ATLANTA (AP) — Two months after the 2020 presidential election, a team of computer experts traveled to South Georgia to copy software and data from voting machines in an apparent violation of a county voting system. They were greeted outside by the leader of the local Republican party, who was involved in then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss.
A surveillance camera outside the elections office in rural Coffee County captured their arrival. The footage also shows some local elections officials were in the office during what the Georgia Secretary of State has described as “alleged unauthorized access” to voting equipment.
Security footage from two weeks later is triggering additional alarms – showing two people instrumental in Trump’s broader effort to undermine the election results entering the office and staying for hours.
Security video from the elections office in the county about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta offers a glimpse of the efforts Trump’s allies have expended in service of his fraudulent election claims. It also shows how access has been facilitated by local officials tasked with protecting election security while raising concerns about the release of sensitive voting technology to the public.
Georgia wasn’t the only state where voting machines were accessed after the 2020 presidential election. Vital information about voting systems was also compromised at polling stations in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Colorado. Election security experts fear the information obtained – including full copies of hard drives – could be exploited by those seeking to disrupt future elections.
“The system is only as secure as the people tasked with protecting it,” said attorney David Cross, representing plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit over Georgia’s voting machines.
Coffee County’s security footage was obtained through this lawsuit, which alleges Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines are vulnerable to attack and should be replaced with hand-marked paper ballots. The lawsuit dates back a long time and is unrelated to false allegations of widespread voter fraud made by Trump and his allies after the 2020 election.
The alleged violation of the Coffee County Electoral Bureau has also drawn the attention of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is overseeing an investigation into whether Trump and his allies illegally attempted to influence the 2020 Georgia election results.
Last month, Willis cited the activities of Coffee County, among others, when she tried to coerce testimony from Sidney Powell, an attorney deeply involved in Trump’s efforts to reverse the election results.
Emails and other records show that Powell and other Trump-affiliated attorneys helped arrange a team from data solutions firm SullivanStrickler to travel to Coffee County, which Trump won by nearly 40 percentage points.
The surveillance video, emails and other documents detailing what happened there in January 2021 were made in response to subpoenas issued in the voting machine case and were obtained by The Associated Press. Portions of the security video appear to contradict claims made by some local officials:
– Footage shows Cathy Latham, then-Chairman of the Coffee County Republican Party, arriving at the polling station just after 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after the violent attack on the US Capitol. Just weeks earlier, she was one of 16 Georgia Republicans to sign a charter falsely stating Trump had won the state and declaring they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” voters.
A few minutes after arriving, she is seen outside greeting SullivanStrickler Chief Operating Officer Paul Maggio and two other people. Less than 10 minutes later, she escorts two more men into the building.
Video shows her leaving the voting office just before 1:30 p.m., about two hours after greeting the SullivanStrickler team. She returns just before 4:00 p.m. and then departs again around 6:15 p.m
Latham said during testimony in August that she stopped by the polling station for “just a few minutes” that night and left before 5 p.m. When asked if she’d been there earlier in the day, Latham said she couldn’t remember but suggested her schedule as a teacher didn’t allow for it.
A lawyer for SullivanStrickler said in an email attached to a court filing that Latham was a “primary point of contact” in coordinating the company’s work and was “on site” while that work was being done.
Robert Cheeley, an attorney for Latham, said in an emailed statement that his client does not remember all the details of that day. But he said she “would not and did not knowingly engage in any impropriety in any election” and “did not act improperly or illegally”.
— The video also shows Eric Chaney, a member of the Coffee County Board of Elections, arriving just before 11 a.m. the same day and going in and out several times before heading out at about 7:40 p.m., wrote in a court filing that a photo taken by SullivanStrickler’s COO shows Chaney in the office while the copying takes place.
During a testimony last month, Chaney declined to answer many questions about the day, invoking the Fifth Amendment. But when a county attorney contacted him about Washington Post questions in April, Chaney wrote, “I am not aware of my absence from the Coffee County Board of Elections and Registration office when someone illegally accessed the server or the room that contains it.” Chaney resigned from the election board last month, days before his ouster.
Attempts to reach Chaney by phone were unsuccessful, and his attorney did not respond to an email seeking comment.
– About two weeks after the first violation, video shows Misty Hampton – then the county elections director – arriving at the polling station at 4:20 p.m. on Jan. 18, when it was closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. She unlocked the door and let in two men — Doug Logan and Jeff Lenberg, who have been active in contesting the 2020 election results.
Logan founded Cyber Ninjas who participated in a partisan and ultimately discredited review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona. The two men stayed in the house until just after 8 p.m. and spent more than nine hours there the next day. Lenberg returned for brief visits at least three more days later that month.
Hampton resigned as Elections Supervisor in February 2021 after Elections Committee officials said she forged her timesheets. Attempts by the AP to reach her have been unsuccessful.
In a statement released by his attorney, SullivanStrickler said the company had been hired by attorneys to forensically copy voting machines used in the 2020 election and had no reason to believe they would ask its employees to do anything inappropriate do.
The Georgia State Department said it launched an investigation in March and asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for assistance last month. State officials have said the system remains secure due to several safeguards in place.