ATLANTA — As Fulton County gets closer to concluding its criminal investigation into former president Donald Trump, there’s newly-disclosed evidence that may implicate the former president in a Georgia election security breach.
This evidence doesn't explicitly put Trump’s fingerprints on a Georgia election security breach one month after he lost the state to current President Joe Biden. But it may come closer than ever to doing so.
Before surveillance footage showed a team of Trump supporters escorted into the Coffee County election office on Jan. 7, 2021 – and before footage showed they spent much of that day scanning election software from the county’s Dominion voting system – records indicate that members of Trump’s brain trust, including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, struggled to find ways to access secure election systems in Georgia and other swing states.
Records show the Congressional January 6th committee staff interviewed Trump’s aide Derek Lyons, who described a meeting less than three weeks earlier.
"It was in the Oval Office," he told the committee.
One group of advisers "believed that the President had the authority to seize the voting machines."
But another group led by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani argued that “the (Trump) campaign… was going to be able to secure access to voting machines in Georgia through means other than seizure… The access would be -- I don't know what the right word is, but, you know, voluntary.”
A few days later, a Trump-friendly election official invited a group tied to Trump attorney Sidney Powell to spend the day examining Coffee County’s voting machines.
"The information from the January 6th committee testimony suggest that this plot was discussed at the resolute desk in the oval office with Donald Trump," said Susan Geenhalgh, an election integrity activist.
Another court document indicates that on Jan. 1 2021, a Giuliani associate named Katherine Freiss sent a text message: “Huge things are starting to come together! Most immediately, we were granted access - by written invitation! - to the Coffee County systens (sic). Yay!”
Seven days later, the group appeared in the rural Georgia election office to scan election software.
That last text message was obtained as part of evidence in a six-year-old civil suit challenging the cybersecurity of Georgia’s electronic voting systems. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation undertook a criminal investigation into the Coffee County event months ago but has so far not produced any criminal charges.