Trump Allies Mulled Using Stolen Voter Data to Overturn Senate Race: Report

Donald Trump’s team hatched a plan in the weeks following the 2020 election to obtain desperately needed proof for their claims of fraud, traveling to Coffee County, Georgia, to hack into voting machines. Text messages obtained by CNN reveal that Trump operatives considered using that data not just to overturn the presidential election, but to also ensure Republicans retained control of the Senate.

On Jan. 19, 2021, two Republican operatives contracted by Trump’s allies and his legal team, former NSA official Jim Penrose and Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, exchanged messages discussing how to move forward with the recently obtained voter data.

More from Rolling Stone

• Leaked Audio: Ex-Trump Adviser Blamed Sidney Powell for Failure to Overturn Election

• MAGA Pastor Says Christians Must 'Be the Ones Writing the Laws'

• Larry Elder, Failed GOP Gubernatorial Candidate, Announces He's Running Against Trump

“We only have until Saturday to decide if we are going to use this report to try to decertify the Senate run-off election or if we hold it for a bigger moment,” Penrose wrote, referring to Democratic Sen. John Ossoff’s victory over Republican David Perdue.

Penrose was working in tandem with Trump lawyer Sidney Powell on efforts to gain access to Georgia’s voting machines. Powell was a leading figure pushing the conspiracy that companies like Dominion Voting Systems had used their machines to rig the election. Logan, meanwhile, was the head of a cyber security firm hired by Arizona Republicans to conduct a highly questionable audit of the state’s election results. Trump would leverage the results of the audit, which was debunked by Arizona election officials, to claim he would be reinstated as president.

In a separate message to Logan, Penrose asked the CEO to “draft a report” on the potential uses of the data in a challenge to the Senate race, “for review on Friday morning with Charles Bundren.” Bundren worked as a lawyer for Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG), a firm contracted by Trump’s allies to investigate voter fraud claims in various states. Bundren had helped spearhead efforts by the Trump campaign and its allies to access voting machines and voter data.

In October, emails and contracts obtained by Rolling Stone revealed how Trump’s allies attempted to replicate their Coffee County voting data heist in other Georgia counties, with help from local officials. Members of the election board in Spalding County plotted to contract a third-party tech firm to copy data from voting machines, election servers, and election staffers’ phones. Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger stepped in to block the illegal plot.

The data breach in Coffee County is currently under scrutiny by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Willis’ probe is also examining the roles Trump and some of his allies, including Rudy Giuliani, played in the election subversion efforts in Georgia.

Willis has indicated that the grand jury overseeing the investigation has not ruled out leveling criminal charges against the former president.

Best of Rolling Stone

• The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign

• Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal

• The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence

Click here to read the full article.