Federal law enforcement doesn't appear to be investigating the former president's allies' attempts, some successful, to access election machines. Experts are alarmed.
As news trickled out that former President Trump’s supporters had organized to access federally protected election machines, and copied sensitive information and software, election expert Susan Greenhalgh waited for FBI or Justice Department leaders to announce an investigation.
Now, just months before the 2024 presidential primaries, it remains unclear whether any federal agency has plans for a comprehensive investigation of the effort to gain access to election systems. Election and law enforcement experts are concerned that the stolen information might be used to interfere with future elections and that the FBI and Justice Department may be sending the wrong signal to those responsible if agencies don’t investigate.
After obtaining access, third parties copied sensitive information, including software used in election equipment in a majority of U.S. counties, and shared the information with an unknown number of people. It is not clear that every county where election systems were accessed has been identified. Those involved have indicated in news reports that similar efforts to access election machines were made in several other states.
Greenhalgh, who is a consulting expert for the plaintiffs in the Georgia civil suit, said she was aghast when people allegedly involved in accessing the Coffee County election system, and believed to have accessed machines in other states, said in depositions that they hadn’t been contacted by federal agents.
FBI spokespeople declined to answer questions from The Times about the letter or whether a national investigation was underway. Mesa County, Colo., clerk who was indicted in March 2022 on accusations that she helped an outsider gain access to election systems in May 2021, allowing sensitive data to be copied. Peters’ trial was recently paused so both sides could review a trove of new evidence provided by the FBI.
Becker, who spent seven years as a senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said it isn’t clear that accessing the machines and copying the information is actually a violation of federal law. “We haven’t been told on a national level that there was a commitment to ensure that all of the elections and all of those locations [and] any allegations have been effectively investigated,” Bowling said. “I think it’s important that that message be communicated that the premier law enforcement agency in the world has looked into this, and has looked into this with all of its capabilities.”
Cybersecurity and election experts say that a full investigation into who accessed election machines in 2020 and 2021, who paid for the efforts and how those involved intend to use the information is necessary to prevent problems in the future. “I don’t think they have any idea how many people have [an image of the election system], or what they’ve done with it,” Crane said.
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