A former Republican county chair in Georgia who is under criminal investigation for allegedly posing as a fake elector for former President Donald Trump escorted GOP operatives into an election office on the same day a voting machine was breached there, newly released surveillance footage shows.
Security video from the same Coffee County elections office also shows that consultants from a former company that failed to prove fraud in Arizona during the 2020 election made multiple visits to the facility, The Washington Post--one of the media outlets that obtained the footage--reported Tuesday.
The video shows that Cathy Latham, a teacher and former GOP chairperson of Coffee County, led a group of data forensics experts into the elections office shortly before noon on January 7, 2021--the same day that confidential software and files were allegedly copied.
The theft was allegedly perpetrated at the behest of Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor and prominent purveyor of Trump's "Big Lie" that Democrats stole the 2020 election.
Latham has claimed in sworn testimony that she taught all day on January 7 and only visited the elections office briefly after classes ended. She is one of 16 Trump supporters in Georgia who signed a bogus certificate claiming they were "duly elected and qualified electors for president and vice president," part of an alleged scheme to create false slates of electors in seven swing states won by President Joe Biden, steal them for Trump, and ultimately overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Two of the data forensics experts seen in the January 7 footage, Scott Hall and Paul Maggio, have admitted to accessing a Coffee County voting machine at Powell's request.
Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler, which employed four of the experts including Maggio, was last week subpoenaed by the Fulton County special grand jury conducting a complex criminal investigation into Georgia's 2020 election.
Separate security camera footage from the Coffee County elections office shows consultants Doug Logan and Jeffrey Lenberg visiting the building twice later in January 2021, and Lenberg making five additional visits there on his own.
Logan was the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the now-defunct security firm hired by Arizona Republicans to find evidence of baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The company's audit concluded that Trump lost Arizona by even more votes than the certified result and that there was no evidence of fraud.
Lenberg--who also analyzed voting equipment in Michigan and New Mexico--said he previously worked on finding ways to break into purportedly secure systems.
The pair were allegedly involved in a separate but related criminal effort to subvert the 2020 election. The office of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, said last month that a group of Trump loyalists including Republican state attorney general candidate Matt DePerno, state Rep. Daire Rendon (R-103), and Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf conspired to feloniously access voting machines as part of an effort to overturn the election.
An investigation by state police and special agents for the attorney general's office resulted in a petition to the Michigan Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council seeking "prosecutorial review for charges" against nine people including DePerno, Rendon, Leaf, Lenberg, and Logan.
The petition states that potential charges in the case include--but are not limited to--conspiracy, using a computer system to commit a crime, willfully damaging a voting machine, malicious destruction of property, fraudulent access to a computer or computer system, and false pretenses.
According to the document, vote tabulation machines used in multiple Michigan jurisdictions were illegally taken to hotels and rented properties in Oakland County, where four people including Lenberg and Logan "broke into the tabulators and performed 'tests' on the equipment" that allegedly included running fake ballots through the devices.
