A team of computer experts led by lawyers allied with President Donald Trump copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia as part of a secret, multi-state effort to access election equipment that was broader, more organized and more successful than previously reported , according to emails and other records obtained by The Washington Post. As they worked to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss, lawyers asked a forensic data firm to access county election systems in at least three battleground states, according to the documents and interviews. The company charged an upfront retention 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 to do the same in the Detroit area, according to the records. A Trump campaign lawyer hired the team to travel to Nevada. And the day after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the team was in southern Georgia copying data from a Dominion voting system in rural Coffee County. The emails and other records were collected through a subpoena issued to Atlanta-based forensics firm SullivanStrickler by plaintiffs in a long-running federal lawsuit over the security of Georgia’s election systems. The documents provide the first confirmation that data was copied from Georgia’s election system. Evidence of a breach there was first reported by plaintiffs in the case in February, and state officials said they were investigating. “The breach is far beyond what we thought,” said David D. Cross, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, who include voting safety activists and Georgia voters. “The range of it is staggering.” The drumbeat of revelations about alleged security breaches at local elections offices has grown louder in the nearly two years since the 2020 election. There is growing concern among experts that officials who share Trump’s allegations of vote fraud could undermine electoral 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 controlled. In several cases since 2020, officials have disabled machines after their chains of custody were broken. State authorities have launched criminal investigations into alleged improper equipment violations in Michigan, a case involving several people who appear in the new filings. In Mesa County, Colo., a local elections official, Republican Tina Peters, was charged with a felony, including conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and attempting to influence a public official. In two counties, SullivanStrickler tests have been authorized by courts, although many details about those efforts have not been made public. The records show how Powell’s team negotiated, traded and paid for the election system data. The plaintiffs plan to bring them to the attention of the judge in the case and provide them to the FBI as well as state and local election authorities in Georgia, Cross told The Post. Emails reviewed by The Post show Powell told SullivanStrickler to share data the firm had obtained with other Trump supporters, some of whom continue to openly promote 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 broad battle by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election. The small group of lawyers and security contractors worked quietly to get their hands on the equipment at the county level, while others around they filed legal challenges against Trump, sent protesters to Washington and pressured Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to reject Joe Biden’s victory. Trump and his advisers had been quick to seize on voting machines as sites of alleged fraud, making wild claims of conspiracies involving machine manufacturers and shadowy foreign powers. Numerous counts and reviews have confirmed the accuracy of the machines used in 2020. Two manufacturers say their systems are safe and have filed multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits still pending against prominent sources of the misinformation. Powell spearheaded the claims with a series of lawsuits filed in swing states, some with fellow attorney L. Lin Wood Jr. Shortly after the election, Powell gathered 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 Secret Service official who was on Wood’s estate, emailed two senior Sullivan Strickler executives and others. Penrose helped arrange for people from the company to travel by private jet to Nevada for what Penrose called an urgent “forensic assignment” and an “opportunity in NV.” The documents do not specify what the job entailed. Later that evening, Jesse Binal, an outside adviser to the Trump campaign who had sued to overturn the result in Nevada, responded to the group asking for a formal agreement it could sign to endorse the project. Among those copied in Binnall’s email were Powell, retired Army Col. Phil Waldron, who later released a PowerPoint presentation advocating for ballot confiscation, and Doug Logan, whose company Cyber Ninjas led of a Republican review of the Arizona election. Binnall received and signed the engagement agreement, he said in another email. SullivanStrickler COO Paul Maggio responded on December 3, 2020, with an invoice for “the 2 days we spent in Las Vegas, NV in support of this matter.” A person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the dispute, said Binnall hired SullivanStrickler to look into forensic election systems in Clark County after the Trump team won a Nov. 30 court ruling which granted access to “test equipment and programs” there. . But the company’s investigators were only allowed to do a cursory examination of machinery, the person said, and Binnall’s efforts to compel access to additional equipment were rejected by the judge in the case. The case was later dismissed. Also copied in some of the Las Vegas emails 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 was in progress.” It was unclear from the records whether Binnall completed the payment. The plaintiffs who obtained them are requesting additional financial records. Later, after Maggio also copied Binnall on another email about data examinations elsewhere, Penrose emailed him to say: “Please do not inform the other legal teams of any additional forensic work in AZ. Keep it on confidential channels with just me, Sidney and Doug.’ It’s unclear which job 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 advice since the election, according to federal campaign records. Binnall is now representing Trump in the lawsuit related to the January 6 attack. Binnall declined to comment on the consulting agreement. Wood told The Post on Monday that he had no involvement in entering into a contract with SullivanStrickler. Penrose, Kennedy, Maggio and Logan did not respond to messages seeking comment. Network data allegedly obtained from Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, was presented at a symposium on August 2021 election fraud held by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in Sioux Falls, SD, as he previously reported the Post. That data was captured over a wireless network of county visitors, officials said, and did not contain sensitive information. An ally of Lindell who spoke at the symposium, Peters, the Mesa County clerk, was later indicted on charges related to alleged election fraud. Sensitive data from the system was leaked online. Peters denies wrongdoing. Authorities have not charged Powell’s group with involvement in the case.
“I authorize the payment” While Maggio awaited payment for Nevada, Sullivan Strickler’s forensics team was called in again, this time for work in Michigan. On December 4, 2020, a judge in rural County Antrim surprised local officials by ordering them to allow the plaintiff in an election lawsuit to take images of county voters. 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 Trump allies saw their opening and moved quickly. The county was already under intense scrutiny after initially reporting inaccurate vote counts that showed Biden beating Trump in a Republican stronghold. The Post and others previously reported that investigators from SullivanStrickler flew to Antrim by private jet for the inspection. The new records show that Maggio wrote to Binnall the following evening that his team had arrived in Antrim and would start work the following morning. “It is our assumption that we will work under our existing agreement and maintain the same daily rate/conditions” as in Nevada, Maggio wrote. A report based on alleged findings from the Antrim examination was publicly promoted by Trump and released to Attorney General William P. Barr as evidence of fraud. Independent analysts said the report was highly flawed. Barr told the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack that Trump had said the report was “absolute proof that the Dominion machines were rigged” and that it meant he “would get a second term.” Barr said the report was “amateur” and that Trump would have to be “detached from reality” to believe it. New files reveal it was Powell…
