Former president Donald Trump was, of course, indicted by a Georgia grand jury yesterday, along with a number of others, of violating the state's equivalent of the federal Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act for his efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election and remain president of the United States. I learned on the NPR Politics podcast this afternoon that some the charges--and some of those charged, including Sidney Powell and Misty Hampton, a former Coffee County elections official--relate to efforts to prevent the certification of votes in nonmetropolitan Coffee County, in the southeast part of the state. Here's what the Politics podcast had to say:
Sidney Powell is involved with a bucket of people that illegally copied election data from all of these voting machines and other equipment in rural Coffee County, Ga. And that's the former Coffee County supervisor Misty Hampton, and Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall, Cathy Latham, who was the Republican Party chairwoman there and also one of Georgia's sham electors.
CNN offered this further explanation about what happened in Coffee County, population 43,000, under the headline, "Exclusive: Georgia prosecutors have messages showing Trump’s team is behind voting system breach."
Six days before pro-Trump operatives gained unauthorized access to voting systems [in Coffee County], the local elections official who allegedly helped facilitate the breach sent a “written invitation” to attorneys working for Trump, according to text messages obtained by CNN.
Shortly after Election Day, Hampton – still serving as the top election official for Coffee County – warned during a state election board meeting that Dominion voting machines could “very easily” be manipulated to flip votes from one candidate to another. It’s a claim that has been repeatedly debunked.
But the Trump campaign officials took notice and reached out to Hampton that same day. “I would like to obtain as much information as possible,” a Trump campaign staffer emailed Hampton at the time, according to documents released as part of a public records request and first reported by the Washington Post.
In early December, Hampton then delayed certification of Joe Biden’s win in Georgia by refusing to validate the recount results by a key deadline. Coffee County was the only county in Georgia that failed to certify its election results due to issues raised by Hampton at the time.
Hampton also posted a video online claiming to expose problems with the county’s Dominion voting system. That video was used by Trump’s lawyers, including Giuliani, as part of their push to convince legislators from multiple states that there was evidence the 2020 election results were tainted by voting system issues.
Text messages and other documents obtained by CNN show Trump allies were seeking access to Coffee County’s voting system by mid-December amid increasing demands for proof of widespread election fraud.
Coffee County was specifically cited in draft executive orders for seizing voting machines that were presented to Trump on December 18, 2020, during a chaotic Oval Office meeting, CNN has reported. During that same meeting, Giuliani alluded to a plan to gain “voluntary access” to machines in Georgia, according to testimony from him and others before the House January 6 committee.
Days later, Hampton shared the written invitation to access the county’s election office with a Trump lawyer, text messages obtained by CNN show. She and another location elections official, Cathy Latham, allegedly helped Trump operatives gain access to the county’s voting systems, according to documents, testimony and surveillance video produced as part of a long-running civil lawsuit focused on election security in Georgia.
Latham, who also served as a fake elector from Georgia after the 2020 election, has come under scrutiny for her role in the Coffee County breach after surveillance video showed she allowed unauthorized outsiders to spend hours examining voting systems there.
This all reminds me of somewhat similar shenanigans in rural New Mexico where there was also a refusal to certify votes--though no known outreach to the president and his team to collaborate on actions.
One question this raises from a ruralist perspective is whether what went down in Coffee County can be attributed to the lack of checks and balances typically associated with local government in sparsely populated places that have relatively few folks with formal education to watch the watchers, if you will.
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