Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' team obtained text messages and emails that directly connect former President Donald Trump's legal team to a January 2021 voting system breach in Georgia's Coffee County, CNN reported on Sunday.
Willis, who is expected to seek charges against more than a dozen people as early as Tuesday, has gathered evidence indicating the breach "was a top-down push by former President Donald Trump's team to access sensitive voting software" as part of a larger push to get evidence to back up Trump's baseless fraud claims, multiple sources told the outlet.
While the probe has focused on Trump's and his allies' efforts to overturn the election in the state, including Trump's infamous phone call demanding George Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger "find" enough votes to overturn his loss, the voting system breach has "quietly emerged as an area of focus" over the past year, according to the report.
The texts and other court documents show that Trump lawyers and other operatives sought to access the Coffee County voting systems days before the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
A former Trump official testified to the House Jan. 6 committee that plans to access Georgia voting systems were discussed in White House meetings, including a December 18, 2020, Oval Office meeting that included Trump.
Six days before pro-Trump operatives got unauthorized access to the voting systems, a local election official who helped facilitate the breach sent a "written invitation" to lawyers working for Trump, according to texts obtained by CNN.
Prosecutors have examined the role of the former election official, Misty Hampton, as well as the involvement of Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Hampton's invitation was shared with attorneys and former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik, an investigator working for Giuliani at the time, according to CNN.
Katherine Friess, an attorney working with Giuliani and Powell, shared the letter and notified operatives who carried out the breach that Trump's team had gotten written permission to access the systems, according to the texts.
"Rudy Giuliani had nothing to do with this," Giuliani attorney Robert Costello told CNN. "You can't attach Rudy Giuliani to Sidney Powell's crackpot idea."
Giuliani received a letter notifying him he is a target in the probe last year.
Coffee County was specifically mentioned in a draft executive order to seize voting machines that was presented to Trump during a chaotic December 18, 2020, Oval Office meeting in which Giuliani alluded to a plan to gain "voluntary access" to Georgia machines, according to the report.
"This is damning stuff and the kind of evidence built for Georgia RICO. This shows a pattern of unlawful activity all over the state," tweeted Georgia State Law Prof. Anthony Michael Kreis. "Rudy Giuliani is almost certain to get indicted on Tuesday after this news. I'd be curious if Bernie Kerik gets roped in, too."
Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman wrote that the report described "multiple crimes" and "ham-handed conduct reminiscent of Watergate."
CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, who served as Democratic counsel during Trump's first impeachment, said the report "connects the dots."
"We now have evidence that goes from Coffee County to Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, and as CNN reports, right into the Oval Office because this was discussed on Dec. 18th in one of the very notorious meetings in the Oval Office, whether it's possible to get access to these Georgia voting systems and others around the country," he said. "It matters, of course, because it is one of the most serious crimes that we have in the 21st century is unauthorized access, hacking of computer systems."
Eisen predicted that Willis' indictments would target the fake elector scheme, the call to Raffensperger and the Coffee County breach.
"It pulls together those three conspiracies we were talking about, including this hacking conspiracy, into one large case that you can present to a jury where you say, 'Hey, what was the point of those fake electoral certificates? What was the point of pressing Georgia officials to do the wrong thing? What was the point of the computer hacking?'" he explained. "The same point, all of these people were working together in one, as we put it, enterprise in order for Donald Trump to allegedly hang on to his office when we know he had lost the election. You can't do that in American law."
