Georgia officials hit with subpoenas in probe of GOP effort to breach voting systems: report

Attorneys have subpoenaed local election officials and a former Republican Party chair in a rural Georgia county to find out how a group of 2020 election deniers improperly accessed a voting system server last year, The Daily Beast. reports.

The lawsuit, brought by voting rights activists, was approved by U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, who expressed “great concern” about the unauthorized access of a voting system server.

"Text messages acquired by The Daily Beast showed how then-Coffee County GOP chair Cathy Latham and elections board member Eric Chaney arranged for a team of computer technicians to access the local election management system at a government office—on none other than the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, just as insurrectionists attacked the U.S. Capitol building," The Beast's reports stated.

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The subpoenas require information from Latham, Chaney, the county elections board, and several others. Also subpoenaed were Paul Maggio, an executive at a computer forensics and data storage company, and bail bondsman Scott Hall.

"Additionally, the subpoenas target Misty Hampton—who was Coffee County’s elections supervisor at the time of the visit but has since been forced to resign—as well as her replacement, James Barnes, who has since left the office as well," reports the Daily Beast. "Benjamin Cotton, the founder of Virginia digital forensics firm CyFIR, was also subpoenaed. Cotton implicated himself in the growing scandal by admitting that he 'forensically examined' Coffee County’s voting system in an unrelated court document spotted by The Washington Post on Sunday."