VI News Staff 3 years ago
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Newly obtained surveillance video shows fake Trump elector escorted operatives into Georgia county's elections office before voting machine breach

(CNN) A Republican county official in Georgia escorted two operatives working with an attorney for former President Donald Trump into the county's election offices on the same day a voting system there was breached, newly obtained video shows.

The breach is now under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and is of interest to the Fulton County District Attorney, who is conducting a wider criminal probe of interference in the 2020 election.

The video sheds more light on how an effort spearheaded by lawyers and others around Trump to seek evidence of voter fraud was executed on the ground from Georgia to Michigan to Colorado, often with the assistance of sympathetic local officials.

In the surveillance video, which was obtained by CNN, Cathy Latham, a former GOP chairwoman of Coffee County who is under criminal investigation for posing as a fake elector in 2020, escorts a team of pro-Trump operatives to the county's elections office on January 7, 2021, the same day a voting system there is known to have been breached.

The two men seen in the video with Latham, Scott Hall and Paul Maggio, have acknowledged that they successfully gained access to a voting machine in Coffee County at the behest of Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.

Text messages, emails and witness testimony filed as part of a long-running civil suit into the security of Georgia's voting systems show Latham communicated directly with the then-Coffee County elections supervisor about getting access to the office, both before and after the breach. One text message, according to the court document, shows Latham coordinating the arrival and whereabouts of a team "led by Paul Maggio" that traveled to Coffee County at the direction of Powell.

Three days after the breach, Latham texted the Coffee County elections supervisor, "Did you all finish with the scanner?" According to court documents, Latham testified she did not know what Hall was doing in Coffee County. But when confronted with her texts about the scanner, she asserted her Fifth Amendment rights.


Maggio did not respond to CNN's request for comment. Instead, the data firm he works for, SullivanStrickler, which court documents show was hired by Powell, said in a statement to CNN that it was "directed by attorneys to contact county election officials to obtain access to certain data" in Georgia and also "directed by attorneys to distribute that data to certain individuals."

In an August 29, 2022, email, an attorney for SullivanStrickler acknowledges that Latham was the "primary point of contact" in coordinating the team's visit to Coffee County.

The firm said it had no reason to believe these attorneys would ask or direct it to "do anything either improper or illegal."

Hall, an Atlanta bail bondsman and Fulton County Republican poll watcher, did not reply to repeated requests for comment from CNN.

READ MORE: CNN

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