Trump Team Implicated in Voting System Breach: Georgia Prosecutors Uncover Messages
CNN sources report that Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia have text messages and emails connecting members of Donald Trump’s legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County.
When her team presents its case to a grand jury the following week, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is likely to pursue charges against over a dozen individuals.
Several individuals implicated in the compromise of Coffee County’s voting systems may be charged as part of the expansive criminal investigation.
Investigators in the Georgia criminal investigation have long suspected that the breach did not originate from Trump supporters in rural and predominantly Republican Coffee County – a county Trump won by nearly 70 percent of the vote.
According to individuals with knowledge of the situation, they have gathered evidence indicating that Trump’s team pushed for access to sensitive voting software.
As part of a larger effort to produce evidence to support the former president’s unsubstantiated claims of pervasive fraud, Trump allies attempted to access voting systems after the 2020 election.
While Trump’s January 2021 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and effort to put forward fake slates of electors have long been considered key pillars of Willis’ criminal investigation, the voting system breach in Coffee County emerged quietly as a focus of investigators approximately one year ago.
Since then, new evidence has been gradually uncovered regarding the role of Trump’s attorneys, the operatives they employed, and how the breach, along with others like it in other critical states, played a role in broader plans to overturn the election.
Together, the text messages and other court documents demonstrate how Trump lawyers and a group of hired operatives attempted to gain access to Coffee County’s voting systems in the days leading up to January 6, 2021, as the former president’s allies continued their desperate search for evidence of widespread fraud to delay certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
A former Trump official testified under oath to a House select committee on January 6, 2018, that plans to access voting systems in Georgia were discussed in White House meetings, including a Trump-led Oval Office meeting on December 18, 2020.
According to text messages obtained by CNN, six days before pro-Trump operatives acquired unauthorized access to voting systems, the local elections official who allegedly helped facilitate the breach sent a “written invitation” to attorneys working for Trump.
CNN has learned from multiple sources that investigators are examining the actions of multiple individuals, including Misty Hampton, a former Coffee County elections official who wrote the letter of invitation referenced in text messages and other documents turned over to prosecutors.
According to sources familiar with the matter, they have also investigated the involvement of Trump’s former counsel Rudy Giuliani, and Trump’s other attorney Sidney Powell. Giuliani was informed last year that he was a target of the Fulton County investigation.
A representative from the office of Willis declined to comment.
CNN’s text messages reveal that the invitation letter was shared with attorneys and an investigator working with Giuliani at the time.
A ‘written invitation’ to access voting systems
Katherine Friess, an attorney working with Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and other Trump allies, sent a “written invitation” to investigate voting systems in Coffee County to a group of Trump allies on January 1, 2021, days before the January 7 breach.
According to text messages obtained by CNN, this group included members of Sullivan Strickler, the firm hired by Trump’s attorneys to examine voting systems in the small, predominantly Republican Georgia county.
According to court documents filed in an ongoing civil case, on the same day, Friess sent a “Letter of invitation to Coffee County, Georgia” to former NYPD Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who was working with Giuliani to find evidence to support their baseless claims of potential widespread voter fraud.
The texts demonstrate that Friess then informed the operatives who carried out the Coffee County breach and others working directly with Giuliani that Trump’s team had obtained written permission.
CNN has not reviewed the invitation letter’s actual content, only communications confirming its distribution to Friess, Kerik, and Sullivan Strickler employees.
Friess was unavailable for comment.
The messages and documents appear to link Giuliani to the breach in Coffee County and cast light on another channel of communication between pro-Trump attorneys and battleground state operatives who collaborated to provide unauthorized individuals with access to sensitive voting equipment.
“Rudy Giuliani had nothing to do with this,” Giuliani’s counsel Robert Costello stated. You cannot associate Rudy Giuliani with Sidney Powell’s ludicrous idea.
On January 1, an employee of the firm Sullivan Strickler, which was hired by Sidney Powell to investigate voting systems in Coffee County, wrote in a group chat: “Just landed back in DC with the Mayor, huge things are starting to come together!”
Giuliani was consistently referred to as “the Mayor” in other texts sent at the same time by the same individual and others.
“We were just permitted immediate access – via written invitation! – to Coffee County’s systems. “Hooray!” the text states.
Invasion of Coffee County
Shortly after Election Day, while still serving as Coffee County’s chief election official, Hampton warned a state election board meeting that Dominion voting machines could be “very easily” manipulated to switch votes from one candidate to another. This claim has been debunked numerous times.
However, Trump campaign officials took note and contact Hampton on the same day. A Trump campaign staffer emailed Hampton at the time, “I would like to obtain as much information as possible,” according to documents released in response to a public records request and first reported by the Washington Post.
Early in December, Hampton obstructed the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia by refusing to validate the recount results by a crucial deadline.
At the time, only Coffee County in Georgia neglected to certify its election results due to issues raised by Hampton.
Additionally, Hampton uploaded a video purporting to expose issues with the county’s Dominion voting system.
This video was utilized by Trump’s attorneys, including Rudy Giuliani, as part of their effort to persuade legislators from multiple states that the 2020 election results were compromised by voting system problems.
CNN has obtained text messages and other documents indicating that Trump allies sought access to Coffee County’s voting system by mid-December in response to rising demands for evidence of pervasive election fraud.
CNN reported that Coffee County was specifically mentioned in draft executive orders for confiscating voting machines presented to Trump on December 18, 2020, during a chaotic meeting in the Oval Office. During the same meeting, Giuliani reportedly alluded to a plan to obtain “voluntary access” to machines in Georgia, according to his and others’ testimony before a House committee on January 6.
CNN text messages reveal that days later, Hampton shared the written invitation to access the county election office with a Trump attorney. She and another elections official at the same location, Cathy Latham, allegedly assisted Trump operatives in gaining access to the county’s voting systems, according to documents, testimony, and surveillance video produced as part of a protracted civil case involving election security in Georgia.
Latham, who also served as a fictitious Georgia elector following the 2020 election, has come under scrutiny for her role in the Coffee County breach after surveillance footage revealed she permitted unauthorized outsiders to spend hours investigating voting systems there.
Trump Team Implicated in Voting System Breach: Georgia Prosecutors Uncover Messages
