Georgia prosecutors investigating former President Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn his loss in the Peach State have new evidence connecting Trump’s allies with a 2021 voting system breach, according to multiple reports.
The prosecutors have text messages and emails that directly tie Trump’s allies to the voting system breach, suggesting the breach was a direct top-down push from Trump’s campaign in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, CNN reported. The evidence contradicts the possibility the breach was conducted by local supporters of the former president, unaffiliated with top officials.
“Just landed back in DC with the Mayor huge things starting to come together!” read one text message on January 1, 2021 obtained by CNN, appearing to reference former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former personal attorney, in the scheme. “Most immediately, we were just granted access – by written invitation! – to Coffee County’s systems. Yay!”
The written invitation originated from Misty Hampton, a former Coffee County elections official. Hampton falsely claimed without evidence that the county’s voting machines could swap ballots in favor of another candidate, according to the Guardian.
That invitation was then circulated by Katherine Friess, an attorney who worked with Trump’s circle, which included Giuliani. The invitation was also sent to members of Sullivan Strickler, a firm Trump’s team employed to attempt to find evidence of voter fraud in Georgia, according to the reports.
As Trump and his team scrambled to back up their unsupported claims of election fraud, Coffee County was singled out in draft executive orders presented to Trump in mid-December aimed at seizing voting machines, according to CNN.
Prosecutors link Donald Trump to 2021 Georgia voting breach: reports (usatoday.com)