This Is Not the First Time Georgia Ballots and Files Were Tampered With – Georgia has a History of Similar Events

We reported that in Georgia under Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, 2020 ballots had been tampered with and this incident was withheld from a judge.  Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has happened in Georgia. 

We reported a couple of days ago that a box of ballots was found that had its seals broken and ballots likely tampered with.

Georgia’s Corrupt Republican Leadership Gave Joe Biden Win By Less Than 12,000 Votes – Yet 460,000 Drop Box Ballots STILL MISSING Chain of Custody Documentation Required by Law

Unfortunately, this type of activity happened before in Georgia.

In August 2016 cybersecurity researcher Logan Lamb discovered easy access to Georgia voting databases, passwords used by election staff, software that runs the devices, and all data on their 6.7 million voters. At that time Kennesaw State University was running Georgia’s elections. KSU asked Lamb to keep quiet and then nothing was done. Six months later in March 2017, Kennesaw State’s CIO Stephen Gay alerted their Center for Elections Systems of a “data breach”. Gay contacted the FBI, who made a forensic server image, then opened an investigation into the hacking.

Three months later Republican Karen Handel beat Jon Osoff by 3.8% in a runoff election for District 6. Upset by the loss, Democrat activists alleged the system might have been hacked. So on July 3^rd 2017 (Curling v. Kemp) they filed in Fulton County Superior Court. They wanted Georgia to replace the outdated (DRE) election machines which had no paper record and massive security holes. Three days later KSU staff deleted the election servers. This data removal was kept from the plaintiffs until October 2017, when one plaintiff (Coalition for Good Governance) obtained KSU’s internal emails. KSU staff had purposely DBAN’d (nuked) the election servers on July 6th, and their backup servers on August 9^th.

KSU Elections Systems answered to Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Secretary of State from 2010 to Nov. 2018. The State AG’s office defending Kemp originally told plaintiffs the data was deleted before their lawsuit. But this was proven false when the “Georgia wipes servers” story broke on October 26^th, 2017 that included KSU emails. A few days later Assistant AG Cristina Correia withdrew the State AG’s office from the entire case due to “newly found” conflicts of interest. Kemp was running for Governor at this time, so he hired the law firm of former GA Governor Roy Barnes to defend this case.

In a December 2017 House hearing in Washington, Director Wray refused to answer if the FBI was investigating the Georgia election hacking, or if they had server data. A couple of years later, FOIA data from the FBI was provided to the Associated Press. It showed why FBI Wray was silent. FOIA shows there was NO indication the FBI ever examined the KSU server for tampering by malicious outsiders. The FBI investigation instead was aimed at the two researchers (Lamb & Christopher Gray) who alerted KSU about the election security risks. An FBI document dated Oct. 23, 2017, said the matter would be shelved once the drive image was placed in a case file. FOIA also showed the FBI did nothing for two months. They closed the case and NO ONE was ever charged.

In December 2016 Brian Kemp sent a letter to Secretary Jeh Johnson. Kemp asked why the DHS tried to penetrate Georgia’s election servers at least 10 times. DHS last attacks were Nov. 7^th and 8^th, the day before and day of the 2016 Trump election. Three years later in December of 2019, plaintiffs were finally able to obtain the election server copy made by the FBI in March 2017. Lamb’s affidavit says logs were deleted and other data altered. “Logs only go back to November 10th, 2016, two days after Donald Trump was elected.” Hackers accessed the system and conveniently deleted logs covering all DHS intrusion attempts.

When the FBI released this server copy in late 2019, Brad Raffensperger was the new Secretary of State. His office refused to submit this server for a thorough examination. Also, a protective order prevented Logan Lamb from speaking about his findings. Lambs testimony says he found “scores of files” that had been deleted on March 2, 2017, just days before KSU handed the server over to the FBI. Numerous other breaches were detected and millions of voter records were accessed. Lamb noted an attacker obtained full control of the server back to 2014 by exploiting a bug. The FBI did nothing. District Judge Amy Totenberg’s 2018 decision in this case was the green light Georgia needed to purchase Dominion equipment.

It’s time that Georgia comes clean and addresses the myriad of election events that have taken place in the state.