There's new leadership in Fulton County Pa. They still chase Trump's 2020 grievances.

Fulton County commissioners continue to roll the dice with taxpayer money on a 2020 election gambit that's failed repeatedly in court.

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania this past April found the county in contempt for allowing multiple third-party inspections of Dominion Voting Systems machines used locally four years ago. Their ruling put Fulton County taxpayers on the hook for all Pennsylvania Department of State and Dominion legal fees in relation to the case — a tab that may soon eclipse $1 million.

Though Fulton County voters in November replaced two of the three sitting commissioners with newcomers, the freshman officials recently acted to continue this saga in court — just weeks before one of their attorneys became a wanted woman in Michigan.

Commissioner Hervey Hahn, an independent sworn in earlier this year, first declined to OK an appeal on both Jan. 9 and Jan. 16 before voting in favor of it Jan. 30. He said they have just three options: to appeal, to try to reach a settlement with Dominion, or to simply accept a "big bill" for their taxpayers by giving up.

"We can't just quit," Hahn told a reporter at a commissioners' meeting March 5.

Commissioner Stephen Wible, a Republican who ousted GOP incumbent Stuart Ulsh during the 2023 primary, said little about this topic while campaigning. He instead focused on issues such as business development and preserving the county's rural character.

Though Wible voted against an appeal Jan. 9 and Jan. 16, he, too, changed his vote Jan. 30.

"There was a lot of information to absorb in a short time," Wible said. "We need to do it right."

In previous court proceedings, Fulton County officials have cited a report by Speckin Forensics claiming that Dominion voting machines contained inadequate security features, an external IP connection to Canada and a Python script that can "exploit and create any number of vulnerabilities including ... external access to the system, data export of the tabulations, or introduction of other metrics not part of or allowed by the certification process."

Federal Judge Sylvia Rambo dismissed their civil breach of contract case against Dominion, writing that the "voting system functioned substantially as intended, and by all appearances, those actual errors which did occur were minuscule and had no material impact on the functioning of the devices." Yaacov Apelbaum, the owner of a New York cybersecurity company, has also filed a lawsuit accusing county attorney Stefanie Lambert of asking him to falsify a report to allege that Dominion machines had been hacked.

Though the commissioners are receiving pro bono representation from special counsel Lambert and Thomas Carroll — a pair of central figures in former President Donald Trump's fruitless challenges to his 2020 election loss — they remain liable for all related legal fees incurred by the state and Dominion, meaning additional court losses will mean an even bigger final bill for the sparsely populated county's 14,000-plus taxpayers.

Last May, Dominion made a reimbursement request of $206,878.

The special master handling this case has asked the voting machines company to submit an updated tally for its legal fees before the end of this month. A spokesperson for Dominion declined to comment on the matter or provide an updated an estimate.

The state has requested a total of $711,252 in reimbursements, recently adding $263,212 to the $448,039 bill submitted in 2023. This means that the potential cost to Fulton County taxpayers is $918,130, and could surpass $1 million by the time Dominion submits its latest request.

"Fulton County officials have inexplicably continued to file meritless appeals that both the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court have repeatedly rejected," Department of State spokesperson Amy Gulli told the USA TODAY Network in an email response to the situation.

"As the Pennsylvania Supreme Court wrote in April 2022, 'Fulton County and its various attorneys have engaged in a sustained, deliberate pattern of dilatory, obdurate, and vexatious conduct and have acted in bad faith.' Their recent decision to appeal proves that this pattern continues."

Lambert, who has been representing Fulton County with Carroll since April 2022, is meanwhile facing legal trouble in Michigan. She's set for trial in April on felony counts of conspiracy to improperly obtain voting equipment in the Great Lakes State, and has been connected to similar election challenges across the country.

On March 7, The Detroit News of the USA TODAY Network reported that an Oakland County Circuit Court judge issued a bench warrant for Lambert after she didn't show up for fingerprinting and DNA sampling.

Lambert's charges in Michigan include undue possession of a voting machine; conspiracy to commit unauthorized access to a computer system; conspiracy to commit undue possession of a voting machine, and willfully damaging a voting machine. Each would bring a prison term of up to five years.

A message to Lambert was not returned by deadline.

It's unclear whether Lambert's legal problems will derail Fulton County commissioners' plans to continue appealing their case involving Dominion voting machines. Fulton County Commissioner Randy Bunch, who helped spearhead the local challenge to 2020 election results in the weeks after the votes were tallied, told the USA TODAY Network just days before Lambert's warrant was issued that he feels obligated to see the lawsuit through.

"We gotta do what we think is best for the county," Bunch said.

"Every one of us is an individual," he added of the dynamics within the new-look commissioners' board. "We are working very well together."

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Bruce Siwy is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network's Pennsylvania state capital bureau. He can be reached at bsiwy@gannett.com or on X at @BruceSiwy.

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Dominion Voting System lawsuits persist in Fulton County PA