Sensitive data files from Dominion Voting Systems from Coffee County, Georgia, and Antrim County, Michigan were placed on a corporate server of a Georgia computer forensics firm hired by Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and others, from which dozens of people and organizations downloaded the information, the Washington Post reports.
The Trump lawyers reportedly hired the firm, Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler, to download election software from various locations in Georgia and Michigan. They then directed the firm to provide the code and data to various people.
Powell signed a retention letter with SullivanStrickler on December 6, 2020, promising $26,000 per day for work a team of four would do to access data in Michigan, Georgia and Arizona. That same day the firm reports it accessed the Georgia systems. Also on that day, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation opened a probe into reports of “computer trespass” into elections systems in Coffee County. It’s unknown whether that investigation was a result of SullivanStrickler’s activities.
The revelation was made as part of a submission from SullivanStickler to comply with a subpoena issued by a federal court in a case by voting rights advocates challenging the security of Georgia’s election system.
According to the Post, company logs show the data sets were downloaded dozens of times from various accounts including John Basham, a Texas-based meteorologist who has pushed false claims about the election on social media and on Sean Hannity’s radio show; former Michigan state senator Patrick Colbeck, who has promoted conspiracy theories about election fraud and other topics; and “Joe Ottman,” an apparent misspelling of right-wing podcaster Joe Oltmann, who has called for gallows to be built to “take care of all these traitors to our nation.”
The information appears to have then been widely distributed, leading investigators to believe the leak of information has led to a series of data leaks and hacks into voting systems and elections databases at state and county elections offices around the country.
The Michigan data was apparently given to SullivanStrickler in compliance with a judge’s order relating to a lawsuit about the results of the November 2020 election filed by Matthew DePerno, the Trump-endorsed GOP nominee for Michigan attorney general who is under investigation by the state AG for illegally accessing election information. The judge in that lawsuit ordered the data to be held by SullivanStrickler under strict security, “restricting use, distribution or manipulation of the forensic images and/or other information gleaned from the forensic investigation” without further authorization from the court.
In a statement, SullivanStrickler denies the distribution of the data was their idea. “Likewise, the firm was directed by attorneys to distribute that data to certain individuals,” the statement reads, adding it “had [and has] no reason to believe that, as officers of the court, these attorneys would ask or direct SullivanStrickler to do anything either improper or illegal.”