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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 23, 2023
Contact: Marilyn Marks
Coalition for Good Governance
Marilyn@uscgg.org
704 292 9802
CGG TAKES LEGAL ACTION AGAINST COFFEE COUNTY ELECTION BOARD TO OBTAIN “MISSING” EMAILS
ATLANTA- Today Coalition for Good Governance (“CGG”) and Georgia voter Donna Curling took legal action against the Coffee County Board of Elections seeking a court order to obtain the emails and other electronic documents improperly withheld by the Board in response to 2022 subpoenas related to the Coffee County voting system breaches that occurred in 2021. The Coffee Board of Elections has repeatedly claimed that they did not preserve former Election Director Misty Hampton’s emails. Those emails include important communications related to the activities surrounding the breaches of Georgia’s voting system software, planned and executed by Trump allies seeking to overturn the 2020 election, as well as to obtain Georgia’s voting system software slated for use in future elections.
Trump attorney Sidney Powell and Atlanta businessman Scott Hall recently pleaded guilty to crimes related to the illegal access of Coffee County’s voting system in the Fulton County District Attorney’s RICO case against former President Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators. CGG learned through a Powell court filing that the GBI had located over 3,000 Hampton emails created between November 1, 2020 and March 1, 2021 on the Election Board’s office computer the GBI had seized—emails that the Coffee Election Board repeatedly insisted did not exist, when CGG and its co-plaintiffs subpoenaed those records last year.
Misty Hampton and Cathy Latham, the former Coffee County GOP chair, were also indicted with charges related to the voting system breaches. “There is little doubt that Hampton’s communications related to the planning, execution and follow up of the three breaches are critical and highly relevant documents to our ongoing litigation. The information in those communications related to the alleged conspiracy to obtain voting system software should undoubtedly be available to the press and public as well.
The claims that over 10,000 emails covering the last ten years of Coffee County’s election activities had simply permanently disappeared have always been preposterous. The GBI’s seemingly simple recovery of them demonstrates the willingness by Coffee officials to conceal the facts from the public,” said Marilyn Marks, CGG’s Executive Director.
After the court document disclosure of the existent of the emails, CGG and its co-plaintiffs attempted again to obtain the emails from Coffee’s Election Board. The plaintiffs subsequently sent a formal demand letter to the Board. After the Board’s further denial of having access to the emails on the seized office computer, CGG and co-plaintiff Donna Curling have initiated legal action to obtain relevant electronic records.
“This entire period in election history is a troubling example of the lengths some public officials and their counsel will go to in an effort to deflect responsibility for their misconduct and flawed judgments. The first step in remediating such errors is to own up to them—something those involved here seem incapable of,” Cary Ichter, Atlanta-based counsel for CGG said.
CGG and Ms. Curling have requested expedited treatment by the Court given the potential importance of the communications may have in the upcoming Curling case trial in January, 2024.
Coalition for Good Governance is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization focused on election security and voter privacy. CGG is the organizational plaintiff in the Curling v Raffensperger case concerning the security of Georgia’s touchscreen voting system, in which plaintiffs obtained a 2019 federal court order declaring the use of Diebold touchscreen machines unconstitutional. Plaintiffs seek the same type of relief enjoining the use of the current Dominion touchscreen ballot marking devices.
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