politicnewsbusterinsiderpostreview: An alleged Republican-led voter data breach caught on camera

September 20, 2022

Republican election deniers in Georgia, Michigan, and Colorado have allegedly attempted to breach election equipment in ill-fated efforts to prove that the presidency was "stolen" from Donald Trump. We now have one such attempt on video.

On January 7, 2021, a team of Trump allies traveled to Coffee County, Georgia, where they gained entry to an office that held poll pads containing sensitive voter data. Scott Hall, one of the Trump supporters allegedly in on the plan, said in a phone call reported by the New York Times that the team "scanned all the equipment, imaged all the hard drives and scanned every single ballot," adding that he had the permission of "basically" the "entire local elections committee."

The group Hall is referring to likely includes Cathy Latham, who chaired the Coffee County Republican Party, was a member of the Georgia Republican Party's election confidence task force, and is now a target of a criminal investigation over her and other state Republicans' involvement in the "fake elector" scheme to overturn the 2020 election results. The newly released footage shows Latham shaking Hall's hand at the county election office. The footage, which was analyzed in detail by the Washington Post, also apparently contradicts Latham's previous assertion in a deposition that she "didn't go into the office." In fact, she was at the election office for more than four hours that day, including in a room where members of a data forensics firm hired by Trump-allied conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell were working, according to the Post's analysis.

No one has been criminally charged in the Coffee County incident, but it does bear at least some similarity to an indicted Colorado county official's alleged attempt to access her office's election equipment in an ill-conceived effort to prove election fraud. Scott Hall's apparent willingness to explain over the phone exactly what went down in Georgia recalls Tina Peters' inability to keep her mouth shut about her alleged crimes in Colorado. They're brazen, brainwashed, or both.

—Abigail Weinberg