A new video shows a Republican official in Georgia who was part of the scheme to send fake electors to overturn the 2020 election results escorting two operatives working for former president Donald Trump’s attorney into the county’s election offices on the same day the voting system was breached, CNN reports.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is now looking into the breach and it has become a point of interest for the Fulton County District Attorney’s probe into the Trump campaign’s interference in the 2020 election results.
The video shows Cathy Latham, the former chairwoman of the Coffee County Republican Party, escorting a team of operatives into the county’s elections office on 7 January 2021, the same day that a voting system was known to be breached.
Scott Hall and Paul Maggio, the two operatives, have said that they gained access to a voting machine in Coffee County at the behest of Sidney Powell, one of Mr Trump’s lawyers. Ms Powell became prominent in the 2020 when she said “I’m going to release the Kraken.”
“The video reveals that Cathy Latham had a more significant role with the SullivanStrickler team’s work in Coffee County than she claimed,” David Cross, a lawyer representing election integrity groups in Georgia. “We can see her escort the team into the office that morning, for example. And she’s an important connection to the effort to create a slate of Georgia electors who would have wrongly voted for Trump for the 2020 election, which now looks to be the subject of a grand jury investigation in Fulton County.”
A civil investigation shows that Ms Latham communicated directly with the then-elections supervisor for Coffee County about gaining access to the office. According to a court document, one text message show Ms Latham coordinating the wheareabouts of a team “led by Paul Maggio.”
Three days later, Ms Latham texted the supervisor and asked “Did you all finish with the scanner?” Afterward, she testified that she did not know what Mr Hall was doing there but when confronted with the document, she asserted her rights under the fifth amendment, which protects against self-incrimination.
The firm Mr Maggio works for, SullivanStrickler, which Ms Powell hired, told CNN it was “directed by attorneys to contact county election officials to obtain access to certain data” in the state and it was “directed by attorneys to distribute that data to certain individuals.”
The alleged breach was part of a larger effort to seat fake electors in states Mr Trump lost in 2020 and shows they were also involved in attempts to gain unauthorised access to voting machines across the country in areas that were friendly to the former president.
A lawyer representing Ms Latham did not dispute the facts of the story and said she did not have the authority to “authorise anyone to do anything with the ballots” but added that she did not “participate personally in anything that the elections board and/or its employee … may have decided to do under their own authority (or at least their perceived authority) with the ballots.”
“So, regardless of whether she correctly remembers the details of what time she spent there on January 7, it doesn’t change the fact that she had no authority to do any of this and was not personally involved in whatever was done,” the attorney told CNN.
Meanwhile, a second attorney named Bob Cheeley told CNN that “Cathy Latham has dedicated significant time and effort over many years protecting the integrity of elections in Coffee County, Georgia. She would not and has not knowingly been involved in any impropriety in any election.”
