According to a motion filed last week by Willis, some of the fake electors are accusing another elector of violating state law. What if he gets them to prevent people likely to vote for Joe Biden from voting at all? A number of Trump aides and allies have recounted a lengthy and acrimonious meeting in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, which one member of the House Jan. 6 committee would later call the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency. During the meeting, then-President Trump presided as his advisers argued about whether they should seek to have federal agents seize voting machines to analyze them for fraud. The Board of Elections holds general elections, caucuses, primaries, and special elections, including elections for Douglas, Coffee County, Georgia state, and federal offices. border-radius: 6px; 2/ 22 Apr 2023 20:38:26 if ($(this).next('.vis_widget_table').is(":hidden")) { A Trump supporter protested election results at the Georgia State Capitol in 2020. As Hall would recall on his call with Marks, I went down there. Fentanyls deadly surge: From Mexican labs to U.S. streets, a lethal pipeline, U.S. government lawyers fought to keep records of foreign work by military retirees secret, won re-election in the Georgia Senate runoff, Republican Party red wave seems to be a ripple, 2024 presidential candidates for the Republicans. View the list of candidates that will be on your ballot. In its letter, Free Speech for People argued that the testimony and other details that have been made public prove that Mr. Trump was, at a minimum, aware of an unlawful, multistate plot to access and copy voting system software. The case alleges that Georgias voting system is insecureand could present a threat to future elections. Scott Hall is on the phone with Cathy about wanting to come scan our ballots from the general election like we talked about the other day. Voting systems are considered by the federal government to be critical infrastructure, vital to national security, and access to their software and other components is tightly regulated. A local NBC television affiliate in western Michigan reported last week that police had raided a township office in a different county as part of that investigation. } GPB is in its spring fund drive. VoterInfobyState_Timeout_jquery = setTimeout(widget_load_check_jquery, 500); Find 5 external resources related to Coffee County Board of Elections. The obvious worry is that these teams might find vulnerabilities and share them with hackers who can actually exploit them. } The likelihood of him trying again is greater now because his loyalists are now in much stronger positions throughout state and federal government. Overall, Georgia was New Democratic, having voted for Mitt Romney (R) in 2012, Donald Trump (R) in 2016, and Joe Biden (D) in 2020. Strangely, the investigation did not create a single document or email. font-weight: 600; In a letter to federal officials, a liberal-leaning group highlighted testimony to the House Jan. 6 committee that described then-President Trump attending a meeting about the plan in December 2020. width: 300px; Thomas-Clark, the elections board chair, said Hampton was accused of falsifying time sheets. In response to a request from the federal judge for any documentation detailing the removal of the server, Raffenspergers office this week filed only those records in court. She has reported on everything from Hurricane Irma to the Milwaukee Bucks winning the NBA championship. They can accidentally install malware, accidentally cause all kinds of havoc, said Harri Hursti, a Finnish computer programmer with extensive experience analyzing election systems. function resizeChevron() { Its in that atmosphere that Coffee County became another front on the Byrne said Hall told him he did not know whether they succeeded in obtaining sensitive data, such as a copy of the hard drive of the server. Ballotpedia features 408,486 encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers. On Jan. 7, 2021, a small group working on behalf of Mr. Trump traveled to rural Coffee County, Ga., some 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, and gained access to sensitive election data; subsequent visits by pro-Trump figures were captured on video surveillance cameras. The report supports past warnings about the software made by University of Michigan cybersecurity researcher J. Alex Halderman, who first spotted those weaknesses in a report that remains sealed by the federal judge. Text messages from that period indicate that some Trump allies seeking evidence of election fraud had considered other uses for the Coffee County election data and their analyses of it. Coffee County, Georgia, held elections for local offices in 2022. color: white; Login Now Secretary of State: Office Visit 237 Coliseum Drive Macon Macon, GA 31217-3858 Contact Primary: (404) 656-2817 Press Office: (470) 312-2733 Fax: The operation continued for hours. Registered voters get sample ballots by mail before an election. Emails show that Harvey contacted the chief of the secretary of states investigations division, who directed one of her investigators, Pamela Jones, to ask Coffee County officials whether Cyber Ninjas had accessed county voting equipment. All Rights Reserved. 2/ 23 Apr 2023 14:12:30 These excuses cannot pass muster in the eyes of voters.. The very next day, he hired Riddlehoover to work at his used car dealership, Chaney Motors, Hampton and Latham both told The Daily Beast. display: block; | Click the links below to learn more: Click here to use Ballotpedia's sample ballot to find every election that Ballotpedia has on file for your address. The teams work wrapped up later that afternoon. Mr. Trump won nearly 70 percent of Coffee County, which is home to just 43,000 people. LISTEN: Patricia Murphy on Kemp's relationship with the state's GOP. WebRT @MuellerSheWrote: In January, 2021, two men named Scott Hall and Paul Maggio were escorted into the Coffee County Georgia elections office by one of the Georgia fraudulent electors (Cathy Latham) where they stole voting data from a voting machine at the direction of Sidney Powell. Mr. Trump won nearly 70 percent of Coffee County, which is home to just She said she believed she was pushed out because she had made the video criticizing Dominion machines. How in the world did you get permission to do that? Marks asked him. chevron.removeClass('fa-chevron-up'); Mr. Giuliani is one of at least 18 people who have been notified by prosecutors that they could face indictment in the case. Both the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Fulton County District Attorney are investigating the breach. Our panel breaks down the ruling, the political implications, and the future of abortion access in Georgia. display: none; The plaintiffs argue that the states election system is so insecure that it violates the rights of voters. (modern). Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, told The Post that the recording captures part of a March 2021 telephone conversation she had with Hall. Address, Phone Number, and Fax Number for Coffee County Board of Elections, a Board Of Elections, at West Ashley Street, Douglas GA. View map of Coffee County Board of Elections, and get driving directions from your location. Willis alleged that Debrow failed to inform the electors of immunity offers. But that investigation may expose a far more sinister plot than previously suspected. chevron.removeClass('fa-chevron-up'); Example video title will go here for this video. Im not a babysitter, she told The Post. The Florida-based firm by then had been selected to conduct a Republican-commissioned ballot review in Maricopa County, Ariz. I think it might be prudent to see if there has been any contact between the person on the card and anyone in your office and/or if they have had access to any of your equipment, Chris Harvey, who was then the state director of elections, replied to Barnes several days later in an email obtained through a public records request. The Daily Beast has verified that the conversations were real and remain stored on an iPhone. Maggio and his firm, SullivanStrickler, played a role in perpetuating the myth of a Trump victory in 2020 as hired expert witnesses supporting a lawsuit against Antrim County, Michigananother locality that was mired in bogus allegations of vote tamperingand the text messages show that the team headed to rural Georgia also included Jeffrey Lenberg, a man heralded by rightwing media as a systems vulnerability expert who also reviewed the voting machines in Antrim County. Go for it. So, they went in there and imaged every hard drive of every piece of equipment. Copyright 2021 WALB. 2/ 22 Apr 2023 20:42:43 State executives | Legal experts say the Fulton County investigation could be particularly perilous for Mr. Trumps allies, and perhaps for Mr. Trump himself, given the phone call that Mr. Trump made as president to Georgias secretary of state on Jan. 2, 2021, asking him to find enough votes to help him overturn his election loss in the state. The most obvious question in American politics today should be: why is the guy who committed treason just over two years ago allowed to run for president? Did Trump send a team? Marks, stunned by what she began to hear, started recording the call. Contact Us. Latham also played a key role in the alleged breaching and copying of election data in Coffee County on Jan. 7, 2021. Information found on CountyOffice.org is strictly for informational purposes and does not construe legal, financial or medical advice. = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. The concern now, cybersecurity experts said, is that conspiracy-driven vigilantes now have unfettered access to a copy of Georgias voting software. function widget_load_check_jquery() { WebView a Sample Ballot. Thank you for using Ballotpedia's sample ballot tool. Monday on Political Rewind: With less than 24 hours before polls open one last time, Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock are making their final appeals to Georgians though nearly 2 million have already voted. Her video fueled the quickly coalescing conspiracy theories and came at the perfect timejust as Trump advocate lawyer Sidney Powell and others launched so-called Kraken conspiracy lawsuits with bogus allegations of voting fraud. Our panelists offer their insights on how we got here and what we can expect this week. } Those lawyers hedged that the search for documents was conducted during a trial and during ongoing elections. The state agency is expected to face questions about this during a court hearing next week. This sample ballot tool includes: All candidates in every upcoming election occurring within the 100 most-populated cities in the U.S., plus all federal and statewide elections, including ballot measures, nationwide. We looked back on the events that led up to the change. Sure, the newly enacted Electoral Count Reform Act (amending the Electoral Count Act of 1887) filled some of the legal holes, creating a new threshold for members to object to a slate of electors (one-fifth of the members of both the House and the Senate), clarifying that the role of the vice-president is solely ministerial and requiring that Congress defer to slates of electors as determined by the states. She said she could not recall the circumstances of his visit. WebRT @MuellerSheWrote: In January, 2021, two men named Scott Hall and Paul Maggio were escorted into the Coffee County Georgia elections office by one of the Georgia fraudulent electors (Cathy Latham) where they stole voting data from a voting machine at the direction of Sidney Powell. Ballotpedia regularly tests our sample ballot's accuracy by looking up addresses on both it and the official sample ballot and comparing the lookup results from both tools. This week, prosecutors filed court documents indicating that they were seeking testimony from a number of other Trump allies, including Ms. Powell and Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. Scott has landed and the rest of team is almost to Douglas, Latham wrote. But the previously unreported text messages shed new light on who arranged the possibly illegal access to the computer and who was on the team that traveled south to do it. chevron.removeClass('fa-chevron-down'); Finally, it should not contain errors such as misspelled names, inaccurate incumbency labels, or incorrect political party affiliations. Get live updates here and runoff results by county. And she questioned why access should be so restricted. Please consider making a gift today to support this vital public service. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. chevron.removeClass('fa-chevron-up'); How to run for office | The reason for the disqualification clause is that someone who has engaged in an insurrection against the United States cannot be trusted to use constitutional methods to regain office. Its in that atmosphere that Coffee County became another front on the election denial battlefield. Were all voters required to present ID at the polls? And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.. SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - Coffee Bluff Road is closed to all traffic south of Vernon River Drive due to downed power lines across the road, according to Savannah police. CNN reported on the existence of that text message on Friday. But whats really driving anxiety is that their sloppy computer work will itself plant evidence of tampering that fuels the Big Lie. David Cross, an attorney representing a group of voting rights activists in that lawsuit, said this matter isnt getting the level of scrutiny it deserves. }); All rights reserved. However, that has only generated even more questions about what its doing to assess the potential threat to a popular election software used across the country. Weeks later, Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area Trump supporter and bail bondsman who traveled to Coffee County on a chartered plane, described what he and the group did there. In a portion of a recorded phone call, a man identified in court papers as Hall claimed to have arranged for a plane to take people to Coffee County to copy data on voting equipment. You may not use this site for the purposes of furnishing consumer reports about search subjects or for any use prohibited by the FCRA. Last month, The Washington Post revealed that the Secretary of States office was investigating the matter. Donald Trump eats pizza after speaking in Fort Myers, Florida, on Friday. According to text messages obtained by The Daily Beast, the covert access granted to Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall and his technical team was actually part of a coordinated effort to find election irregularities. Hall and the team made their way to the windowless Elections and Registration building. WebRT @MuellerSheWrote: In January, 2021, two men named Scott Hall and Paul Maggio were escorted into the Coffee County Georgia elections office by one of the Georgia fraudulent electors (Cathy Latham) where they stole voting data from a voting machine at the direction of Sidney Powell. chevron.addClass('fa-chevron-down'); WebTo use the GA SOS VR platform, you will need to upgrade or switch to another web browser. In the following weeksas Trump was impeached for his role in stoking the Capitol riots and the illegal accessing of voting machines came into focusword got out about their secret mission in Douglas. The Secretary of States office is already fighting off a lawsuit over the security of the states voting machines and may face tough questions before a federal judge next week, given that the Coffee County incident demonstrates the states inability to keep its machines off limits. The costs of election security breaches have been onerous. padding: 5px 10px 5px 10px; Testimony to the Jan. 6 committee from one aide who attended the meeting, Derek Lyons, a former White House staff secretary and counselor, was highlighted on Friday in a letter to the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation from Free Speech for People, a liberal nonprofit legal advocacy group. In an email county lawyers forwarded to The Post, Chaney wrote that he does not know Hall and was not present when anyone illegally accessed the server or the room in which it is contained. Responding later to inquiries about the text messages, he wrote, I have no personal recollection of what youre asking.. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. And they scanned all the equipment, imaged all the hard drives, and scanned every single ballot. I appreciate you calling, but Im not going to talk about that, he told The Daily Beast by phone on Thursday evening. Latham, reached at her home, sat down and spoke to The Daily Beast on her front porch for nearly an hour but professed ignorance about any details of the teams visit. #SPDTraffic ROAD CLOSURE: Coffee Bluff Road is closed to all traffic south of Vernon River Drive due to downed power lines States must act. Election information in Georgia: Nov. 8, 2022, election. The board of elections forced Hampton and her assistant to resign on Feb. 25, 2021. Popularity:#21 of 159 Boards Of Elections in Georgia#168 in Boards Of Elections. We are on our way to Coffee County, Georgia, to collect what we can from the election/voting machines and systems, Mr. Maggio wrote to Ms. Powell on the morning of Jan. 7, 2021, according to an email exchange that recently emerged in civil litigation. Hampton told The Post she believed that Logan had stopped by her office at some point. And they said, We give you permission. Hampton, who was hired by the board, said she was accompanied during Halls visit by the fifth member, Eric Chaney. Find Coffee County Citizen Voting Age Population (Age 18 and Over). Anyone can read what you share. He currently works as a producer with GPB'sPolitical Rewindteam. Allies of Mr. Trump ultimately succeeded in copying the elections software in those two states, and the breach of voting data in Georgia is being examined by prosecutors as part of a broader criminal investigation into whether Mr. Trump and his allies interfered in the presidential election there. .widget-toggle-tabs li.panel > a:after {font-family: 'Glyphicons Halflings';content: '\e113';float: right;color: grey}.widget-toggle-tabs li.panel > a.collapsed:after {content: '\e080'} Read more about race and ethnicity in the census. if (chevron.hasClass('fa-chevron-down')) { widget_load_check_dom() Patricia Murphy points out thatKemp can have fundraising success outside the party. Send the note to: editor@ballotpedia.org. She gave The Post what she said were text messages with Chaney in which she mentioned Hall. DOUGLAS, Ga. (WALB) - Two Coffee County employees resigned from the countys elections office. $(this).next('div.vis_widget_table').slideToggle('normal'); Additional local ballot measures may also be included. The former supervisor resigned in lieu of termination.. $("div.vis_widget_title").click(function(){ You could not have snuck anybody in here. Latham also played a key role in the alleged breaching and copying of election data in Coffee County on Jan. 7, 2021. Election experts noted that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, recommended that the safest course of action was to decommission voting equipment that has been compromised. Most immediately, we were granted access - by written invitation! Insider threat, while always part of the threat matrix, is now a reality in elections, said Matt Masterson, who previously served as a senior U.S. cybersecurity official tracking 2020 election integrity for the Department of Homeland Security. Suspected or attempted breaches have spurred law enforcement investigations in Colorado, Michigan and Ohio. = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. 2023 County Office. Yay!, said Trump attorney Katherine Friess in a Jan. 1, 2021 text message. Some of those involved with the Coffee County effort came to regret it. #content { The Daily Beast paid a visit to another elections board member, Carl Travis Peavy Jr., who would have been briefed on the teams visit. Hall, who owns a bail bond business, did not respond to requests for comment. But faking work appearances didnt seem to bother Chaney. | - to the Coffee County systens (sic). This week, court filings revealed that the Coffee County data breach is now part of the sprawling investigation into election interference being conducted by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., which encompasses most of Atlanta. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Friday that he will We basically had the entire elections committee there, he added. Other attendees offered similar testimony to the committee, which released its final report on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in late December. } else { (Notably, all three branches of the federal government have described the January 6 attack on the US Capitol as an insurrection.). Anyone can read what you share. Neither Chaney nor Riddlehoover returned calls since The Daily Beast reached out to them last week. Byrne said Hall told him that he and others had made a trip to Coffee County to try to get access to election equipment. Trump tried these tactics once. } Click the links below to Logan said in a podcast interview last year that after the 2020 election, he spent time in Georgia trying to get access to Dominion machines to investigate the election results. COFFEE COUNTY, Ga. Georgia's secretary of state's office is investigating whether an activist had inappropriate access to an election server in a county in 2021. Hampton told The Post last week that no investigators have contacted her about Halls claims. One, in Mesa County, Colorado, has already led to an indictment. Questions about Hamptons interactions with Hall surfaced only in recent months, in a long-running federal lawsuit filed by the Coalition for Good Governance and others against the Georgia secretary of states office. You know, all the poll pads, everything, he responded. Participants in that effort including employees of the Atlanta-based data security firm Sullivan Strickler and former pro surfer Conan Hayes, who was then working with Byrne either declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment. Does anyone doubt the possibility no, the probability of any or all of this happening? 2 MLK Jr. Drive Suite 802 Floyd West Tower Atlanta, Georgia 30334. (and fax number, if available) of the County Election Office. Hall chartered a plane for a team set on copying a computer server that housed the elections management system, something that Hall, a member of that team, would later reveal on a call with an elections rights activist. The next day, Chaney asked her to switch to Signal, the encrypted messaging app, according to the messages. color: #0B406A; I am going to call you in a few, Hampton wrote to her boss in a text message conversation we obtained. Marissa Goldberg, an Atlanta-area lawyer representing Mr. Trump in Georgia, did not respond to a request for comment. Trump had carried the conservative county by 40 points, but elections supervisor Misty Hampton said she remained suspicious of Joe Bidens win in Georgia. #contentwrapper { The local news website Douglas Now covered their resignations in early March. text-align: center; @media only screen and (max-width: 500px) { You know, absentee, in person, and absentee by mail, he told her. He told WALB News 10s Gabrielle Ware he began this month. Hampton made a video that went viral soon after the election, claiming to show that Dominion Voting System machines, the ones used in her county, could be manipulated. VoterInfobyState_Resized = true; Hamptons successor, James Barnes, emailed Raffenspergers office on May 7, 2021, to say he had found a business card from Doug Logan of Cyber Ninjas at the base of Hamptons former computer. chevron.addClass('fa-chevron-up'); Voting experts said that, whether they accessed sensitive areas or not, Hamptons actions underscore a growing risk to election security. Suggest Listing The pair also argue evidence uncovered by the special purpose grand jury was "unconstitutionally derived" and no prosecutor should be able to use it. 2/ 01 May 2023 05:36:38 Team left Atlanta at 8 5 members led by Paul Maggio Scott is flying in, Latham texted on Jan. 7 at 9:46 a.m. An hour later, a small single-propeller plane flying in from DeKalb-Peachtree Airport appeared on the horizon just north of the small city, according to flight records obtained by The Daily Beast. DOWNLOAD THE APP Download the mobile app to save your choices. It remains unclear to what extent Ms. Williss office will focus on the Coffee County matter in her inquiry, or what, if any, charges could flow from it. $("div.vis_widget_title").each(function(index) { Sign up to receive GPB Event announcements via Email. Texts reviewed by 11Alive and obtained through a years-long civil lawsuit challenging the security of Georgias electronic voting systems show Trump allies were invited to inspect the county's voting system. The note below discusses how we do that, and how you can help. section three of the 14th amendment to the constitution. The operatives then spent hours inside the office copying election data. } An attorney for Cathy Latham, the former chair of the Coffee County Republican Party, filed a motion Friday joining Trump's efforts to bury a special purpose grand jury report that recommends more than a dozen people be indicted for their actions. Was absentee/mail-in voting available to all voters? On June 8, 2021, about a month after Barnes sent the email regarding Logans business card, state officials replaced the server in Coffee County with a new server, according to computer records generated when the new server was installed. As recently reported in the New York Times, for example, the Trump allies Ms. Williss office cited the Coffee County data breach in its filing on Thursday seeking Ms. Powells testimony, which was the first time the matter had surfaced in connection with her investigation. CountyOffice.org does not provide consumer reports and is not a consumer reporting agency as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Cathy Latham, who also played a key role in the copying of election data in Coffee County, filed the motion Friday, Mistrial declared on murder charge for man accused of killing Tori Lang; guilty on three other counts, Johns Creek firefighters battle house fire, only structure remains, Weekly weather update April 28 | Forecast in metro Atlanta. You know the same people that went up to Michigan, OK, and did all that forensic stuff on the computers they sent their team down to Coffee County, Georgia. widget_load_check_jquery(); Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., is trying to clarify Mr. Trumps role in a number of efforts to overturn his November 2020 election loss in Georgia including the plan to gain access to voting machine data and software and determine whether to recommend indictments for Mr. Trump or any of his allies for violating state laws.

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