The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia has evidence supporting his involvement in breaking into voting machines in the state, as claimed by two individuals.
The individuals implicated are suspected of committing computer trespass, but the identities of the accused and whether they will be involved in a racketeering case are not yet known, according to the sources.
Prosecutors in Georgia must establish that an “enterprise” involved in two “qualifying” offenses, including computer trespass, has existed before the case was brought under state law. The Guardian reports that prosecutors have evidence that they are confident of having a case for racketeering.
It also states that “a computer or its associated network shall not be used intentionally to erase data, either temporarily or permanently, or with the intent to do so; every other activity which may be necessary or likely to result from any attempt to interrupt or interfere with another computer’s operation; each such action being the alteration or destruction of a Computer.”
The Coffee county, Georgia, voting machines breach by Trump supporters has drawn the attention of prosecutors due to their boldness in conducting the operation and suspicion that Trump was aware of his allies’ plan to break in.
Forensics experts hired by Trump supporters copied data from almost every aspect of the voting system, which is used statewide in Georgia, and then uploaded them to a website with password protection that could be accessed by 2020 election deniers in dozens of particularly notable incidents.
Megan Varner/Getty Images captured the banners with voter stickers in Atlanta, Georgia on January 5, 2021.
The tale of a group of Trump supporters obtaining access to voting machines, as evidenced by deposition records and surveillance tapes, can be traced back to 2020 when the county’s top elections supervisor discovered the “adjudication” system for mail ballots inside the machines.
The Fulton county district attorney’s office did not respond to a comment request.
Mail ballots in Georgia are marked by hand and then evaluated by an adjudication panel consisting of bipartisan members who review the ballot for any stray marks or errors, and instruct the machine to count them.
The November 2020 video posted by Misty Hampton, the elections supervisor, caused controversy in local Republican party circles due to the possibility of someone entering the information to falsely count a candidate for another.
The act of swapping a vote during adjudication would be completely illegal, and there is no proof that this occurred during the 2020 presidential election. If it had happened, it would have been detected during any subsequent statewide hand count, according to experts.
The bipartisan adjudication panel in Georgia held runoff elections for two US Senate seats on January 5, 2021. Cathy Latham, the GOP chair from Coffee county, was chosen to represent the party during the fraught atmosphere.
Latham recounted in depositions during a long-standing lawsuit brought by the Coalition for Good Governance that the ballot scanner in Coffee county was repeatedly jamming while trying to read mail-in ballots. Additionally, Lathham’s explanation suggests that it became more frequent when checking for Republican candidates.
The on-site Dominion Voting System technician advised Latham to wipe the ballot scanner with a cloth after her complaint. Lathham stated that the incident was resolved when the technician held his phone near the scanner.
The technician was suspected by Latham of having downloaded data to the ballot scanner using his phone, as per his statement.
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A voter is aided by an election official at a polling station in Atlanta, Georgia on 5 January 2021. Image credit: Bloomberg/Getty Images.
There is no evidence to support the claim that the scanners are not wireless, and the office of the Georgia secretary of state has confirmed that this unusual incident was the driving force behind several Trump supporters trying to determine if someone could have rigged the election.
Eric Chaney, a member of the Coffee county elections board, was recorded arriving at the county’s elections office around 11am on January 7, 2019, one day after the Capitol attack in Washington. Latham also made an appearance at their office approximately an hour later.
Latham was captured on the tapes interacting with data experts from SullivanStrickler, who creates precise digital copies of electronic devices, and Scott Hall, a bail bond business owner linked to the local Republican party seeking evidence of election fraud.
Surveillance video only partially captures what occurred in the elections office, but it reveals that the SullivanStrickler team imaged almost every facet of the election systems, such as ballot scanners, thumb drives, and flash memory cards.
According to a deposition, Dean Felicetti, director of data risk at SullivanStrickler, stated that the company believed it had the right to gather the data and suggested that Hampton and Latham had given their approval.
The majority of the imaging work seems to have been done without filming, but the recordings from the Coffee county elections office exhibit Latham, Hampton, and Chaney interacting with SullivanStrickler experts by looking at computer screens and walking around with their instruments.
Requests for comment were not answered by Latham and Hampton’s lawyers in response to requests for their statements. Nevertheless, Lather’ ex-partner informed the Washington Post that she did not authorize the copying and had not engaged in any improper or illegal activity. Hall and Chaney also failed to respond to inquiries.
SullivanStrickler was warned by Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who had helped coordinate the covert operation and paid through her non-profit, that it would post the collected data on a password-protected website for downloading.
It seems that the Coffee county voting machines were breached on at least two more occasions. On 18 January 2021, Hampton, along with CyberNinjas CEO Doug Logan and a retired federal employee named Jeffrey Lenberg, attempted to access them for the second time.
The couple spent a minimum of four hours in the elections office during the afternoon, returning for an additional nine hours on January 25th. Lenberg was granted daily access to the election process for four days starting from January 25, 2021.
The specific actions taken by Lenberg inside his office are unclear. However, during a later podcast, Lenburg disclosed that he and Logan visited Coffee County after hearing about the Senate runoffs incident but chose not to touch the machines themselves.