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Videos Show Trump Allies Handling Georgia Voting Equipment


Newly released videos show allies of former President Donald J. Trump and contractors handling sensitive voting devices on his behalf in a rural Georgia county weeks after the year’s election. 2020.

Footage, made public as part of protracted litigation through Georgia’s voting system, raising new questions about efforts by Trump affiliates in several states around gaining access to and copying sensitive election software, with the help of administrators. friendly local election administrator. One such incident took place on January 7, last year, a day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, when a small team travel to rural Coffee County, Ga.

The group includes members of an Atlanta-based firm called SullivanStrickler, hired by Sidney Powell, an attorney advising Mr. Trump who is also a conspiracy theorist.

“We’re on our way to Coffee County, Ga., to gather what we can from the voting/voting machines and systems,” one of the company’s executives, Paul Maggio, said. wrote Mrs. Powell that January morning. Weeks later, Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area Trump supporter and bailee who also went to Coffee County, said “we scanned every weird ballot” in a Record phone conversations.

Mr. Hall said the team was blessed by the local election board and “scanned all the devices, took pictures of all the hard drives and scanned every single ballot.”

New videos show members of the team inside an office that processes county polls, which contain sensitive voter data. (Instances of device retention in the footage are labeled with the word “POLL PAD.”) In a court hearing on September 9, David D. Cross, an attorney for a nonprofit group is suing for vulnerabilities. security that was noticed in the Georgia voting system – and released new videos after obtaining them in litigation – told a judge that his team suspected that “personally identifiable information of about seven million Georgia voters may have been copied.

Charles Tonnie Adams, elections supervisor for Heard County, Ga., said in an email that “the polls contain every registered voter on the state roster.” It remains unclear what specific personally identifiable information about voters is on the polls or what, if any, is done with what data.

Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, said a poll “has voter information but is not accessible because it is obfuscated behind security protocols”. He added that there were no driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers on the polls at the time.

The new videos also show that some of Trump’s allies who visited Coffee County were given access to a storage room and that many people associated with the Trump campaign or his allies, were admitted. building for a few days.

The new footage also shows Cathy Latham, then head of the county’s Republican Party, with members of Trump’s team, standing together in an office where county polls are placed on tables. Ms. Latham is among the targets of a criminal investigation in Atlanta, involving her participation as one of a number of alternative electors who tried to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in Georgia. . That investigation, led by Fani T. Willis, the Fulton district attorney, also addressed what happened in Coffee County.

In a filing Monday night, the plaintiffs in the civil case assessed what they called “the persistent refusal by Latham and her attorneys to be candid with this court about the real.” They accused her of downplaying her involvement with the Trump team when “she was actually instructing them on what to gather in office.”

Robert D. Cheeley, Ms. Latham’s attorney, declined to comment on the filing on Monday. This month, he told CNN that his client “will not and willfully not engage in any improper conduct in any election”.

Investigators from Mr Raffensperger’s office also appeared in the new videos, questioning what they knew. Along with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Raffensperger’s office is investigating what happened in Coffee County, 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, but voting rights advocates involved in the lawsuit have questioned asked why Mr. Raffensperger, the defendant in the civil case, did such a thing. do not move stronger.

Hassinger said the secretary of state’s office “didn’t know” why its investigators were at the election office in Coffee County in early January.

“We’re looking at it,” he said. “Again, we take this matter very seriously. This investigation is a joint effort between the State Department and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and if it is determined that people have committed a crime, they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. “

Mr. Hassinger added that at the time, the secretary of state’s office was reviewing “vote counting procedures when Coffee County was unable to confirm their election results ahead of time.”

SullivanStrickler’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment. The company’s attorneys had previously said it was “clearly false” that it was part of an attempt to “illegally violate” servers “or other voting equipment, but that” in the interests of deeply aware and knowing everything they know now, they will not continue to do any work of this kind. “

Contacted by phone on Monday, Rachel Ann Roberts, current election supervisor for Coffee County, said she could not comment on the matter of the polls because she began work after the visit took place.

“I’m not sure about any of that,” she said. “I wasn’t here at the time.”

Georgia is hardly the only state where such activity has occurred. In Michigan, a special prosecutor is investigating the efforts of Trump allies, including the Republican nominee for attorney general, Matthew DePerno, to gain access to the voting machine. And in Colorado, the secretary of state’s office estimates that taxpayers face bills of at least $1 million to replace voting equipment in Mesa County after a pro-Trump election monitor was indicted. on charges of her tampering with county voting equipment after the 2020 election.



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