A new report from Reuters detailed how Michigan GOP Attorney General candidate Matt DePerno led a conspiracy to breach voting machines in Michigan. DePerno and his cronies:
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Illegally gained access to a voting machine in Roscommon County
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Used the illegally obtained machine as the basis for a sham report to try to overturn the will of the people of Michigan in the 2020 election.
Matthew DePerno is a conspiracy obsessed politician who is too corrupt and extremist to protect the people of Michigan. He is willing to go to criminal-level lengths to pursue self-serving conspiracies and clearly cannot be trusted to fight for Michigan families.
Reuters: Trump-backed Michigan attorney general candidate involved in voting-system breach, documents show
Nathan Layne
08/08/22
Key points:
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An analysis shows that Matthew DePerno’s team examined voting equipment hunting for evidence to support former President Donald Trump’s false election fraud claims.
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Reuters established the connection between Michigan’s DePerno and the Richfield voting-system breach by matching the serial number of the township’s tabulator to a photograph in a publicly released report written by a member of DePerno’s team, James Penrose. State officials previously identified Richfield as the site of a voting-equipment security breach
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The photograph in the report showed a record of a vote-tabulator’s activity. The matching numbers indicate that DePerno’s team had access to the Richfield Township tabulator or its data.
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DePerno led the “Michigan Antrim County Election Lawsuit & Investigation Team,” which included himself, Detroit attorney Stefanie Lambert, private investigator Michael Lynch, and James Penrose, a former analyst for the National Security Agency. Penrose wrote the report that Reuters tied to a tabulator involved in the Richfield Township security breach.
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Jake Rollow, a spokesperson for the secretary of state, said the office does not believe DePerno’s team had legal approval to access ES&S voting equipment. “To ensure Michigan’s elections are secure in the future, there must be consequences now for people who illegally accessed the state’s voting machines,” he said.
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Access to tabulators is tightly restricted, and any machine compromised by an unauthorized person is typically taken out of commission. Among the 17 incidents identified by Reuters nationwide in which Trump supporters gained or attempted to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment, Michigan accounts for 11 of them.
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At an April 12, 2021 hearing, the judge shut down DePerno’s attempt to subpoena several Michigan counties for access to election data and equipment. In reality, DePerno’s associates had already taken possession of voting machines from local officials in Richfield Township in Roscommon County and Lake Township in Missaukee County.
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Lynch, the private investigator who worked with DePerno on his Antrim county case, exchanged texts with Lake Township clerk Korinda Winkelmann on March 20, 2021. Winkelman shared with Lynch an operational manual and a password for the device, while also speculating on how election systems might be rigged.
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Lynch had no authorization to examine the machine, and the incident remains under state investigation.
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Elsenheimer dismissed the Antrim suit in May 2021, a decision that was affirmed this year by the Michigan Court of Appeals. A Republican-led Michigan Senate committee issued a scathing report in June 2021 that called DePerno’s various allegations “demonstrably false.”
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