How alleged computer crimes figure into latest indictment of Trump, allies
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Four people who pushed the disproven narrative that Donald Trump won the 2020 election face charges of conspiracy to commit computer theft, conspiracy to commit computer trespass and conspiracy to commit computer invasion of privacy, according to an indictment released Monday night in Georgia.
The charges take aim at attorney Sidney Powell; former Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton; the former head of the Coffee County Republican Party, Cathy Latham; and Scott Hall, a bail bondsman and Trump supporter. The indictment accuses Powell of hiring a firm "for the performance of computer forensic collections and analytics on Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Michigan and elsewhere," with a breach of election equipment in Coffee County taking place under the agreement, according to the indictment. And it also accuses Latham, Hampton and Hall of helping take and examine data from Dominion Voting Systems machines inside the Coffee County Elections and Registration Office.
The four face additional charges, such as conspiracy to commit election fraud, stemming from the same or similar alleged acts.
The indictment also mentions (without naming) four unindicted co-conspirators who "unlawfully accessed certain data" on the Coffee County voting machines by downloading information from a server maintained by forensics data firm SullivanStrickler (more on that firm later).
And Rudy Giuliani, who has served as an attorney for Trump, faces charges of allegedly making false statements to the Georgia House that two named election workers and another unidentified person were "quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they're vials of heroin or cocaine" at State Farm Arena to be used to "infiltrate the crooked Dominion voting machines," among other claims.
Those are the biggest cyber-related takeaways in a far more sweeping indictment that features charges for Trump and 18 others, the fourth indictment of Trump to date.
The indictment calls the totality of the effort a criminal enterprise that was "corruptly conspired in Fulton County, Georgia, and elsewhere to unlawfully access secure voting equipment and voter data."
"In Georgia, members of the enterprise stole data, including ballot images, voting equipment software, and personal voting information," it reads. "The stolen data was then distributed to other members of the enterprise, including members in other states."
The intrusion allegations date back to Dec. 6, 2020, when Powell entered into a written agreement with SullivanStrickler (based in Fulton County, the site of the indictment), under which the "unlawful breach of election equipment" occurred, according to the indictment.
The indictment says that Latham, Hampton and Hall "aided, abetted, and encouraged" SullivanStrickler employees in accessing the machines.
SullivanStrickler wasn't charged in the indictment. The company previously said that it believed it was working with attorneys who were authorized to access the voting machines, and that it didn't have any reason to think the firm would be asked to do anything improper or unlawful.
Separately, Giuliani is not contesting as a legal matter that he made false statements about the two election workers in question, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, according to a July court filing in a defamation lawsuit the two women brought. But he said his statements were constitutionally protected speech.
Trump wasted little time in condemning the charges. His legal team called Monday's events "shocking and absurd" and said that Willis built her case on "witnesses who harbor their own personal and political interests."
"We look forward to a detailed review of this indictment which is undoubtedly just as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process has been," the statement said.
Hampton, Latham, Hall and an attorney for Powell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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