(Headline USA) A Pennsylvania judge has recommended the state’s high court impose civil contempt penalties against a Republican-majority county government that this summer secretly allowed a third party to copy data from Dominion voting machines used in the 2020 election.
Commonwealth Court President Judge Renee Cohn Jubilee’s 77-page report issued late Friday said the July inspection and copying of computer data from machines rented by Fulton County was a willful violation of a court order.
Dominion has been the subject of citizen concern. It has since sought the protection of the judicial system by filing a number of defamation lawsuits.
The Department of State ordered the county to stop using its rented Dominion machines after Bunch and Ulsh allowed one group, Wake TSI, access to them as part of an effort to monitor election data.
Fulton County, Bunch and Ulsh sued to challenge the state’s order that the machines could not be used in future elections, and Fulton County has since been using other machines.
“All chain of custody has been broken, and it is now impossible to determine what the state of the Dominion Voting Equipment was immediately after the Wake TSI Inspection.” Cohn Jubelirer wrote, “that is, the Speckin Inspection rendered the voting equipment unreliable as evidence of what Wake TSI did, and it is impossible to reverse that effect.”
The Department of State had told counties they were not allowed to provide others such access to voting machines. Ulsh and Bunch were moments away from permitting a third group, Envoy Sage LLC, to inspect the machines in January when the state Supreme Court put that on hold.
Litigation over the Envoy Sage inspection and the state’s order prohibiting outside access was planned for Supreme Court oral argument last month before the Department of State notified the justices of the Speckin inspection and sought penalties. The high court took the matter off its calendar and asked Cohn Jubelirer to investigate.
Cohn Jubelirer said the justices should not grant Chapman’s request that they dismiss the lawsuit that Fulton County, Ulsh and Bunch have pending against her. Instead, Cohn Jubelirer said that during the ongoing litigation any facts related to the machine inspections should be “conclusively established” in Chapman’s favor.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
