Exclusive: Text messages reveal Trump operatives considered using breached voting data to decertify Georgia’s Senate runoff in 2021

In mid-January 2021, 2 guys worked with by previous President Donald Trump’s legal group talked about over text what to do with information acquired from a breached ballot device in a rural county in Georgia, consisting of whether to utilize it as part of an effort to decertify the state’s pending Senate runoff outcomes.

The texts, sent out 2 weeks after operatives breached a ballot device in Coffee County, Georgia, expose for the very first time that Trump allies thought about utilizing voting information not just to reverse the outcomes of the 2020 governmental election, however likewise in an effort to keep a Republican hang on the senate.

” Here’s the strategy. Let’s keep this close hold,” Jim Penrose, a previous NSA authorities dealing with Trump legal representative Sidney Powell to gain access to ballot makers in Georgia, composed in a January 19 text to Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, a company that claims to run audits of voting systems.

In the text, which was acquired by CNN and has actually not been formerly reported, Penrose recommendations the approaching accreditation of Democrat Jon Ossoff’s win over Republican David Perdue.

” We just have up until Saturday to choose if we are going to utilize this report to attempt to decertify the Senate run-off election or if we hold it for a larger minute,” Penrose composed, describing a possible claim.

The plot to breach ballot systems in Coffee County, collaborated by members of Trump’s legal group consisting of Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, becomes part of a more comprehensive criminal examination into 2020 election disturbance led by Fulton County District Lawyer Fani Willis.

Willis’ workplace is weighing a possible racketeering case versus several offenders and is actively choosing who to bring charges versus, sources inform CNN. Willis has actually subpoenaed a variety of people associated with the Coffee County breach, consisting of the 2 guys who brought it out who were in touch with Penrose and Logan.

Willis has actually likewise subpoenaed Giuliani and Powell as part of her probe. Giuliani has actually been informed he’s a target in the Fulton County probe, CNN formerly reported. The unique grand jury assembled for the case suggested releasing several indictments in its last report finished in February, according to the jury foreperson.

A source acquainted with Willis’ examination informs CNN that Willis and her group have in their ownership proof that Trump allies prepared to utilize the breached ballot information from Georgia to attempt to decertify the state’s senate overflow election. E-mails acquired by CNN reveal Penrose and Powell organized in advance payment to a cyber forensics company that sent out a group to Coffee County on January 7, 2021.

The Coffee County breach is likewise under examination by the Georgia Bureau of Examination.

Unique Counsel Jack Smith likewise seems analyzing the wider effort to breach or take ballot makers as part of his federal probe into efforts to reverse the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol. It’s uncertain what if any proof he has in his ownership associated to the Coffee County breach.

Penrose and Logan were likewise called in a state-level criminal examination in Michigan declaring they took part in a conspiracy to take ballot makers there.

A lawyer for Giuliani decreased to comment and referred CNN to his January 6 committee interview records.

Powell, Penrose and Logan did not react to ask for remark.

On January 7, 2021, the day after rioters stormed the United States Capitol, 2 individuals strolled into an elections workplace in Coffee County, Georgia, a rural part of the state that voted extremely for Trump in 2020. A regional election authorities assisted them get to delicate ballot information which they downloaded onto a portable hard disk.

That information was then published to an encrypted server and shown numerous Trump allies and operatives, consisting of Logan, Penrose, Powell and Giuliani, according to gain access to logs evaluated by CNN and testament launched by the January 6 committee.

In 2015, a previous Trump authorities affirmed under oath to your house January 6 committee that prepares to gain access to ballot systems in Georgia were gone over in conferences at the White Home, consisting of throughout a now notorious Oval Workplace conference on December 18, 2020, that consisted of Trump.

Derek Lyons, a previous deputy White Home counsel who remained in that conference, affirmed to the January 6 committee that Giuliani recommended accessing ballot makers in Georgia as an option to purchasing the military or Department of Homeland Security to take ballot makers.

” His perspective was that in some method the project, I think, was going to have the ability to protect access to voting makers in Georgia through methods besides seizure,” Lyons stated about Giuliani, according to a records of his deposition.

Lyons informed the committee that Giuliani recommended the gain access to would be “voluntary” and evaluation of those makers would “start to reveal proof of the claims that were being made.”.

” That proof might then be leveraged to … gain access to extra makers,” Lyons stated.” Georgia was the subject of conversation at that time.”.

There is no proof that the Coffee County ballot information was utilized as part of a claim to attempt to decertify the Senate runoff outcomes. However the reality that the information has yet to be recuperated has actually raised issues amongst election security supporters about how it might be utilized possibly to interfere with future election outcomes.

In a December 2022 letter to the FBI, Susan Greenhalgh, a senior consultant for election security at the advocacy group Free Speech For Individuals, explained how copies of the ballot information from Coffee County have actually been “shared discreetly with an unidentified variety of election deniers.” The letter cautioned that the information “might be utilized to plant suspect in elections, make proof to challenge genuine election outcomes, and even to control election lead to the future.”.

Greenhalgh is amongst those associated with a civil case concentrated on election security in Georgia. She has actually asked the FBI and Smith’s group to examine the Coffee County breach as just recently as today.

In their hunt for proof to support their unwarranted claims of citizen scams, after the 2020 election Trump allies worked with an obscure Texas-based security business called Allied Security Operations Group to examine declared voting device abnormalities in a handful of swing states that Trump lost, consisting of Michigan, Arizona and Georgia.

A couple of weeks prior to the Coffee County breach, in late December 2020, Trump allies were approved access to voting makers in Antrim County, Michigan, a county of approximately 24,000 individuals where Trump won 61% of the vote.

The group then took that information and with the aid of ASOG, produced a report declaring Rule Ballot Systems vulnerabilities. That report, which has actually considering that been commonly exposed, formed the basis of a claim submitted by Powell in December 2020 challenging the election leads to Michigan. That fit was among more than 60 matches submitted by Trump’s legal group challenging the election results that were roundly turned down in courts throughout the nation.

Still, Logan and Penrose, who became part of the group that produced the Antrim County report, thought about utilizing the Coffee County information in a comparable method to challenge the Georgia Senate overflow. In their texts from January 19, the 2 guys prepared to produce a report with the aid of ASOG’s leading legal representative, a guy called Charles Bundren, who was deeply associated with earlier efforts to get to voting systems.

” If you can prepare a report for evaluation on Friday early morning with Charles Bundren, that would be best,” Penrose composed to Logan as part of the January 19 text.

Bundren became part of the group gotten by Trump’s legal representatives to discover proof of extensive citizen scams after the 2020 election. Bundren assisted manage the multi-state push to gain access to ballot makers on behalf of the Trump legal group, according to numerous files acquired by CNN.

Bundren likewise had a hands-on-role establishing a few of the most severe choices thought about by Trump’s inner circle, consisting of assisting draft executive orders in December 2020 directing the military and DHS to take ballot makers, according to a source with direct understanding of Bundren’s function in the strategy. The orders were never ever signed by Trump.

Even after the report from Antrim County, Michigan was consistently exposed by regional, state and federal authorities, top-level Trump allies consisting of Giuliani and Powell particularly suggested to lawmakers around the nation that they must work with ASOG to carry out an audit of their 2020 election outcomes.

That held true in Pennsylvania where Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, among Trump’s more reputable supporters for reversing the 2020 election outcomes, advised county authorities in his state to not just start an outdoors audit however work with ASOG to bring it out, according to a letter acquired by CNN.

In Arizona, state Republican authorities at first tried to work with ASOG to perform the partisan audit in Maricopa County however eventually picked Logan’s Cyber Ninja’s rather due to public analysis over the Antrim report.

However Bundren stayed totally associated with that procedure and collaborated straight with GOP authorities managing the sham audit. His ASOG associates even suggesting Logan for the task once it was clear they might not be worked with.

Bundren and other ASOG workers likewise silently took part in the audit itself after they were worked with as subcontractors working under business with various names, text and other files acquired by the group American Oversight and shown CNN reveal.

On all fronts, Bundren worked carefully with fellow ASOG member Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel who became part of Giuliani’s group that was examining claims of citizen scams following the 2020 election and was main to the wider effort to gain access to ballot makers in essential swing states.

Logan affirmed in the Georgia lawsuit that he did produce a report on the Coffee County information for Bundren and it appears to have actually made its method to Giuliani, who informed your house January 6 committee that his group got access to voting makers in Coffee County, according to a records of his testament launched by the panel.

Asked if somebody accessed to makers in Coffee County and supplied him with a report, Giuliani informed your house committee, “yes,” remembering that person was Waldron.
Bundren and Waldron did not react to ask for remark.