Part 1:
A team of computer experts directed by lawyers allied with President Donald Trump copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia as part of a secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment that was broader, more organized and more successful than previously reported, according to emails and other records obtained by The Washington Post.
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As they worked to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat,
the lawyers asked a forensic data firm to access county election systems in at least three battleground states, according to the documents and interviews. The firm charged an upfront retainer fee for each job, which in one case was $26,000.
Attorney Sidney Powell sent the team to Michigan to copy a rural county’s election data and later helped arrange for it to do the same in the Detroit area, according to the records. A Trump campaign attorney engaged the team to travel to Nevada. And the day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol the team was in southern Georgia, copying data from a Dominion voting system in rural Coffee County.
Since Donald Trump first suggested the 2020 election might be stolen, Republicans have latched onto the claim. Here’s how it became a litmus test for the party. (Video: JM Rieger/The Washington Post)
The emails and other records were collected through a subpoena issued to the forensics firm, Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler, by plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit in federal court over the security of Georgia’s voting systems.
The documents provide the first confirmation that data from Georgia’s election system was copied. Indications of a breach there were first raised by plaintiffs in the case in February, and state officials have said they are investigating.
“The breach is way beyond what we thought,” said David D. Cross, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, who include voting-security activists and Georgia voters. “The scope of it is mind-blowing.”
A drumbeat of revelations about alleged security breaches in local elections offices has grown louder during the nearly two years since the 2020 election. There is growing concern among experts that officials sympathetic to Trump’s claims of vote-rigging could undermine election security in the name of protecting it.
The federal government classifies voting systems as “critical infrastructure,” important to national security, and access to their software and other components is tightly regulated. In several instances since 2020, officials have taken machines out of service after their chains of custody were disrupted.
State authorities have opened criminal investigations into alleged improper breaches of equipment in Michigan, a case that involves several people who appear in the new records. In Mesa County, Colo., a local elections official, Republican Tina Peters, was indicted on felony charges including conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and attempting to influence a public servant.
In two counties, SullivanStrickler’s examinations were permitted by courts, though many details surrounding those efforts have not been public.
The records show how Powell’s group discussed, exchanged and paid for elections-system data. The plaintiffs intend to bring them to the attention of the judge in the case and provide them to the FBI as well as state and local elections authorities in Georgia, Cross told The Post.
Emails reviewed by The Post show that Powell told SullivanStrickler to share data obtained by the firm with other pro-Trump operatives, some of whom continue to openly push conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
Powell did not respond to messages seeking comment. SullivanStrickler also did not respond.
The documents shed new light on one front in the wide-ranging battle by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election. The small team of lawyers and security contractors worked quietly to get their hands on the county-level equipment while others around Trump filed legal challenges, deployed protesters to Washington and lobbied Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to reject Joe Biden’s victory.
Trump and his advisers had quickly seized on voting machines as the sites of supposed fraud, making wild allegations of plots involving the makers of the machines and shadowy foreign forces. Numerous recounts and reviews have confirmed the accuracy of the machines used in 2020. Two manufacturers say their systems are secure and have filed billion-dollar defamation lawsuits that are pending against prominent sources of the disinformation.
Powell spearheaded the claims with lawsuits filed in swing states, some with fellow pro-Trump attorney L. Lin Wood Jr. Soon after the election, Powell huddled with other Trump associates for strategy talks around Thanksgiving at Wood’s South Carolina estate.
The following Monday, the documents show, Jim Penrose, a former intelligence official who had been at Wood’s estate, emailed two senior SullivanStrickler executives and others. Penrose helped arrange for people from the firm to travel by private jet to Nevada for what Penrose called an urgent “forensics engagement” and an “opportunity in NV.” The documents do not specify what the work entailed.
Earlier that day Jesse Binnall, an outside counsel to Trump’s campaign who was suing to overturn the result in Nevada, won a court order granting limited access to “testing equipment and programs” in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas.
Binnall replied to the email group asking for a formal agreement that he could sign to authorize the work in Nevada. Among those copied on Binnall’s email were Powell, retired Army Col. Phil Waldron, who later circulated a PowerPoint presentation proposing the seizure of ballots, and Doug Logan, whose company Cyber Ninjas led a Republican review of the election in Arizona.
Binnall promptly signed the engagement agreement, the new records show, and investigators began work in Las Vegas the following day. But the day after that, Binnall complained in a court filing that his team had not been allowed to access certain equipment. He attached a supporting statement from SullivanStrickler’s director of forensics, Gregory Freemyer, though the statement did not identify Freemyer’s employer.
On Dec. 3, SullivanStrickler’s chief operations officer, Paul Maggio, sent Binnall an invoice for “the 2 days we spent in Las Vegas, NV in support of this matter.”
Binnall’s efforts to compel access to additional equipment were rejected by the judge in the case. The case was later dismissed. Binnall declined to comment for this story.
Also copied on some of the emails about Las Vegas was Brian T. Kennedy, a fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. The day after Maggio invoiced Binnall, Kennedy replied: “I spoke to Jesse and he said the payment is in process.”
Later, after Maggio also copied Binnall on another email about data examinations elsewhere, Penrose emailed him to say: “Please do not communicate about any additional forensics work in AZ to the other legal teams. Keep that in confidential channels with me, Sidney, and Doug only.” It is unclear what work in Arizona he was referring to.
Trump’s campaign and political action committee have paid Binnall’s law firm more than $1.5 million for legal consulting since the election, federal campaign filings show. Binnall is now representing Trump in litigation relating to the Jan. 6 attack.
Wood told The Post on Monday that he had no involvement in contracting SullivanStrickler. Penrose, Kennedy, Maggio and Logan did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Network data purportedly obtained from Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, were presented at an August 2021 election-fraud symposium held by MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell in Sioux Falls, S.D., as The Post previously reported. That data was captured through a county guest wireless network, according to officials, and contained no sensitive information.
A Lindell ally who spoke at the symposium, Peters, the clerk in Mesa County, was later indicted on charges relating to an alleged breach of the voting system. Sensitive data from the system was leaked online. Peters denies wrongdoing. Authorities have not accused Powell’s group of involvement in the case.
‘I am authorizing payment’
While Maggio was awaiting payment for Nevada, SullivanStrickler’s forensics team was called on again, this time for work in Michigan.
On Dec. 4, 2020, a judge in rural Antrim County surprised local officials by ordering them to allow the plaintiff in an election lawsuit to take images of county vote tabulators. The lawsuit was filed by Matthew DePerno, a lawyer who is now the Trump-backed Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general.
State officials made moves to oppose the inspection, but the Trump allies saw their opening and moved swiftly.
The county was already under intense scrutiny after initially reporting inaccurate vote tallies that showed Biden beating Trump in a Republican stronghold. The Post and others previously reported that investigators from SullivanStrickler flew to Antrim on a private jet for the inspection.
The new records show Maggio wrote to Binnall the following evening that his team had made it to Antrim and would begin work the next morning. “It is our assumption that we will be working under our existing agreement and maintain the same daily rate / conditions” as in Nevada, Maggio wrote.
A report based on purported findings from the Antrim examination was promoted publicly by Trump and circulated to Attorney General William P. Barr as evidence of fraud. Independent analysts said the report was badly flawed.
Barr told the congressional committee investigating the Jan 6. attack that Trump had said the report was “absolute proof that the Dominion machines were rigged” and that it meant he was “going to have a second term.” Barr said that the report was “amateurish,” and that Trump would have to be “detached from reality” to believe it.
The new records reveal it was Powell who authorized SullivanStrickler’s investigators to work on Antrim — and arranged to pay for their first day’s work. “I am authorizing payment today for Michigan,” Powell wrote to Maggio on Dec. 8, 2020. Maggio replied two days later to say the firm had received a check, adding, “thanks for executing.”
The Michigan judge’s order granting access to the machines had barred the “use, distribution or manipulation of the forensic images and/or other information gleaned from the forensic investigation without further order of this court.”
The new records show that after SullivanStrickler investigators copied the hard drive of an elections server in Antrim on Dec. 6, 2020, Maggio emailed Powell and Penrose, who were not involved in the local lawsuit. Maggio told them the Antrim files would be made available to download from a secure online folder once the firm was paid.
The Antrim data was later publicized during the same Lindell symposium where the Nevada data was shared.
“There’s no real control of this data once it gets copied,” said Kevin Skoglund, an expert retained by plaintiffs in the case. “It’s just loose and out in the world.”