The Republican candidate for Michigan attorney general led a team that gained unauthorized access to election equipment while seeking evidence to support former President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud, according to a Reuters analysis of court filings and public records. The analysis shows people working with Matthew DePerno — Trump’s nominee for the state’s top law enforcement post — examined a polling table from Richfield Township, a conservative stronghold of 3,600 people in northern Michigan’s Roscommon County. The Richfield security breach is one of four similar incidents being investigated by Michigan’s current attorney general, Democrat Dana Nessel. Under state law, it is a felony to seek or provide unauthorized access to election equipment. DePerno did not respond to a request for comment. A Republican attorney general nominee’s involvement in election fraud comes amid a nationwide effort by Trump fraud supporters to win state offices that could prove critical in deciding any future contested elections. In Arizona last week, three Trump-backed candidates who claim the 2020 election was stolen won the Republican primary for governor, attorney general and secretary of state, the top official overseeing the election. In Pennsylvania, Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano has vowed to certify any election he deems rigged through his secretary of state appointee. Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania are all presidential battlegrounds. Trump praised DePerno before a large audience this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas. “He’s going to make sure you have law and order and fair elections,” Trump said, pumping his fist as DePerno stood in the audience and waved. “This is an important fight.” Reuters traced the connection between Michigan’s DePerno and the Richfield election hack by matching the township’s plate serial number to a photo in a public report written by a member of DePerno’s team. The photograph showed a printed record of the activity of a voting board, which also included a series of ten digits. Reuters confirmed those numbers match the serial number of a Richfield voting board through public records obtained from the township. State officials had previously identified Richfield as the site of the election equipment security breach. DePerno had submitted the report as evidence in a failed lawsuit challenging the results of the 2020 election in a different Michigan county, Antrim. The report claimed that Dominion and ES&S election equipment was vulnerable to hacking and vote fraud. Reuters asked an election security expert to review the footage. Kevin Skoglund, president and chief technologist for the nonpartisan Citizens for Better Elections, an election security advocacy group, said the matching numbers show DePerno’s team had access to Richfield Township’s board or its data units. DePerno led the “Michigan Antrim County Voter Education & Research Team,” which included himself, Detroit attorney Stephanie Lambert, private investigator Michael Lynch and James Penrose, a former National Security Agency analyst, according to promotional materials for a July 2021 fundraising event in California sponsored by a conservative group that advertised appearances by members of DePerno’s group. Penrose, who had helped other prominent Trump allies in their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, authored the report that Reuters linked to a tax collector involved in the Richfield Township security breach. Lambert, Lynch and Penrose did not respond to requests for comment. The previously undisclosed link to GOP attorney general nominee DePerno and his associates comes as Democratic incumbent Nessel advances her investigation, which began in February 2022. Nessel is seeking re-election, which would create a conflict of interest if her political opponent becomes a suspect in the investigation of her office. The attorney general’s office declined to comment on the details of its investigation, but said Nessel “will take appropriate steps to remove herself and her department should a conflict arise.” Those steps include asking a special prosecutor to look into election violations, according to a letter from the attorney general advising the secretary of state of the request. The request was sent to the coordinating council of prosecutors, an autonomous entity within the attorney general’s office that will decide whether a special prosecutor is warranted. Nessel’s office began investigating the election system security breaches at the request of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. In a February statement, Benson said “at least one unnamed third party” had accessed tabulation machines and data drives from Richfield Township and Roscommon County. Jake Rollow, a spokesman for the secretary of state, said the office does not believe DePerno’s team had legal authorization to access the ES&S voting equipment. Rollow declined to comment further on the attorney general’s investigation, but emphasized its importance. “To ensure that Michigan’s elections are secure in the future, there must be consequences now for the people who illegally accessed the state’s voting machines,” he said. ES & S did not respond to requests for comment.

PAYMENT ON A VOLUME

Voting and vote counting equipment are subject to strict chain of custody requirements to ensure accuracy and protection against fraud. Access to taggers is strictly limited and any machine tampered with by an unauthorized person is usually disabled. The four cases being investigated by Nessel are among at least 17 incidents found by Reuters nationwide in which Trump supporters gained or attempted to gain unauthorized access to election equipment. Michigan accounts for 11 of them, reflecting how conspiracy theorists sought to exploit an error in the initial reporting of 2020 Antrim County results to claim widespread fraud in the state, without evidence. A state review of the Antrim County incident found that a failure to properly update the software caused a computer error that caused county officials to initially list Joe Biden as the winner of the reliably Republican county. Officials quickly recognized and corrected the mistake, and Trump’s victory was confirmed when all the votes were counted. DePerno seized on the confusion, filing a lawsuit making the baseless claim that Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems tabulators were rigged to move votes from Trump to Biden in Adrim County. “There has never been any evidence of engineering fraud or manipulation in the 2020 elections in Michigan or any other state, and courts in Michigan and elsewhere have rejected such allegations as without merit,” said Dominion spokesman Tony Frato. In early December 2020, 13th Circuit Judge Kevin Elsenheimer granted DePerno’s legal team permission to take forensic images of Antrim County’s voting equipment to look for evidence of voter fraud. The court order was limited to Antrim, where only Dominion equipment was used. The mandate did not extend to other jurisdictions or machines made by other voting system providers. However, DePerno’s team filed two reports in April 2021 with the court that revealed they had also examined equipment manufactured by Election Systems & Software (ES & S). The report written by Penrose, dated April 9, included a photo of a “summary tape” with information about a taxifier’s activity on election night, such as when the results were submitted to the county. Among other things, the tape showed a sequence of digits: 0317350497. This is the serial number for one of two Richfield Township ES & S DS200 tabulators used in the 2020 vote, according to copies of documents obtained by Reuters through a public records request. Skoglund, the election security expert consulted by Reuters, said the matching numbers indicated the author of the report had access to either Richfield’s panel or a data drive containing the results and other information on the machine. “There is no doubt in my mind that the Penrose photo came from the same DS200 – that it had physical access,” Skoglund told Reuters. A second person familiar with the operation of the ES&S voting equipment reviewed records obtained by Reuters and agreed that the panel tape shown in the Penrose report matched the machine with the same serial number.

MORE MACHINES

The Penrose report was part of a series of submissions by DePerno’s team that failed to convince Judge Elsenheimer. In a hearing on April 12, 2021, the judge blocked DePerno’s attempt to subpoena several Michigan counties for access to election data and equipment. DePerno was interviewed later that day by two right-wing websites, Gateway Pundit and 100% Fed Up. DePerno said Penrose had looked at an ES & S machine. He added the group also looked at Dominion equipment “outside of County Antrim.” The lawyer said he doesn’t see Elsenheimer’s decision as a dead end. “Maybe there will be a county somewhere that decides to come forward and cooperate. That would be cool,” DePerno told the sites. In fact, 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, according to police records and text messages obtained through public records requests. Lynch, the private investigator who worked…