A security camera outside the election office in Coffee County recorded their arrival. The video also shows some local election officials were in the office during what the Georgia Secretary of State’s office described as “alleged unauthorized access” to election equipment. Security footage from two weeks later raises additional alarms — showing two people instrumental in Trump’s broader efforts to undermine the election results enter the office and stay for hours. Security video from the election office in the county, about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, offers a glimpse of the lengths Trump’s allies went to accommodate his false 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 election equipment was accessed after the 2020 presidential election. Important information about election systems was also breached at election offices in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Colorado. Election security experts worry that the information obtained – including full copies of hard drives – could be exploited by those looking to interfere in future elections. “The system is only as secure as the people tasked with keeping it secure,” said attorney David Cross, who is representing plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit over Georgia’s voting machines. Coffee County’s security footage was obtained through this lawsuit, which claims Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines are vulnerable to attack and should be replaced by marked paper ballots. The suit was long-standing and unrelated to false allegations of widespread voter fraud pushed by Trump and his allies after the 2020 election. The alleged hack at the Coffee County election office also drew the attention of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is overseeing the investigation into whether Trump and his allies illegally tried to influence the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. Last month, Willis cited Coffee County’s activity, among other things, when she tried to compel testimony from Sidney Powell, a lawyer deeply involved in Trump’s effort to overturn the election results. Emails and other records show Powell and other Trump-connected lawyers helped arrange for 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 that shed light on what happened there in January 2021 were produced in response to subpoenas issued in the election machine lawsuit and obtained by The Associated Press. Parts of the security video appear to contradict the claims of some of the local officials: — Footage shows Cathy Latham, then chair of the Coffee County Republican Party, arriving at the polls just after 11:30 a.m. on January 7, 2021, the day after the violent attack on the US Capitol. Just a few weeks earlier, she was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely saying that Trump had won the state and stating that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. Minutes after her arrival, she is seen outside greeting SullivanStrickler’s chief operating officer, Paul Maggio, and two other people. Less than 10 minutes later, he accompanies two other men into the building. The video shows her leaving the polling station shortly before 1:30 p.m., about two hours after she greeted the SullivanStrickler team. It returns just before 4pm and then leaves around 6.15pm Latham said under oath during a deposition in August that she stopped by the polling station that afternoon for “Just a few minutes” and left before 5 p.m. Pressed about whether she had been there earlier in the day, Latham said she couldn’t remember but suggested her schedule as a teacher wouldn’t allow it. An attorney for SullivanStrickler said in an email attached to a court filing that Latham was the “primary point of contact” in coordinating the firm’s work and “was on site” while that work was being done. Robert Chili, Latham’s attorney, said in an emailed statement that his client does not remember all the details of that day. However, he said he “will not be involved in and has no knowledge of any impropriety in any election” and “has not acted improperly or illegally”. — The video also shows Eric Chaney, a member of the Coffee County Board of Elections, arriving just before 11 a.m. that same day and going in and out several times before leaving for the night around 7:40 p.m. wrote in a court filing that a photo produced by SullivanStrickler’s COO shows Chaney in the office as the copying takes place. During a deposition last month, Chaney declined to answer several questions about that day, citing the Fifth Amendment. But when contacted in April by an attorney representing the county about questions from the Washington Post, Chaney wrote, “I am not aware of nor was I present at the Coffee County Board of Elections and Registration office when anyone illegally entered the server or the room in which it is.” Chaney resigned from the election board last month, days before his deposition. Attempts to reach Chaney by phone were unsuccessful, and his attorney did not respond to an email seeking comment. — About two weeks after the initial breach, the video shows Misty Hampton — then the county’s director of elections — arriving at the polls office at 4:20 p.m. on Jan. 18, when it was closed for Martin Luther King Day. He unlocked the door and let in two men — Doug Logan and Jeff Lenberg, who were active in efforts to challenge the 2020 election results. Logan founded the Cyber Ninjas, which participated in a partisan and ultimately discredited review of the 2020 elections in Maricopa County, Arizona. The two men stayed inside until just after 8pm and then spent more than nine hours there the next day. Lenberg returned for at least three more short visits later this month. Hampton resigned as supervisor of elections in February 2021 after board of elections officials said she falsified her hours. Attempts by the AP to reach her were unsuccessful. In a statement released by her attorney, SullivanStrickler said the company was retained by attorneys to copy forensic voting machines used in the 2020 election and had no reason to believe its employees would be asked to do anything improper. The Georgia Secretary of State’s office said it began an investigation in March and requested assistance from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation last month. State officials have said the system remains secure because of multiple safeguards in place.
