Nathan Layne, Alexandra Ulmer

KIOWA, Colorado (Reuters] – Trump supporters persist in falsely claiming that election machines were compromised across America 18 months after he lost the White House.

To stand up that bogus claim, some Trump die-hards are taking the law into their own hands – by attempting, with some success, to compromise the voting systems themselves.

Unreported surveillance footage captured one of these attempts in August, in rural Colorado. Footage obtained by Reuters through a public-records request shows Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder, the county’s top election official, fiddling with cables and typing on his phone as he copied computer drives containing sensitive voting information.

Schroeder, a Republican, later testified that he was receiving instructions on how to copy the system’s data from a retired Air Force colonel and political activist bent on proving Trump lost because of fraud.

That day, Aug. 26, Schroeder made a “forensic image of everything on the election server,” according to his testimony, and later gave the cloned hard drives to two lawyers.

Schroeder has been under investigation by Colorado’s secretary of state for possible election violations. He is also being sued to get the data back. Schroeder refuses to give up on the request of the state and refused to name the other lawyer who has the hard drives. One private lawyer works alongside Mike Lindell (the pillow mogul, conspiracy theorist and activist).

Schroeder said in a legal filing that he believed he had a “statutory duty” to preserve voting records. Schroeder declined to comment on this report.

It is one of the eight known instances in which unauthorized access was sought to five U.S. voting machines since the 2020 election. All involved local Republican officeholders or party activists who have advanced Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods or conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines, according to a Reuters examination of the incidents. Some breaches including that in Elbert County were motivated in part by the belief state-ordered maintenance and upgrades of voting-systems would wipe out evidence of possible fraud in the 2020 election. In fact, state election officials say, those processes have no impact on the voting systems’ ability to save data from past elections.

The incidents include a North Carolina case, first reported last week by Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-local-election-chief-threatened-by-republican-leader-seeking-illegal-2022-04-23, in which a local Republican Party leader threatened to get a top county election official fired or have her pay cut if she didn’t give him unauthorized access to voting equipment. A pro-Trump clerk in southern Michigan issued a defiance order to maintain a voter machine. He believed that he could erase evidence of fraud and endorsed the QAnon conspiracy theory via social media. Another Michigan case saw a Republican activist pretending to be an official of a fictional government agency, in order to steal voting equipment.

Some of the people and groups involved in the vigilante election-investigator movement are drawing financial support from Lindell, the My Pillow Inc chief executive and one of the most visible backers of Trump’s false fraud claims. Lindell claimed that he had hired four members from the U.S. Election Integrity Plan (USEIP). The group got Lindell’s backing about three months after its co-founder advised Elbert County Clerk Schroeder in his effort to copy and leak voting data. In all, Lindell told Reuters he has spent about $30 million and hired up to 70 people, including lawyers and “cyber people,” partly in support of Cause of America, a right-wing network of election activists.

Lindell, who said he hasn’t been involved in any data breaches, said his quest aims to prove fraud in the 2020 vote and to reshape American elections by getting rid of electronic voting machines and returning to paper ballots. Trump’s Trump ally stated that his fraud allegations will be eventually proven true despite ridicule from the media.

“We’ve got to get rid of the machines!” Lindell said. “We need to melt them down and use them for prison bars and put everyone in prison that was involved with them.”

Trump spokesperson didn’t respond to our requests for comment.

‘DESTROYING VOTTER CONFIDENCE’

Four voting-law experts told Reuters that the scale of data breaches in balloting was unprecedented in U.S. elections. Officials from election agencies say the violations break the chain that controls custody of ballots and tabulating devices. This allows for tracking who is responsible for sensitive voter data. It’s essential that elections are secure.

“You need to make sure that those ballots are maintained under strict chain of custody at all times,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research. “It’s destroying voter confidence in the United States.”

These breaches could also be privacy violations by publishing information on individual voters. The Colorado data Schroeder leaked likely included ballot images that showed how people voted, according to the secretary of state’s office. That would go against a key principle of American democracy, the secret vote, intended to shield voters from political harassment and intimidation, as well as to stop voter-buying.

The secret ballot “is a fundamental right in American elections,” said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that advocates for secure elections.

Reuters found that all incidents were in competitive states. Two of them occurred in Colorado and three others in Michigan. One each was in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. According to local and state officials, five of these cases are currently under investigation by either federal or local law enforcement. There have been three arrests, and one conviction. Election officials had to replace or decertify voting equipment in four of these breaches due to the fact that they were not secure.

Federal Bureau of Investigation did not respond to our request for comment.

There are many types of data that were leaked. In some instances, it is not clear how much. In Colorado’s Mesa County, the secretary of state accuses clerk Tina Peters of allowing an unauthorized person to make a “forensic image” of a voting-equipment hard drive. In addition, confidential passwords required to upgrade the county’s election software were published on the internet, according to an indictment of Peters. Peters stated that she was complying with her statutory obligation to maintain election records. Without evidence, she accused Dominion, the secretary of State, and others of conspiring against evidence of fraud in election elections.

In three other attempts–in Ohio’s Lake County, Michigan’s Cross Village and North Carolina’s Surry County–no data is believed to have been accessed. Reuters could not determine the identity of data stolen in two cases.

It’s also unclear what data, if any, may have been accessed in Michigan’s Adams Township, where a key component of an election tabulator machine went missing for four days in October 2021. The item was finally found at the home of a clerk, who had posted memes supporting QAnon (NASDAQ:). QAnon refers to a conspiracy theory in which Trump is seen as a savior, fighting a secret battle against a cannibal cabal and Satanist pedophiles.

The rise of what election-security officials describe as “insider threats” – officeholders who leak confidential election data or sabotage voting machines – coincides with the national pressure campaign by Lindell-backed groups and other Trump allies who are traveling the country and lobbying local officials to replace electronic voting systems with hand-counted paper ballots. This push is ahead of November’s midterm elections, which will determine control of the U.S. Congress. It also coincides with the 2024 presidential campaign in which Trump may seek a second term.

In some instances, they act as victims of pressure while in other cases they play the role of the suspected actors. The United States has many key elections administrators. They also manage vital records such as marriage licenses.

The American right’s fixation with voting machines intensified in the days after Democrat Joe Biden beat Trump. Rudolph Giuliani was the former New York mayor who made outrageous allegations about rigged machines. The accusations were soon deemed bogus by courts and Trump’s own election-security chief, and spurred ongoing defamation lawsuits against Giuliani and others from a prime target of the Trump camp, voting-machine provider Dominion Voting Systems.

Dominion’s machines have been the focus of multiple baseless election conspiracy theories, including that financier George Soros and the family of Venezuela’s late socialist President Hugo Chavez conspired with Denver-based Dominion to steal the election.

Dominion said statements by Lindell and others “about Dominion have been repeatedly debunked, including by bipartisan government officials.”

Many Trump supporters insist, despite the absence of any evidence that they were wrongly able to prove it, that all electronic voting machines in 2020 were rigged and call for paper ballots to be restored. Officials from both political parties fear that this would reduce the security of voting. According to them, electronic voting machines offer greater fraud protections than paper ballots. They reduce human error and prevent delays that can be used by criminals seeking to stop the certification of results.

A PHONY: ELECTION INTEGRITY COMISSION

The most recent known attempted breach came in March, when a county election director in North Carolina faced threats from a local Republican Party leader who demanded access to a vote tabulator – a machine which, by state law, may only be handled by election officials.

William Keith Senter, chair of the Surry County Republican Party, told elections director Michella Huff that he would have her fired if she didn’t comply, the state board of elections told Reuters, which first reported news of the incident on April 23.

Senter and a prominent election conspiracy theorist, Douglas Frank, met with Huff on March 28, falsely claiming that a “chip” inside voting machines was used to rig the 2020 results, the board said. Frank had spoken two days prior to this meeting in which he promoted a variety of conspiracy theories about election results in Dobson (a rural town of 72,000 residents).

Frank and Senter did not reply to our requests for comment on this report.

Huff refused Senter’s demands, made as part of a push by local activists to conduct a “forensic audit” of the 2020 presidential results. Huff was told by Senter, during one of the encounters, that Senter said to Huff, “I cannot wait for you to fall.” Huff was threatened by the state board. The report was made to Huff’s federal, state, and local law enforcement officers. The matter has not been investigated and no one has been arrested.

Huff reported that Senter had told Huff at one time that Steve Hiatt (the county sheriff) would assist him in obtaining the keys for the voting machines. Hiatt is a Republican and did not respond when asked.

Huff, an independent registered voter, stated that she was shocked by disinformation and threats. Her office needs to prepare now for those voters who refuse to put their ballot in the tabulator under the false impression that it will alter their vote.

Huff stated to Reuters, “I am very worried for the voters.” Democracy begins right here. It begins here, in our office.”

Only one incident has led to serious criminal charges in relation to the data breaches. This was the case Peters, the Mesa County Clerk in Colorado. Peters was a Republican and was charged in March with seven felonies, including identity theft and criminal impersonation. These charges can lead to a maximum sentence of 25 years.

Her arraignment date is May 24, but she hasn’t yet made a plea. Peters did not respond to requests for comment. Peters has stated that she was a victim to partisan attacks.

In Cross Village, Michigan, Tera Jackson faced felony charges after she allegedly impersonated a government official working for a non-existent agency – the “Election Integrity Commission” – and convinced three men to access the town’s vote tabulator on Jan. 14, 2021, and try to clone it, law enforcement records show. According to an investigator, she claimed that she was trying “to connect the dots” about a conspiracy theory regarding the county’s voter tabulator.

However, the Emmet County Prosecutor reached a settlement with Jackson (56), and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of creating a disorder. Jackson was cleared of the charges of fraud, and unauthorized access to a PC. Jackson was not sentenced. Jackson didn’t respond to our requests for comment.

The three men – a computer technician, a town trustee and a former law enforcement officer who showed up with a bulletproof vest and a gun – talked their way past the town clerk, claiming authority to inspect voting equipment. The computer technician opened parts of the tabulator and attempted to insert a flash drive into several ports but it wouldn’t fit, according to video footage taken by the three men and obtained by Reuters in a records request. Video shows the technician using pliers followed by tweezers in order to get a piece from the machine.

The men, who did not respond to requests for comment, believed they were part of an operation approved by the Department of the Defense, according to body camera footage and interviews by sheriff’s investigators. According to the town trustee, Jackson claimed she was working alongside Sidney Powell (a pro-Trump lawyer) who had filed numerous unsuccessful lawsuits regarding the 2020 election. She made wild, unfounded allegations of voter fraud. Jackson told investigators that she had also been communicating with Phil Waldron https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-military, a retired Army colonel who worked with then-President Trump’s outside legal team on election-fraud claims.

Emmet County Detective Matt Leirstein said investigators found no evidence of Powell and Waldron’s involvement in the scheme. Powell and Waldron declined to comment.

Jackson’s arrest warrant was signed by a judge on March. She wasn’t captured until October. Leirstein, the detective, stated that her whereabouts had been unknown for several months.

Some residents, including the Republican Supervisor of the Township, have criticised the prosecutor’s approach to Jackson. They also called for the prosecution to bring charges against the other three people who accessed voting equipment.

“Almost everything doesn’t add up,” said the supervisor, Stephen Keller, of the sheriff’s and the prosecutor’s handling of the case.

Leirstein, the sheriff’s detective, said he did not seek charges against the three men working with Jackson because he believed their stories that she had duped them. He said he did recommend charges against the town’s former Republican clerk, Priscilla Sweet, who lost her position in the 2020 election. He stated that the prosecutor did not intend to press those charges.

According to bodycam video footage examined by Reuters Sweet was present at the scene when law enforcement arrived. According to the detective, Sweet claimed that she told contradictory stories about what happened. He said that Sweet had spoken to Jackson via phone before police arrived. Sweet also admitted having told Jackson that she was concerned a pending voting system service would “wipe” the system of 2020 election data, according to a video of Leirstein’s interview of Sweet a few days after the breach.

Sweet has not responded to any requests for comment.

James Linderman, Emmet County Prosecuting attorney did not respond when asked for comment.

PREPARING ‘PROOF”

Another breach came in Michigan’s Adams Township, a rural area of about 2,000 people. Republican Stephanie Scott, the Township Clerk, was accused of refusing to carry out testing on and maintaining the machine. Scott claimed it would remove evidence of possible fraud. At a town meeting in October, Scott said she wanted “to find out what’s on this machine before destroying anything,” adding, “We need the proof. We can’t just make accusations.” On her Facebook page, Scott has expressed support for Trump, Lindell and QAnon.

The office of Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, sent a letter to Scott in October 2021 pointing out that data from the November 2020 election was not even stored in the tabulator. Benson stripped Scott of her duties in October, citing her refusal to perform legally required maintenance needed to “ensure the security and safety” of upcoming elections, according to a news release from Benson’s office.

Hillsdale County officials took the tabulator from the town on the orders of the state. A crucial part called the scanner unit (also known as the brains) was left behind. State police obtained a search warrant and recovered the part from Scott’s office. Scott was not charged. The state police are continuing their investigation into the unauthorized alteration of the machine. In the meantime, $5,500 was spent by the municipality on a brand new tabulator.

By the time police came to execute the warrant, Scott was represented by Stefanie Lambert, a Detroit attorney who – along with Sidney Powell and other pro-Trump lawyers – tried unsuccessfully to overturn the state’s election results, according to police records obtained in a public records request.

Lambert didn’t respond to our requests for comment.

Scott did not comment on this story. She sued Benson, and other defendants, in state court. In her complaint, Scott claimed that Benson had unconstitutionally abused her power and she was obligated to protect election data as per federal law.

PRICE CAMPAIGN

In Colorado, the breach of voting data came to light in early January, when Elbert County clerk Schroeder admitted to copying the hard drives in a lawsuit he joined with other Republican officials against Colorado’s secretary of state. The lawsuit argued that the company that tests Dominion election system software, Pro V&V Inc, was improperly certified and that state authorities illegally destroyed election records – allegations the state and the company deny. The suit also asserts Colorado’s top election official, Secretary of State Jena Griswold exceeded her authority when she adopted emergency rules last year to prevent election audits she considered partisan and illegitimate. The matter is still ongoing.

So is the state’s own lawsuit against Schroeder. In legal filings, the clerk admitted to making a copy of the county election server’s two hard drives on Aug. 26. Shawn Smith, who was a former Air Force colonel, claimed that he helped him. Mark Cook, an IT specialist, provided Schroeder with a digital imager capable of transmitting data at very high speeds. The cost for the device is about $4,000, Cook said. Both Smith and Cook then “provided instructions” as Schroeder worked to take the data, Schroeder testified. He said that he created a second copy on Sept. 2.

Cook didn’t respond to our requests for comments. Smith did not respond to requests for comment.

Secretary of State Griswold, a Democrat, opened a formal inquiry after discovering Schroeder’s leak in January and sued the clerk on February 17, seeking the return of the data. Schroeder claimed in his written replies to the inquiry that the copies of hard drives were given to two attorneys. One of these attorneys he declined to name. The other is John Case, a longtime Colorado attorney who says on his website that he’s dedicated to representing citizens “petitioning for integrity” in elections. Case is now representing Schroeder against the state.

Schroeder stated that he didn’t recall any person asking him to take the data. Smith was one of those who gave Schroeder instructions on how to get the data. His decision to leaked it to unauthorized lawyers came after a concerted effort by an organization to press county clerks in Colorado. Smith’s organization, the U.S. Election Integrity Plan (USEIP), emailed all 64 Colorado county clerks and visited at least 10 of them, including Schroeder, demanding they investigate unfounded allegations of 2020 voter fraud, according to Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association.

Reuters has seen messages that Smith sent to Schroeder in the early part of 2021. Smith sent some communications that included a statistical analysis that claimed that Biden was suspiciously high in votes in one precinct within Elbert County, which is majority Republican. Colorado state officials said the county’s votes were accurate.

Reuters examined four of the emails from USEIP member and allies. One message mentioned the discredited conspiracy theory regarding rigged voting machines at Dominion Voting Systems. It stated that clerks were legally required to initiate inquiries and preserve alleged evidence. “You have an obligation to investigate this evidence and take the appropriate actions,” read one message sent on March 15.

“The heat is more on Republican clerks,” said Crane, a Republican who served as Arapahoe County clerk until 2018. “They really look at us like traitors.”

In legal filings, Schroeder said he believed he had a “statutory duty” to preserve the 2020 voting records and the information he copied should be legally public information, without detailing what the files contained.

In court filings, Schroeder said that he was careful to “preserve chain of custody” with the data he gave the attorneys, asserting on Feb. 3 that the copied hard drives remained in “sealed containers.” He said the lawyers who took possession of the data – including the attorney representing him, Case – told him no one had accessed it.

Case refused to comment. He referred questions to USEIP co-founder Holly Kasun, who he described as his “media consultant.” Kasun did not answer questions about Case’s involvement in the data leak.

Schroeder expressed concern that records from the 2020 election would be erased by a state-ordered update to the voting systems. However, state officials said that the 2020 election records will be kept after the upgrade.

Schroeder, and other people involved in this breach of the voter system, have not been charged. The county’s district attorney’s office declined to comment. Elbert County Sheriff Tim Norton said his office had not investigated the incident, which he said was being “handled by the state.” A Colorado State Patrol spokesperson, Sergeant Troy Kessler, said state police do not handle “election matters.”

NEW FINANCIER

Three months after Schroeder leaked the data, USEIP’s members landed Lindell as a financial backer. The pillow magnate reached out to USEIP and said the group’s work in Colorado was “great,” Kasun, who co-founded the organization with Smith, said in an interview. Smith was among the four USEIP members who met Lindell last year in Colorado Springs to present their work. At a subsequent meeting a few weeks later, Kasun said, Lindell told the group: “Let’s scale. Let’s do exactly what you’re doing with USEIP.”

Lindell revealed that four of the activists had joined Lindell in a interview with Reuters. The four activists now head the Lindell-backed Cause of America which coordinates an entire network of right-wing electoral activists across America. “We talk to him every day,” Kasun said of Lindell. “We keep him updated on what we’re doing. He offers advice on running things. He offers us what we need to ramp up.”

Since joining Lindell, Smith has remained at the forefront of Colorado’s election conspiracy activism. At a February 10 event held in a Colorado church, Smith publicly threatened Griswold, saying: “You know, if you’re involved in election fraud, then you deserve to hang.”

Griswold, who did not attend the meeting, said she would not be “intimidated.”

“These threats are being fueled by extreme elected officials and political insiders who are spreading the Big Lie” – that 2020 vote was stolen – “to further suppress the vote, destabilize American elections, and undermine voter confidence,” she said in a statement.

Lindell stated to Reuters that Cause of America is only a portion of his efforts to prove that the 2020 election was stolen, and to amend election rules. Lindell claimed he has funded Cause of America in South Dakota and paid employees who are election-focused through Lindell Management. This Minnesota LLC was registered in 2018.

“I have over probably 50 to 70 people that I pay, that all they’re doing is on this election,” Lindell, 60, said in an interview. “I guess Cause of America would be a little piece of that.” The group helps connect other groups with lawyers.

Lindell claims he was a cocaine addict, and credits his recovery to his Christian faith. He also stated that he believed God selected Trump for president. Lindell claims God now supports him in his pursuit for election fraud claims.

“God has given me an amazing platform,” he said. “I’m using it the best I can.”

Lindell has publicly praised Tina Peters, the Republican clerk of Colorado’s Mesa County, who has been charged in connection with one of the most invasive breaches of voting systems. In an interview, Lindell said of the allegations against Peters: “She backed up her computers. She did her job.”

He said to Reuters that he would pay her legal fees. “I’m sure it’s in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said. In a subsequent interview, however, Lindell said he was mistaken: “I thought I put money towards it, but I never had.”

Harvey Steinberg (a lawyer representing Peters) did not answer a question regarding who paid him.

SUPPORT IN HOMETOWN

Schroeder wasn’t the only Colorado clerk approached by the USEIP’s Smith for access to secure voting data. In May 2021, Smith told El Paso County clerk Chuck Broerman in a meeting that USEIP would conduct a “forensic investigation” of his voting systems, Broerman said.

“Clerk Broerman, we will do this either with you or through you,” Broerman recalled Smith telling him.

According to a March lawsuit by the NAACP, other rights organizations and others, USEIP workers also harassed Colorado voters through a door-to–door campaign. Some USEIP workers impersonated government authorities from “the county,” wearing badges and carrying guns as they interrogated voters “about their addresses, whether they participated in the 2020 election, and – if so – how they cast their vote,” the suit alleges.

USEIP didn’t respond to a request asking for comments on these allegations. This organization sought to dismiss the suit, saying it was speculative.

Schroeder was a self-employed entrepreneur and became a clerk in the rural Republican County in 2013. The area’s about 27,000 residents in 2020 overwhelmingly backed Trump, who took 74% of votes here. Political signs such as “Trump Country” and “Eat Meat!! Vote Republican” dot the town of Kiowa, with a population of about 750.

Interviews with local officials revealed that a majority of Elbert County supporters Schroeder. The county’s Republican chair, Tom Peterson, and two county commissioners defended him. “Dallas is a highly respected clerk,” said Peterson, who also repeated the false theory that the state upgrade would erase election data.

Schroeder isn’t letting the state investigation slow him down. In November, he is running for a higher office. He asks voters to elect Schroeder to the County Commission.