Trump Team Lawyers Linked to Lawful and Unlawful Access of Election Equipment in Multiple States

[essentialsaltes]

Some of the tentacles here and there are coming together into one ugly kraken.

Of course, the exclamation point at the bottom of all of this is that nobody found anything that called the 2020 election results into doubt.

Trump-allied lawyers pursued voting machine data in multiple states, records reveal

A team of computer experts directed by lawyers allied with President Donald Trump copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia as part of a secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment that was broader, more organized and more successful than previously reported, according to emails and other records obtained by The Washington Post.

Attorney Sidney Powell sent the team to Michigan to copy a rural county’s election data and later helped arrange for it to do the same in the Detroit area, according to the records. A Trump campaign attorney engaged the team to travel to Nevada. And the day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol the team was in southern Georgia, copying data from a Dominion voting system in rural Coffee County.

The emails and other records were collected through a subpoena issued to the forensics firm, Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler, by plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit in federal court over the security of Georgia’s voting systems. The documents provide the first confirmation that data from Georgia’s election system was copied.

State authorities have opened criminal investigations into alleged improper breaches of equipment in Michigan, a case that involves several people who appear in the new records.

Trump-backed GOP candidate for Michigan AG under criminal investigation for possibly tampering with voting machines, docs say

Trump’s Michigan AG Candidate Revealed He Had Access to Voting Tabulator on Podcast
“We got access to a tabulator, and we were able to simulate elections."


In Mesa County, Colo., a local elections official, Republican Tina Peters, was indicted on felony charges including conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and attempting to influence a public servant.

Trump allies in 5 states breach U.S. voting systems in search of 2020 fraud ‘evidence’

In two counties [Clark County Nevada and Antrim County Michigan], SullivanStrickler’s examinations were permitted by courts [; in others.... they weren't]

...

Allegations that machine data had been accessed in Coffee County, Ga., first surfaced in February this year as part of the long-running lawsuit. In a recording of a March 2021 telephone call filed in court, pro-Trump businessman Scott Hall said he had arranged for a plane to take people to Coffee County and joined them as they “went in there and imaged every hard drive of every piece of equipment” and scanned ballots. “We basically had the entire elections committee there,” Hall added. “And they said: ‘We give you permission. Go for it.’ ” [This effort was also carried out by the same team and arranged by Powell.]

Former local elections official Misty Hampton told The Post earlier this year that she had allowed Hall and other outsiders into her office in the hope that they could identify machine vulnerabilities and show the “election was not done true and correct.” [Narrator: they didn't] Hampton resigned under pressure last year because she falsified time sheets, according to county officials.

Trump had carried the conservative county by 40 points, but elections supervisor Misty Hampton said she remained suspicious of Joe Biden’s win in Georgia.

 

[Paulos23]

Lock them up!

Honestly, how did they think this would be unnoticed? And they should have known this was illegal.

 

[Blade]

Delete.. I liked what I said.. just.. like ping pong now. He said she said. Its lawyers.. for me many love to bend that law as far as they can. Sorry don't know any more then that. Lets hope justice this time will be served if true. WP been posting things as of late that are not true. This one might be

 

[Fantine]

Not sure we need a third party but the Republican Party seems to need an extreme makeover.
It's sad it has been infiltrated with so many unsavory and even criminal elements that overpower their political philosophy and goals.
If we persist on excising the bad elements, it will be a party conservatives can feel proud to support.

 

[DaisyDay]

Not sure we need a third party but the Republican Party seems to need an extreme makeover.
It's sad it has been infiltrated with so many unsavory and even criminal elements that overpower their political philosophy and goals.
If we persist on excising the bad elements, it will be a party conservatives can feel proud to support.

The GOP is in the process of making itself over. It is throwing out its moderate members and becoming increasingly radical and trumpish.

 

[Fantine]

I agree, but those who are being excluded will hopefully be the core of the real Republican Party.
It seems as if law enforcement agencies--federal, state and city--will hopefully indict and convict the ringleaders and lawbreakers who remain.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Some of the tentacles here and there are coming together into one ugly kraken. Of course, the exclamation point at the bottom of all of this is that nobody found anything that called the 2020 election results into doubt.
Trump-allied lawyers pursued voting machine data in multiple states, records reveal

Files copied from voting systems were shared with Trump supporters, election deniers

A Georgia computer forensics firm, hired by the attorneys, placed the files on a server, where company records show they were downloaded dozens of times. Among the downloaders were accounts associated with a Texas meteorologist who has appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show; a podcaster who suggested political enemies should be executed; a former pro surfer who pushed disproven theories that the 2020 election was manipulated; and a self-described former “seduction and pickup coach” who claims to also have been a hacker.

A series of data leaks and alleged breaches of local elections offices since 2020 has prompted criminal investigations and fueled concerns among some security experts that public disclosure of information collected from voting systems could be exploited by hackers and other people seeking to manipulate future elections.

Access to U.S. voting system software and other components is tightly regulated, and the government classifies those systems as “critical infrastructure.” The new batch of records shows for the first time how the files copied from election systems were distributed to people in multiple states.

“Likewise, the firm [SullivanStrickler] was directed by attorneys to distribute that data to certain individuals,” the statement said. The firm said that it “had [and has] no reason to believe that, as officers of the court, these attorneys would ask or direct SullivanStrickler to do anything either improper or illegal.”

 

[essentialsaltes]

Allegations that machine data had been accessed in Coffee County, Ga., first surfaced in February this year as part of the long-running lawsuit. In a recording of a March 2021 telephone call filed in court, pro-Trump businessman Scott Hall said he had arranged for a plane to take people to Coffee County and joined them as they “went in there and imaged every hard drive of every piece of equipment” and scanned ballots. “We basically had the entire elections committee there,” Hall added. “And they said: ‘We give you permission. Go for it.’ ” [This effort was also carried out by the same team and arranged by Powell.]

Former local elections official Misty Hampton told The Post earlier this year that she had allowed Hall and other outsiders into her office in the hope that they could identify machine vulnerabilities and show the “election was not done true and correct.” [Narrator: they didn't] Hampton resigned under pressure last year because she falsified time sheets, according to county officials.

Trump had carried the conservative county by 40 points, but elections supervisor Misty Hampton said she remained suspicious of Joe Biden’s win in Georgia.

Technology consultants who sought evidence that Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat was fraudulent made multiple visits to a county elections office in rural Georgia in the weeks after an alleged post-election breach of voting equipment there that is the subject of a criminal investigation.

Surveillance video reviewed by The Washington Post shows that the consultants, Doug [Cyber Ninjas CEO] Logan and Jeffrey Lenberg, made two visits in January 2021 to the elections office in Coffee County, about 200 miles south of Atlanta. Lenberg made an additional five visits on his own. The two men are under investigation for separate alleged breaches of voting machines in Michigan.

Lenberg, 66, lives in Tijeras, N.M., and previously worked in technical roles at a private laboratory operated for the National Nuclear Security Administration. A résumé for Lenberg filed in the Antrim court case stated that he has held high-level security clearances and that his past work included “developing ways to break in (if possible) to what were considered to be secure systems.”

The footage also shows that earlier in January, Cathy Latham, a teacher and then-chairwoman of the county Republican Party, greeted a group of outside data forensics experts when they arrived at the elections office shortly before noon on the day of the alleged breach. Latham has said in sworn testimony that she taught a full day of school that day and visited the elections office briefly after classes ended. She was one of 16 Republicans who signed certificates declaring Trump the rightful winner of the 2020 election as part of the “fake elector” scheme now under investigation by federal and state prosecutors.

The footage shows Latham entering the building before noon, then leaving at 1:26 p.m. She returned several minutes after Hampton’s 3:48 p.m. text and then finally departed after 6 p.m., it shows.

Latham “would not and has not knowingly been involved in any impropriety in any election,” Robert D. Cheeley, her lawyer, said in a statement to The Post. She “did not authorize or participate in any ballot scanning efforts, computer imaging or any similar activity in Coffee County in January 2021.”

ETA: CNN version of story with punchier headline and details:

Newly obtained surveillance video shows fake Trump elector escorted operatives into Georgia county's elections office before voting machine breach

Three days after the breach, Latham texted the Coffee County elections supervisor, "Did you all finish with the scanner?" According to court documents, Latham testified she did not know what Hall was doing in Coffee County. But when confronted with her texts about the scanner, she asserted her Fifth Amendment rights.

"So, regardless of whether she correctly remembers the details of what time she spent there on January 7, it doesn't change the fact that she had no authority to do any of this and was not personally involved in whatever was done," the lawyer added.

When asked during a recent deposition in the Georgia civil case whether she knew or ever had any communication with Giuliani, Latham asserted her Fifth Amendment rights.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Allegations that machine data had been accessed in Coffee County, Ga., first surfaced in February this year as part of the long-running lawsuit.

Inside the secretive effort by Trump allies to access voting machines
How rural Coffee County, Ga., became an early target in the multistate search for purported evidence of fraud after the 2020 election

In two instances, courts or state lawmakers granted Trump supporters access to the machines, which are considered by the federal government to be “critical infrastructure” vital to national security and are usually closely guarded. But in at least seven other counties in four states, including Coffee, local officials acting without a court order or subpoena allegedly gave outsiders access to the machines or their data, a Washington Post examination found.

The operations not sanctioned by courts or lawmakers were clandestine affairs. In Mesa County, Colo., an outsider was allegedly smuggled into the elections office under an alias to copy data. In Michigan, a pro-Trump state lawmaker allegedly persuaded clerks in two counties to hand over equipment for a House investigation that, according to the office of the House speaker, did not exist. In Coffee County, a local elections official invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination more than 200 times when questioned under oath recently for a long-running lawsuit that voting activists brought against state officials.

Coffee County was home to the most extensive of the early covert efforts that have come to light. In January 2021, forensics experts copied data from virtually every component of the voting system there, records show. The incursion provided pro-Trump election deniers with copies of sensitive election software used across Georgia, a state widely seen as a linchpin in the battle for control of the U.S. Senate in 2022 and the White House in 2024.

The Post examination shows how unfounded suspicions in Coffee County spiraled into an alleged breach that was organized in part by pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and paid for by her nonprofit, which at the time counted former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn among its directors. This account is based on interviews and documents obtained through public-records requests as well as surveillance video, text messages, and depositions and other records that were gathered by the plaintiffs in the long-running lawsuit, who contend that Georgia’s elections are not secure.

In response to a request for comment, Powell referred The Post to her testimony before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. That testimony is not public. Flynn did not respond to similar inquiries.

 

[Fantine]

I would be embarrassed to support a party that needs to cheat to win. It's sad voters have such low standards.

 

[Bobber]

I'm surprised that people even have the mental energy to talk about these things anymore. When I see how so many invested so many hours....hours upon hours of who was right and wrong about all these things I wonder that most don't just conclude, just forget about it!

 

[essentialsaltes]

How improperly obtained election system information is being shared in far-right circles​

On the third day of the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this month, two men delivered on experts’ biggest concerns about attempts to access election machines after the 2020 election.

Using copies of election software — improperly removed from multiple counties — that has been circulating among election deniers, they presented an unfounded narrative that they had discovered evidence of fraud and foreign interference. They also discussed their goal to secure jobs as election officers and build a team of computer experts to access elections systems in more than 60 counties in order to prove their theories.

In the weeks after the 2020 election, and for at least the first six months of 2021, former President Trump’s supporters arranged to access federally protected election machines and copied sensitive information and software. What they intend to do with the information is not entirely clear.

“We have multiple counties’ forensic images,” [Buongiorno] said during the presentation. “We’re not going to name the counties.”

Some came from evidence in court cases, and other images he and Merritt obtained on their own, Buongiorno said.

“Sometimes you have good Samaritans on the inside who care,” Buongiorno said.

Little is known about who has the information taken in Coffee County, which included copies of every component of the county’s voting system. [election security expert] Skoglund, who is an expert witness in an ongoing case involving Georgia’s voting machines that uncovered the improper access in the county, said he was unaware that Merritt and Buongiorno had access to that system.

“They were not on the list of people that I knew had had that software until then, which just shows that it has spread further than the dozen people or so that had it that I know about,” Skoglund said.

 

[essentialsaltes]

State authorities have opened criminal investigations into alleged improper breaches of equipment in Michigan, a case that involves several people who appear in the new records.

Trump-backed GOP candidate for Michigan AG under criminal investigation for possibly tampering with voting machines, docs say

Trump’s Michigan AG Candidate Revealed He Had Access to Voting Tabulator on Podcast
“We got access to a tabulator, and we were able to simulate elections."

‘I have been indicted,’ says suspect in Michigan vote machine tampering probe​

“My attorney has been informed that I have been indicted by DJ Hilson, the special prosecutor in Michigan, working at the request of (Attorney General) Dana Nessel,” Stefanie Lambert said Wednesday on a conservative podcast, where she bashed the pending criminal action.

Lambert is one of nine suspects Nessel referred to a special prosecutor last fall, citing an alleged tabulator tampering plot that aimed to prove former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims the 2020 contest was rigged against him.

Other suspects in the case include former state Rep. Daire Rendon of Lake City, Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf, officials with the Cyber Ninjas security firm and former Republican attorney general candidate Matt DePerno, who did not return a voicemail seeking comment late Wednesday.

Lambert, who did not respond to a request for comment on this story, is also mired in other legal battles. A cyber security expert sued her last week in Detroit federal court, alleging she refused to pay him and was "furious" after he reviewed Pennsylvania election data for her but found no evidence of fraud.

 

[childeye 2]

Wow.

 

[essentialsaltes]

‘I have been indicted,’ says suspect in Michigan vote machine tampering probe​

“My attorney has been informed that I have been indicted by DJ Hilson, the special prosecutor in Michigan, working at the request of (Attorney General) Dana Nessel,” Stefanie Lambert said Wednesday on a conservative podcast, where she bashed the pending criminal action.
Other suspects in the case include former state Rep. Daire Rendon of Lake City, Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf, officials with the Cyber Ninjas security firm and former Republican attorney general candidate Matt DePerno, who did not return a voicemail seeking comment late Wednesday.

DePerno and Rendon have also been indicted.

Michigan Republicans charged in connection with 2020 voting machine tampering​

Former attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno (R) was charged with improper possession of a voting machine, conspiracy to unlawfully possess a voting machine, conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to a computer system and willfully damaging a voting machine, according to Hilson. Former state representative Daire Rendon (R) was charged with conspiracy to unlawfully possess a voting machine and using false pretenses with the intent to defraud, he said. Both were arraigned Tuesday and released.

The investigation in Michigan has mirrored ones in other states after the 2020 election. In Colorado, a grand jury last year indicted Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters (R) for allegedly secretly copying hard drives from voting equipment in an attempt to investigate whether anyone tampered with the election. Peters, who has since left office, was convicted of a misdemeanor obstruction charge in March in a separate case. In Georgia, prosecutors are investigating the potential involvement of the Trump campaign in an unauthorized breach of election equipment in rural Coffee County.

Following the 2020 election, four clerks in three Michigan counties turned over voting tabulators to third parties, investigators found. They were taken to suburban Detroit, where a group of four men broke into the machines and performed “tests” on them, according to Nessel’s office. The group held onto the machines for weeks or months but returned them to clerks — in one case in a carpool parking lot — after the clerks grew apprehensive, documents show.

[Others are implicated in this, including chief Cyber Ninja Doug Logan.)

 

[essentialsaltes]

Exclusive: Georgia prosecutors have messages showing Trump’s team is behind voting system breach​

Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected the breach was not an organic effort sprung from sympathetic Trump supporters in rural and heavily Republican Coffee County – a county Trump won by nearly 70% of the vote. They have gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software, according to people familiar with the situation.

Together, the text messages and other court documents show how Trump lawyers and a group of hired operatives sought to access Coffee County’s voting systems in the days before January 6, 2021, as the former president’s allies continued a desperate hunt for any evidence of widespread fraud they could use to delay certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

The messages and documents appear to link Giuliani to the Coffee County breach, while shedding light on another channel of communication between pro-Trump attorneys and the battleground state operatives who worked together to provide unauthorized individuals access to sensitive voting equipment.

“Just landed back in DC with the Mayor huge things starting to come together!” an employee from the firm Sullivan Strickler, which was hired by Sidney Powell to examine voting systems in Coffee County, wrote in a group chat with other colleagues on January 1.

[Giuliani's lawyer denies Rudy's involvement in "Sidney Powell’s crackpot idea".]

 

[essentialsaltes]

Some of the tentacles here and there are coming together into one ugly kraken.

Allegations that machine data had been accessed in Coffee County, Ga., first surfaced in February this year as part of the long-running lawsuit. In a recording of a March 2021 telephone call filed in court, pro-Trump businessman Scott Hall said he had arranged for a plane to take people to Coffee County and joined them as they “went in there and imaged every hard drive of every piece of equipment” and scanned ballots. “We basically had the entire elections committee there,” Hall added. “And they said: ‘We give you permission. Go for it.’ ” [This effort was also carried out by the same team and arranged by Powell.]

Trump had carried the conservative county by 40 points, but elections supervisor Misty Hampton said she remained suspicious of Joe Biden’s win in Georgia.

Scott Hall and Sidney Powell have both pleaded guilty (and agreed to testify truthfully in the trials of their codefendants).

 

[The Barbarian]

Honestly, how did they think this would be unnoticed? And they should have known this was illegal.

There's an old bit of doggerel, but it's true...

"Treason never prospers.
And this is the reason;
If treason should prosper,
none dare call it treason."

They just thought it was all going to work, and Trump would become president and intervene to save them, if anyone even reported them.

 

[The Barbarian]

I would be embarrassed to support a party that needs to cheat to win. It's sad voters have such low standards.

It was that or change their objectives to fit the wishes of the American people. Their conclusion; "we just didn't cheat hard enough."

 

[essentialsaltes]

‘I have been indicted,’ says suspect in Michigan vote machine tampering probe​

“My attorney has been informed that I have been indicted by DJ Hilson, the special prosecutor in Michigan, working at the request of (Attorney General) Dana Nessel,” Stefanie Lambert said Wednesday on a conservative podcast, where she bashed the pending criminal action.

Lambert is one of nine suspects Nessel referred to a special prosecutor last fall, citing an alleged tabulator tampering plot that aimed to prove former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims the 2020 contest was rigged against him.

Dominion Lawsuit Against Kraken Dead Enders Keeps Getting Weirder​

Consider this excerpt from a March 12 email to Judge Carl Nichols, attesting that protected discovery material from the civil case had appeared in a criminal matter involving Byrne’s counsel Stefanie Lambert Junttila:

It has recently come to our attention that Confidential Discovery Material produced by Dominion in this case has been disclosed in a public filing in Michigan by Stefanie Lambert. Ms. Lambert had access to Confidential Discovery Material as an attorney for Patrick Byrne who was assisting in this litigation. Prior to her gaining access to any Confidential Discovery Material, she signed an Undertaking in which she agreed to use all Discovery Material only as permitted by the Protective Order. Attached is a copy of her signed Undertaking.

Dominion’s Confidential Discovery Material appears to have been shared with a non-party (i.e., Sheriff Dar Leaf of Barry County, Michigan) by Stefanie Lambert and publicly disclosed by her as part of a filing she made in the criminal case styled People of the State of Michigan vs. Stefanie Lynn Lambert Junttila, which is currently pending before the Sixth Circuit Court in Oakland County, Michigan as Case Number 2023-285759-FH….

...

[litany of Lambert's legal woes...]

On top of which, she now has an active warrant in that case after failing to appear multiple times.