'Weakest link in the chain': How the Georgia security breach nearly threw the election into chaos

A key focal point in the indictment of former President Donald Trump and 18 of his associates in the Georgia election racketeering case is the breach of voting equipment in rural Coffee County, allegedly arranged between pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell and supportive local election officials.

That incident, said former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House" Tuesday, could have actually helped the former president accomplish his goal and create enough doubt to shut down the electoral count.

"I want to be sure that I don't press my nose too quickly against the glass to miss the bigger picture of all of this," said anchor Nicolle Wallace. "The idea that Chris Krebs, lifelong Republican, is fired, because he goes out and publicly announces that he has done his job and he has overseen the, quote, 'most secure election in U.S. history,' and then Trump's allies, including his top campaign official, Rudy Giuliani, are the ones breaking into voting machines, is off-the-charts bonkers."

"These are not distinct things, these are linked," said Figulizzi. "The narrative was not helped by the assertion that this was the most secure election in history. And look, we're all familiar with the phrase, you're only as strong as your weakest link. The weakest link here was about to be Coffee County, Georgia, 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, because of a cooperative GOP chair in that county and a cooperative elections clerk, or head of elections there. And that is all they needed."

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In the midst of that environment, said Figliuzzi, "here comes Sidney Powell with her hired guns, this forensic computer firm, to come in, manipulate software, steal software, and make it appear that there was something horribly wrong with the systems there."

"That weak link, in that little county, could have caused complete disarray for even legit people to give pause and say, holy cow, if it happened in that little county, maybe it happened everywhere," continued Figliuzzi. "That is how fragile this was. That's how experimental this democracy is. One bad link, a couple of bad officials in a little county south of Atlanta."

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