Trump Witch Hunt Gets Curiouser and Curiouser

By Brent E. Zepke, Esq.

Trump has a knack for bringing people together. Fani Willis (above) and Nathan Wade (below)

Another couple of characters in the “Witch Hunt Without End” in Georgia re-emerged last week in a courtroom in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Georgia: they were the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, and the Obama-appointed Judge Amy Totenberg. 

Raffensberger’s role began with his choosing to use the Dominion “ImageCast” X Ballot Marking Devices (Dominion BMDs) instead of paper ballots in the 2020 presidential election.

Was there a problem with choosing the Dominion BMDs in Georgia?

In 2017, Donna Curling (Curling group) filled the lawsuit Curling v. Raffensberger to try and prevent the use of the Dominion BMDs in Georgia elections.

What was the result of the Curling lawsuit?

Judge Totenberg’s delays, and Raffensberger’s refusal to co-operate, finally in the summer of 2020, caused the frustrated Curling group to hire the respected University of Michigan Professor Alex Halderman, assisted by Auburn University’s Drew Sringall to test the security of the Dominion BMDs. Both were chosen because their out-of-state status would ensure the duo’s political independence.

Was the Dominion BMDs system secure?

No, within “twelve person-weeks,” Halderman and Sringall were able to demonstrate a simple way to breach the security and change votes.

It is not known whether Raffensberger was aware of their discovery before using the Dominion BMDs in the 2020 presidential election.

The Dominion BMDs showed Biden had 11,779 more votes than Trump, meaning that changing just half of them, or 5,890 out of the 4,935,487 votes cast, would have changed the outcome

In the less than two months between the election and certification, the lack of paper ballots or other means of verifying the votes prevented the Trump team from verifying the accuracy of the vote count.

President Trump said his January 2, 2021, call to Raffensberger, was to ask about the finality of the vote count. Raffensberger’s notes would indicate that Trump asked that he “find more votes.”

Raffensberger used the same Dominion BMDs the next day in the election where the narrow defeat of the two Republican incumbent senators gave the majority in the senate to the Democrats.

Years later, after Trump became the leading GOP candidate for the 2024 presidential election, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, after meetings in the White House, hired Nathan Wade to file criminal charges against the ‘Trump 19” (see “Witch Hunt Without End”).         

Eight months after the 2020 election, on July 1, 2021, Judge Totenberg interrupted Halderman’s intent to publish the Halderman Report, by holding a closed – meaning no press – hearing where, after she and Raffensberger’s team read the report, the judge ordered it sealed.

The notes from the judge’s hearing indicate that she did not want the Trump team to be able to use it against Dominion in litigation.

In January 2024, Judge Totenberg “re-emerged” when, finally, the Curling v. Raffensberger case, the one filed seven years ago in 2017, trial began.

Halderman – two Georgia elections and 3 1/2 years after being hired – was permitted to testify in open court about his report.

When called, Halderman asked the attorneys for the “other” side, defendant Raffensberger’s counsel, if he could borrow the ballpoint pen the counsel was using.

Halderman, pen in hand, walked over to the Dominion voting machine that had been placed in evidence in the court room, and using the borrowed pen, depressed a button and changed a pre-programed vote for George Washington to Benedict Arnold: how long did this take? 

Seven seconds.

Judge Totenberg, when she sealed the report in July 2021, prevented the voters of Georgia from becoming aware that the report included the following excerpts: 

“Although the same BMDs are used in 15 states, Georgia is unique in using them statewide as the primary method of in-person voting.”

“This unusual arrangement places potentially malicious computers between Georgia voters and their paper ballots. Most U.S. voters mark paper ballots directly by hand, and the BMDs are reserved for those who need or request them. Georgians who vote at a polling place generally have no choice but to use the BMDs.”

“I played the role of an attacker and attempted to discover ways to compromise the system and change votes. I, along with my assistant, spent approximately twelve person weeks studying the machines, testing for vulnerabilities, and developing proof-of-concept attacks. Many of the attacks I successfully implemented could be effectuated by malicious actors with very little time and access to the machines, as little as mere minutes.”

“We discovered vulnerabilities in nearly every part of the system that is exposed to potential hackers. The most critical problem we found is an arbitrary-code-execution vulnerability that can be exploited to spread malware from a county’s central election management system (EMS) to every BMD in the jurisdiction. This makes it possible to attack the BMDs at scale, over a wide area, without needing physical access to any of them.”

“Our report explains how attackers could exploit the flaws we found to change votes or potentially even affect election outcomes in Georgia, including how they could defeat the technical and procedural protections the state has in place.”

The damage done by the Totenberg-Raffensberger duo includes attempting to deprive the voters of Georgia of:

knowing if their votes counted;

knowing the truth, as they re-elected Raffensberger in 2022;

learning about paying for Willis to try and falsely accuse the Trump 19;

experiencing a fair 2024 election.

Raffensberger plans to use the same machines in the 2024 elections. 

Now that’s a conspiracy!