member of the Trump campaign's legal team.

Keshavarz-Nia's nonsensical claim about Edison County drew widespread attention with a tweet from Jonathan Oosting, a reporter at the nonprofit news organization Bridge Michigan.

—Jonathan Oosting (@jonathanoosting) November 30, 2020

The typo-peppered lawsuit makes many of the same wildly conspiratorial arguments Powell made at a press conference that led to her ouster from Trump's legal team, including that the now dead Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez used voting machines to manipulate election results in his own country and that the very same machines are now being used to manipulate the 2020 election results. There's no evidence of the claim, and the companies named in Powell's lawsuits have debunked the arguments in them.

The witness says he hasn't actually looked at the voting machines

In the affidavit, Keshavarz-Nia said he had not analyzed any of the voting machines used in the 2020 election but argued that there was "evidence of fraud" based on his analysis of election data.

Much of that data is simply false or based on a misunderstanding of how election data is reported.

It's not clear whether Keshavarz-Nia had another county in mind when referring to a vote count of more than 100% in "Edison County," but some internet sleuths have made claims about more than 100% of a particular county voting by relying on outdated voter-record information or simply using the wrong data sets, USA Today and Reuters reported.

In another part of the affidavit, Keshavarz-Nia said Trump's lead in Pennsylvania dropped at a rate faster than votes can be counted. But the votes were reported by precincts in the time span he indicated, not actually counted at that time.

Even though Keshavarz-Nia said he didn't analyze the machines used in the 2020 election, Powell's lawsuit cites his affidavit to argue that "hundreds of thousands of votes that were cast for President Trump in the 2020 general election were transferred to former Vice-President Biden" — which is not true.

The lawsuit ultimately asks a federal judge to force Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to ignore voters and "transmit certified election results that state that President Donald Trump is the winner of the election."

Michigan has already certified its election results, granting its 16 electoral votes to Biden. The Trump campaign withdrew a federal lawsuit challenging the state's election results, and three other lawsuits filed by Republican-aligned groups failed; the judges overseeing the cases found no evidence of fraud.

Keshavarz-Nia couldn't be reached for comment, and Powell did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

• Read more:
• Meet Sidney Powell, the former federal prosecutor turned conspiracy theorist who's fueling baseless claims about election fraud
• Dominion Voting Systems tore into Sidney Powell's lawsuit accusing it of a vast conspiracy, calling it 'baseless, senseless, physically impossible'
• Trump axed campaign lawyer Sidney Powell because 'she was too conspiratorial even for him,' report says
• Trump and his allies have won zero out at least 26 lawsuits they've filed since Election Day