Donald Trump Has a New Problem
Donald Trump has already been indicted three times this year, but it’s not every day that a new allegation surfaces against the ex-president and his team.
But that happened over the weekend when CNN reported that the prosecutors examining the former president in Georgia are “ in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Donald Trump’s legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County.”
It’s part of the investigation in Georgia into Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the election in that state, which will reportedly reach the grand jury this week. The District Attorney in the Atlanta area, Fani Willis, is expected to seek charges against “more than a dozen people,” possibly including Trump and the “fake electors” in that state.
The probe was thought to center on Trump’s phone calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other officials, and also the fake electors’ plot. Among those also looking at possible indictment are those accused of being involved in the voting system breach, which was allegedly carried out by Trump attorneys and other operatives who were hired.
Trump and others may face indictment as early as this week in Georgia.
It’s been known since 2020 that there was a voting breach in Coffee County, a heavily Republican area of the state that Trump won with 70 percent of the vote. But per CNN, prosecutors now say the prosecutors have “gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software.”
CNN had reported in April that text messages showed Trump operatives had “considered” using data from a breached voting machine in that county to push for decertification of the Georgia election result, as well as that state’s Senate runoffs. The April story named former NSA official Jim Penrose and Doug Logan of Cyber Ninjas, a now-defunct firm that had carried out a bogus audit of the election results in Arizona.
According to that theory of the case, per the report, is that Trump allies tried to access voting systems in that state “as part of the broader push to produce evidence that could back up the former president’s baseless claims of widespread fraud.”
Among those mentioned as having participated in the plot are then-Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, as well as former country elections official Misty Hampton, although it’s not clear who actually faces the possibility of criminal charges. Hampton had stated multiple times — falsely — that Dominion voting machines could be easily manipulated to flip votes.
Attorney Katherine Friess, per CNN, wrote a “letter of information” on New Year’s Day in 2021, in which she offered Giuliani, Powell, and other Trump allies a chance to look at the voting systems in Coffee County. Friess also sent such a letter to former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was working with Giuliani (and had been pardoned by Trump a year earlier.)
Friess also “notified operatives who carried out the Coffee County breach and others working directly with Giuliani that Trump’s team had secured written permission” to examine the systems, CNN said.
At one point after the election — including during the infamous “craziest meeting of the Trump presidency” in December 2020 — Powell and other Trump allies had suggested seizing voting machines in order to prove what they called voter fraud. Doing so, during that meeting, was placed in proposed executive orders, although none were ever signed and the widespread seizure of machines never actually happened.
Per CNN, Hampton and local elections official Cathy Latham “allegedly helped Trump operatives gain access to the county’s voting systems.” Latham was also among the “fake electors” for Trump in Georgia.
Author Expertise and Experience:
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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