Team Trump and a nationwide attempt to crack voting machines

As Donald Trump prepares for another criminal indictment, this time in Fulton County, Georgia, more details have come to light about efforts by his team and allies to access sensitive voting machine software to support the former president’s lies about voter fraud .

Fulton County prosecutors have emails and text messages shows Trump’s team was involved in an attempt to break through voting machines in Coffee County, Georgia. CNN reported on Sunday

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Trump’s allies have hacked voting machines in at least three states to pursue conspiracy theories about voter fraud, and the same players keep popping up in different states.

In Colorado, a former Mesa County employee faces a felony charge for allegedly allowing an unauthorized person access to secure areas in the employee’s office. Shortly thereafter, digital images of the county’s voting systems were posted online by a major figure in the QAnon conspiracy world.

In Michigan, three people, including a former Republican nominee for attorney general, have been charged with felony charges of illegally gaining access to voting machines.

Digital images of voting machines in these and other states have been repeatedly shared online and at face-to-face events aimed at “proving” Trump’s election lies.

The January 7, 2021 violation of Coffee County’s voting system has multiple links to other efforts across the country to support Trump’s false claim of a stolen election.

CNN reported Sunday on Messages by a lawyer who works for Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell – both private attorneys unnamed co-conspirators in the recent federal indictment against Trump for attempting to overturn the election — and prompted several others to investigate voting machines in Coffee County.

And we know Republican activists did Access to this gear: On January 7th surveillance video showed how employees at the computer forensics firm SullivanStrickler, which worked under Powell’s direction, had accessed the county’s voting software. Digital images of the software were then uploaded online and viewed by a number of Republican political activists and campaigners.

According to the records, SullivanStrickler was also assigned to do similar work in Antrim County, Michigan, and in Nevada obtained from the Washington Post. (The Company has said there was “no reason to believe” that the lawyers it had worked for would ask anything improper of it.)

In one notable crossover was Jim Penrose, a former National Security Agency officer who had been with one planning session shortly after the election in November 2020, allegedly asked SullivanStrickler is to send the bill for the work in Coffee County, Georgia Stephanie Lamberta lawyer against whom four criminal offenses are now being charged in connection with a similar project in Michigan.

The State replaced some of Coffee County’s voting machines. Election Security Experts pushed Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith is scheduled to begin an investigation. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation launched an investigation into the matter, albeit as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported As of April, “so far, everyone involved in the system has been absolved of accountability.” A spokesman for the GBI told HuffPost that the agency “has no new updates to report.” A spokesman for Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said separately that “this investigation did not feed into the Fulton County matter.”

In Michigan, three people have been charged with alleged conspiracy to illegally access voting machines: Lambert, former Attorney General candidate Matthew DePerno (right) and former State Assemblyman Daire Rendon (right). Lambert And DePerno have denied wrongdoing; An attorney for Rendon did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

A year ago, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office requested that a special counsel is investigating DePerno, Lambert, and Rendon for the staging of what Nettle’s office called “a coordinated plan to gain access to voting records” from various counties across the state. Therefore petitionDePerno was in attendance while others “broke into the tabs and performed ‘tests’ on the equipment.”

Lambert also has ties to Dar Leaf, the sheriff of Barry County, Michigan. Leaf sent a deputy sheriff and private investigator recommended by Lambert from community to community He traveled around his county to quiz officials about the 2020 election, prompting several officials to speak out publicly about the visits. Leaf was among those named in the Nesell’s office petition about the alleged plan to access voting machines, but he and others mentioned in the document were ultimately not charged.

A similar case was heard by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in April found the Republican majority government in their state’s Fulton County is being disregarded as part of an ongoing saga involving a Michigan forensic operation improper access to the voting machines of the district. The court criticized Lambert, who represented the county for a time, for the non-disclosure disciplinary proceedings against her in Michigan related to a lawsuit to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Although only three people were ultimately charged, Nessel’s office indicated many others may have been involved, including: Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber ​​Ninjas, the firm Arizona Republicans hired to conduct a mock “audit” of the 2020 election results in the Phoenix area. (Logan also visited the Coffee County, Georgia office Surveillance footage showedas did Jeffrey Lenberg, another person who the Michigan attorney general’s office said has been conducting “tests” on the state’s voting machines.)

DePerno also worked on a local voter’s lawsuit for fraud in Antrim County, Michigan, after an official’s quickly corrected mistake led to incorrect results in the county. As part of that lawsuit, a judge allowed DePerno to make a copy of the county’s voting software. As in Georgia, SullivanStrickler flown in for work, again under Powell’s permission.

Though the judge cautioned against sharing the data publicly, the Antrim County images were shared at a 2021 “cyber symposium” hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Some attendees immediately recognized the gravity of the situation: “I said, ‘I haven’t seen the Antrim image because I didn’t sign a court protection order to get a copy of the image, but I bet they stole court evidence here. ‘ ,’” Harri Hursti, a cybersecurity expert who attended the symposium, reflected later that year.

Similar data from Nevada, that according to the Washington Post, which was the site of another Sullivan-Strickler arrangement, was also presented at the symposium. But it wasn’t very impressive as it appeared to be recorded from a public WiFi system and contained no sensitive data. said a Clark County spokesman. Also in 2021, there was a breach at a government office in Lake County, Ohio asked State and federal investigations after data from the District Committee President’s office was shared at Lindell’s event.

Like Michigan, a former Colorado official faces charges of allowing unlawful access to a county’s voting machines.

Tina Peters was accused in an indictment of involvement in a “fraudulent scheme aimed at influencing officials, violating security protocols, exceeding permitted access to voting machines and ultimately orchestrating the disclosure of confidential information to unauthorized persons.” Peters portrayed herself as a martyr and has appeared frequently on far-right podcasts to echo Trump’s claims about widespread corruption among voting machine manufacturers and poll officials.

Two others have begged guilty and agreed to cooperate in the case against Peters. As part of the plan, Peters allegedly instructed his staff to turn off surveillance video aimed at the voting equipment. She is also said to have instructed the staff to make a fake ID card for an unauthorized person – allegedly the former pro surfer turned election conspiracy theorist Conan Hayes – and then allowed that person to be present at a required personal software update, which gave the person access to the software.

Law enforcement became aware of the plan after a key QAnon conspiracy theorist, Ron Watkins, published information from the online voting systems. This all led to one dramatic moment during Lindell’s cyber symposium, as Peters announced that investigators “searched” her office on the basis of a search warrant. At the same symposium, digital images of Mesa County’s voting system were shared with attendees.

Last year FBI agents seized Lindell’s cell phone as he waited in line at a Hardee’s thoroughfare; Lindell afterwards said He had received a subpoena as part of a federal grand jury’s investigation into the Colorado violation. Lindell sued the Justice Department about the phone call.

peters pleaded not guilty on election rigging and has done so successfully wanted delaying the process several times even though she did sentenced a separate offense related to the recording of a court proceeding.

Peters and others, including former Trump attorney Giuliani, will speak at an event hosted by Lindell this week.