Under questioning last month about a civil suit, a former Georgia Republican Party official named Kathy Latham said in the affidavit that he briefly passed the office in Coffee County that afternoon. He said he stayed in the lobby and spoke to a junior official about an unrelated matter at the front desk. “I didn’t go into the office,” said Latham, according to a transcript of her deposition filed in court. He said he had a close look at a pro-Trump businessman who was working with the experts. She said they talked for “five minutes at most” – she couldn’t remember what it was about – and left soon after for an early dinner with her husband. Surveillance video reviewed by the Washington Post shows Latham visited the polling station twice that day, staying a total of more than four hours. He greeted the businessman, Scott Hall, when he arrived and led him to a back area to meet the experts and local officials, the video shows. During the day, shows, moved in and out of an area where the forensic data firm SullivanStrickler’s experts were working, a part of that building that was not visible from the surveillance camera. He took a selfie with one of the forensic experts before he left out at 6:19 pm A Post review found that parts of the account Latham gave in her deposition of the events of Jan. 6 and 7, 2021, appeared to diverge from the footage and other evidence, including depositions and text messages. Many of those records, including Latham’s Aug. 8 deposition, were filed in a long-running federal civil court case involving election security in Georgia. During the 2020 election and its aftermath, Latham served on the Georgia Republican Party’s executive committee and served on its Election Trust Task Force. He was also chairman of the Coffee County Republican Party. He was one of the “fraudulent electors” who signed unauthorized certificates in an attempt to keep Trump in office after his 2020 election loss. In response to questions from The Post, Latham’s attorneys said, “Not accurately remembering the details of events nearly two years ago is not a lie.” They said he was not involved in copying or anything improper or illegal. Her attorneys Robert D. Cheeley and Holly A. Pierson wrote in a court filing last week that the alleged security breach was “actually less of a breach or criminal enterprise and more of a permissive exercise of the County Board of Elections’ authority.” They wrote that “the parties involved clearly believed they had the authority to authorize it and the power to do it, and that belief appears to be at least reasonable and probably accurate, which negates any possible criminal intent.” Surveillance footage shows Latham appearing to introduce the SullivanStrickler team to local officials when they arrived that day. He then watched as they began looking at the county’s voting equipment, it seems. The President of Coffee County, Ga. GOP Cathy Latham and digital forensics experts hired by lawyers allied with former President Trump on January 7, 2021. (Video: Taken from Washington Post) The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and a grand jury in Atlanta are investigating the incident in Coffee County, a Republican stronghold about 200 miles south of Atlanta. Federal and state prosecutors are also investigating the “fake voter” scheme, in which Latham and dozens of other Republicans in battleground states signed certificates declaring Trump the rightful winner. The Coffee County episode is one of several alleged breaches of voting equipment from the 2020 election. In each case, Trump supporters — often with the help of like-minded local officials — sought access to voting equipment to find evidence that the election were falsified. Access to voting machines is usually tightly restricted, and some security analysts fear that such breaches – including copying voting software that is also used elsewhere – risk exposing the systems to hackers. Details about what happened in Coffee County, including surveillance video reviewed by The Post, have come to light in large part because of a lawsuit against Georgia by several voters and the nonprofit Coalition for Good Governance. The plaintiffs they say the state’s election system is unconstitutionally unsafe, which state officials deny. Plaintiffs have subpoenaed documents and depositions from various individuals, including Latham. Sidney Powell, the Trump-allied attorney charged with the project, did not immediately respond to The Post’s questions about Coffee County. “Previous reports of my involvement were seriously misrepresented,” he said in an email. Records obtained by plaintiffs show that Powell signed contracts for the forensics expert election work. The SullivanStrickler team emailed her about the job in Coffee County and billed her more than $26,000, records show. Coffee County was among a handful of locations across the nation where Trump and his advisers have pounced on small mistakes or rumors of ballot irregularities in an effort to overturn the 2020 election. After Coffee County Supervisor of Elections Misty Hampton discussed concerns about Dominion Voting Systems machines at a Nov. 10 board of elections meeting, a Trump campaign official emailed her requesting information available under public records laws. The county refused to certify its results after a national count on Nov. 30, claiming the machines showed inconsistent results. State investigators later concluded that the differences were caused by human error. A local news outlet released a video showing Hampton purportedly demonstrating how she could “trade” votes from one candidate to another. It went viral. Trump’s team later cited Coffee County in its campaign to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. In her testimony, Latham said that sometime between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Jan. 6, after working a full day as a high school teacher — and as Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol — received a call from Hall, the businessman. Hall was “reviewing the election on behalf of the President,” Georgia GOP Chairman David Shaffer told Trump campaign officials on Nov. 20, 2020, in an email obtained by The Post. The email focused on problems with absentee ballots and did not mention Coffee County or the voting machines. In her deposition, Latham said Hall asked her to connect him with Hampton. He didn’t know why and didn’t ask, he said. “Because it was a hectic day. I hadn’t slept, everything was happening, I was getting phone calls left and right and answering them. I was tired, I wanted to go home,” Latham said. She said she then briefly called Hampton to put her in touch with Hall. “I would have called Misty and said, ‘Well, let me give you his email,’” Latham said, adding, “I sent her the email. That’s all I remember to do.” New surveillance footage shows Latham and Hampton were inside the office together during this time. Latham arrived at the office at 3:58 p.m. and had at least three phone calls between 4 p.m. and 4:40 p.m. At 4:26 p.m., Hampton texted Eric Chaney, a member of the county board of elections who employed her, records show. “Scott Hall is on the phone with Kathy We want to sweep our ballots from the general election, as we were saying the other day,” he wrote. Latham’s husband joined them in the office at 5 p.m., the video shows, and later brought takeout. The Lathams and Hampton all left the office shortly before 7:40 p.m The next morning, Latham exchanged text messages with SullivanStrickler’s chief operating officer, Paul Maggio, as the team drove to Coffee County, records show, coordinating who would pick up Hall from the airport. Latham also informed Hampton of the visitors’ movements. “The team left Atlanta with 8.5 members led by Paul Maggio. Scott is flying in,” Latham wrote to Hampton in a text message at 9:26 a.m. “Yes!!!!” Hampton replied. In her deposition, Latham said she was simply relaying information that Hall asked her to share with Hampton. He said he didn’t know why Maggio and Hall were coming to Coffee County. Latham said she also worked a full day at Coffee High School that day, Jan. 7, before briefly visiting the election office lobby after about 4 p.m. for reasons unrelated to SullivanStrickler’s work there. Latham said she could see people behind the front desk but didn’t pay attention to who they were and stayed on the other side of the partition. “There were people in there and I feel uncomfortable when there are others,” he said. Exterior surveillance footage released earlier this month showed Latham arriving at the office at 11:37 a.m. of that day. Three SullivanStrickler employees arrived at the election office soon after. They were later joined by a fourth colleague. They intended to collect what they could from the county’s voting machines, emails and billing records. Cheeley, Latham’s attorney, previously told The Post that Latham did not remember all the details of that day, but he testified truthfully. He said he remembers visiting the office after school “to check on some voter review teams from the runoff elections” that had been held for the two U.S. Senate seats in the U.S. earlier that week. Latham described herself to SullivanStrickler as an election official, a company executive said during a filing on behalf of the company this month. A lawyer for Latham said something must have been taken out of context or misunderstood…
