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Background Briefing: Connections between the voting machine breaches in Michigan and Georgia and their relationship to Trump, his campaign, and the Fulton County District Attorney’s anticipated indictment.
Key points:
· Many of the same individuals were involved in the software breaches in both Michigan and Georgia.
· There is direct evidence that voting system breaches were funded and directed by attorneys for Trump and the Trump campaign.
· January 6th Committee testimony shows that Trump was aware of the plot to take voting software.
· Reports indicate that Fulton DA Fani Willis may charge the unlawful voting system access in Coffee County as an underlying crime in her RICO case.
· The federal government does not appear to be investigating the multistate plot to access voting systems, in Georgia or anywhere else.
· Public records requests reveal that Georgia is slow-walking its investigation of the Coffee County breach.
· After she facilitated the breach in Coffee County and while she was working for Stephanie Lambert Junttila, Misty Hampton had access to voting systems in another county in Georgia. The Georgia Secretary of State is reportedly investigating.
· The stolen software can impact future elections by facilitating malicious access and for disinformation.
Many of the same individuals were involved in the software breaches in both Michigan and Georgia.
On the same day Donald Trump was indicted in federal court for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, two individuals, Matt DePerno and Daire Rendon, were indicted in Michigan for taking and accessing voting components and software in 2021. Stephanie Lambert Junttila, co-counsel in Sidney Powell’s Kraken lawsuits, has also been indicted in Michigan.
In 2022, evidence uncovered in a long standing lawsuit by the Coalition for Good Governance (CGG) and its fellow plaintiffs – not through a federal or state investigation, criminal or otherwise – revealed that copies of Georgia’s voting system software were taken through the cooperation of a county election supervisor, Misty Hampton, and at least one county election board member. Documents and depositions collected by plaintiffs in the lawsuit also revealed that many of the same actors involved in Michigan participated in the Georgia software breaches.
According to testimony from Ben Cotton (a cybersecurity executive who examined software images taken from Michigan, Georgia and other states, and testified in Kari Lake’s lawsuit in Arizona), taken in a deposition by CGG and its fellow plaintiffs, Misty Hampton served as an elections consultant for Stephanie Lambert Junttila of Michigan. Cotton also testified that Lambert Junttila represented Hampton as a client and that he met Hampton in Michigan with Lambert Junttila when Hampton traveled there a few months after she facilitated the software breaches in Coffee County, Georgia. When questioned in a deposition about her relationship with Lambert Junttila, Hampton pled the Fifth.
Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, claimed that he provided Lambert Junttila with millions of dollars for her efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and called her a “maestro” behind the unsuccessful election challenges in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
SullivanStrickler, an Atlanta based cyber forensics firm, was hired by Sidney Powell to copy software in both Georgia and Michigan.
Doug Logan, CEO of the now disgraced and defunct Cyber Ninjas, accessed software in Georgia and Michigan. Logan has claimed he spent weeks at Lin Woods’ Tomotley estate working to develop evidence to overturn the election.
Logan also communicated extensively with Lambert Junttila about machine access in Michigan and Georgia, and has refused to disclose that communication.
Jeff Lenberg, a New Mexico based computer analyst, also accessed systems in Coffee County, Georgia and in Michigan. Lenberg has issued reports and declarations in support of efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
CGG and its partner plaintiffs took depositions of Hampton, Cotton, Logan, Lenberg, and a representative from SullivanStrickler that are each linked here.
Others connected to the breaches in Georgia include Rudy Giuliani, Jim Penrose, Conan Hayes, Todd Sanders, Katherine Friess and Phil Waldron which are outlined in this declaration filed by CGG’s expert.
There is direct evidence that voting system breaches were funded and directed by attorneys for Trump and the Trump campaign.
Through its court discovery, the Coalition for Good Governance amassed records, contracts, logs and documents that show that Sidney Powell and Jesse Binall directed and funded, through the “Defending the Republic” PAC, efforts to copy sensitive voting system software that counts votes in Georgia, Michigan and Nevada (though they were reportedly unsuccessful in obtaining access in Nevada). These records provide evidence that Trump associated attorneys were behind the multistate effort to take copies of election software.
January 6th Committee testimony shows that Trump was aware of the plot to take voting software.
The January 6th Committee highlighted a draft executive order for an audacious plan to use federal agencies to seize voting equipment raised at the “unhinged” December 18, 2020 meeting at the White House. But careful review of testimony to the J6 Committee reveals that this was one of two plans discussed to seize voting equipment. A second, parallel plan to gain “voluntary” access to copy voting machine software in Coffee County, Georgia and other states was also discussed at the Oval Office meeting, indicating Trump was, at a minimum, aware of the plot.
On April 28, 2023, on MSNBC, J6 committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren and J6 staffer Marc Harris affirmed that Trump was aware of the “unlawful” plot and acknowledged that this matter was not included in the J6 Committee report because of space. If the Special Counsel is using the J6 report as a roadmap for his probe, this issue will be omitted from investigation.
Reports indicate that Fulton DA Fani Willis may charge the unlawful voting system access in Coffee County as an underlying crime in her RICO case.
The Guardian has reported that DA Willis is likely to charge “computer trespass” related to the unauthorized access to voting systems in Coffee County as one of the underlying crimes if she pursues a RICO case. Importantly, the software these actors obtained and shared was not merely the local county system software, but the software for the entire state, used in all 159 counties.
The federal government does not appear to be investigating the multistate plot to access voting systems, in Georgia or anywhere else.
In December 2022, Free Speech For People [1] and a coalition of election and computer security experts sent a letter to the DOJ, Special Counsel and DHS urging a federal investigation into the multistate conspiracy based on the evidence uncovered by the CGG. The letter argued that the incidents demand a federal investigation from 1) the Special Counsel to probe Trump’s involvement in the plot, 2) the DOJ to investigate the potential for ongoing crimes aimed at disrupting future elections, and 3) DHS to conduct a risk assessment to understand how the unlawful taken software copies could impact the security of elections going forward.
Regrettably, available evidence indicates that a federal investigation into the multistate plot to access voting systems has not been initiated. Free Speech For People received a letter from the FBI stating that it will not investigate the breach in Coffee County, citing the specious argument that the FBI would need to be asked to investigate by a local investigating authority. The FBI letter ignores the fact that the Georgia State Election Board did formally ask the FBI to investigate.
Further, through public records requests, Free Speech For People has established that no federal agency has sought any records, interviews, or evidence from Coffee County, or even contacted the county.
Public records requests reveal that Georgia is slow-walking its investigation of the Coffee County breach.
Though there were several concerning incidents in Coffee County that should have triggered a robust investigation in late 2020 and early 2021, neither the Georgia Secretary of State, the State Election Board, nor the Georgia Bureau of Investigation launched an investigation. (If interested in these incidents, please contact us for more information.)
It was not until after CGG presented evidence of one of the Coffee County breaches to the Georgia SOS office during a deposition, February 24 2022, that the SOS office declared it would investigate. However, the SOS did not actually open an investigation until April 25, 2022 according to a sworn declaration filed with the court by Ryan Germany,[2] then-counsel to the SOS. Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger has provided conflicting answers as to when the SOS office actually began to investigate the Georgia software breaches.
Although a Secretary of State investigation was purported to be on-going in the spring and summer of 2022, the SOS office apparently found no evidence of the breaches. In fact, in late April 2022, the state election director, Gabe Sterling, derisively denied that the breach occurred.
In a few weeks after being granted discovery by the federal court, CGG obtained evidence that broke open the conspiracy and established that the voting systems were unlawfully accessed and copied multiple times in Coffee. The evidence included stunning surveillance video which showed details of access. CGG’s evidence also shows that copies of the voting systems were uploaded to an online sharefile site and covertly shared with an unknown number of Trump allies and unauthorized actors.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) did not open an investigation until August 15, 2022. To date, despite the abundance of evidence, no one has been charged.
Free Speech For People, through public records requests, has obtained an email which indicates that the GBI requested to take possession of the office laptop belonging to Misty Hampton (the complicit former election supervisor in Coffee County) in September 2022. The email also shows that Coffee County declined to produce the laptop, and the GBI accepted the refusal and did not pursue it for nine months, until May 22, 2023. This suggests that the GBI’s investigation has been lax and unserious.
The slow response from the GBI allows potential criminals to continue to improperly share this information, advance disinformation about our elections, or even potentially to use this data to engineer cyber attacks that can be deployed to disrupt or corrupt future elections, and of course there’s the potential for loss or destruction of evidence of the alleged crimes. In addition, the lack of criminal charges against those who financed, arranged, facilitated and participated in these activities signals to aspiring copycats that they may pursue these unlawful efforts with impunity.
After she facilitated the breach in Coffee County, and while she was working for Stephanie Lambert Junttila, Misty Hampton had access to voting systems in another county in Georgia. The Georgia Secretary of State is reportedly investigating.
In the Spring of 2021, after she was forced to resign from Coffee County for falsifying time sheets, Misty Hampton was hired by Treutlen County, Georgia to program its voting machines and run two local elections, according to Hampton’s deposition. The engagement, for which Hampton was paid $20,000, provided Hampton access to sensitive voting system data and software during the time she was also working for Stephanie Lambert Junttila in Michigan according to Ben Cotton’s deposition taken by CGG.
The Georgia Secretary of State’s office has reportedly seized the Treutlen County election server and is investigating.
The stolen software can impact future elections by facilitating malicious access and for disinformation.
Access to Georgia’s statewide software enables bad actors to install the software on their own hardware to create their own exact replicas of voting systems, probe them, and develop exploits. They can decompile the software to get the source code, study it for vulnerabilities, and develop undetectable malware tailored to the system. Such malware can be loaded onto systems by a poll worker, maintenance worker, or even a voter: little physical access is needed.[3] Merritt Beaver, Georgia’s Chief Information Officer, said in a deposition that allowing bad actors access to the voting system software is “giving them a road map to how to basically get in and access the system.”[4]
Further, access to this software may also be used in service of disinformation campaigns to cast doubt on legitimate election results. Perhaps the most easily executed attack would be to simply use the software as the basis of fabricated evidence of election manipulation to delegitimize the results and destabilize our government, or to manufacture evidence that could be presented in court to challenge legitimate election results.
Additional resources:
Deposition of Cathy Latham, the former chair of the Coffee County GOP and an alleged “fake elector” who reportedly arranged the breaches in Coffee County. In her deposition, Latham claimed that she was at the election office the day of the breach for only a short time, but the surveillance video shows that Latham welcomed the operatives in and spent the whole day there. This detailed review shows how Latham’s testimony is directly disputed by the security video. Latham pled the Fifth over 300 times in her deposition. Text messages show that Latham was identified as the point person for the operation.
Deposition of Eric Chaney, a former member of the Coffee County Board of Elections who participated in the January 7, 2021 software breach in Coffee. Chaney resigned from the Board shortly after he was subpoenaed and pled the Fifth about the breach.
Deposition of James Barnes, the election supervisor who succeeded Misty Hampton in Coffee County.
If you have questions or would like to access other information or public records referenced in this memo, please contact Susan Greenhalgh susan@freespeechforpeople.org or Marilyn Marks marilyn@uscgg.org.
[1] Free Speech For People is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest legal organization that works to renew our democracy and our United States Constitution for the people. As part of our mission, we are committed to promoting, through legal actions, secure, transparent, trustworthy and accessible voting systems for all voters. We are not parties or counsel in the civil litigation referenced in this letter.
[2] No. 17-cv-02989-AT (N.D. Ga. filed Aug. 8, 2017). Germany Dep. Document 1444-1 filed August 2, 2022 Page 9.
[3] University of Michigan Professor J. Alex Halderman, one the nation’s foremost experts on election system security, examined the Dominion Voting System ballot marking device for the Curling lawsuit and documented multiple security vulnerabilities that could be exploited and that were affirmed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Prof. Halderman warned “Attackers could exploit these flaws to install malicious software, either with temporary physical access (such as that of voters in the polling place) or remotely from election management systems.” No. 17-cv-02989-AT (N.D. Ga. filed Aug. 8, 2017). Document 1304-3
[4] No. 17-cv-02989-AT (N.D. Ga. filed Aug. 8, 2017). Beaver Dep. Document 1368-3 Page 157-158.
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