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      Judge Says Lindsey Graham Can Be Questioned About Election Activity

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      Prosecutors in Atlanta have called the Republican senator to testify before a special grand jury investigating efforts by Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn his election loss.ATLANTA — In a setback for Senator Lindsey Graham, a federal judge ruled on Thursday that prosecutors can ask him about certain elements of his November 2020 phone calls with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state. Mr. Raffensperger has said that in those calls, Mr. Graham suggested rejecting mail-in votes in the presidential election from counties with high rates of questionable signatures.The order from U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May must now be taken up for consideration by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. It is the latest twist in a protracted legal drama in which Mr. Graham has sought to avoid appearing before a special grand jury in Atlanta that is investigating efforts by Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn Mr. Trump’s narrow loss in the state in 2020.Mr. Graham’s phone calls to Mr. Raffensperger were followed, weeks later, by a call from Mr. Trump himself, who asked Mr. Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes to put him over the top.Mr. Graham has argued that he should not have to comply at all with a subpoena to testify before the special grand jury. His lawyers raised issues of sovereign immunity and the fact that Mr. Graham is “a high-ranking government official.”Judge May rejected those arguments in a ruling in mid-August. But a week later, the appellate court asked the judge to determine whether limits should be applied to Mr. Graham’s testimony, based on the U.S. Constitution’s Speech or Debate clause, which protects lawmakers from being questioned about their legitimate legislative functions.Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationCard 1 of 5Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationAn immediate legal threat to Trump. More

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      L. Lin Wood, a Trump Ally, Is Called to Testify in Election-Meddling Inquiry

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      Mr. Wood said he would appear before the special grand jury in Atlanta.ATLANTA — L. Lin Wood, a trial lawyer and an ardent supporter of Donald J. Trump who pushed a number of falsehoods about election fraud after the 2020 presidential contest, has been asked to give testimony in the criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the Georgia election, he confirmed on Tuesday.In a phone call, Mr. Wood said that his lawyer had been informed that Mr. Wood’s testimony was being sought by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office. Mr. Wood said he would comply and go before the special grand jury that has been looking into efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to reverse Mr. Trump’s election loss.“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Wood said. “I’ve got nothing to hide, so I’ll go down and talk to them.”Prosecutors’ efforts to secure Mr. Wood’s testimony in the closed-door grand jury sessions were first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Mr. Wood, a trial lawyer, earned national fame for taking on high-profile clients, most notably Richard A. Jewell, who was wrongly suspected of setting off a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.Last week, prosecutors in the election-meddling case noted — in court documents seeking the testimony of another pro-Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell — that Mr. Wood had given a December 2021 interview to CNBC in which he spoke of hosting meetings “at a plantation in South Carolina for the purpose of exploring options to influence the results of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere.”The court filing noted that the meetings had been attended by Ms. Powell; Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to Mr. Trump; “and other individuals known to be associated with the Trump campaign.”Mr. Wood said that he had been informed that he was a material witness but that he had not been informed that he was a target of the investigation.Prosecutors in Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta, have brought more than 30 witnesses before the special grand jury, which was impaneled with the sole purpose of looking into election interference. Once it has completed the work of hearing from witnesses and considering evidence, it will issue an advisory report that could be taken to a regular grand jury with the power to issue indictments.Prosecutors have already brought Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former lawyer for Mr. Trump, before the special grand jury and have told him he is a target, meaning he could eventually face an indictment. In recent days they have also signaled that they hope to compel the testimony of other well-known Trump associates, including Ms. Powell and Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. More

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      Democrats in Georgia, Buoyed by Recent Wins, Seek to Keep Up Momentum

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      COLUMBUS, Ga. — As President Biden and Democrats in Congress have notched some wins in Washington lately, Democrats in Georgia have been happily accepting the credit.“Georgia Democrats, we did the work,” Stacey Abrams, the party’s nominee for governor, told delegates at the state party’s convention this weekend. “We provided the voices and the votes that delivered these resources, and now we deserve a better life, a brighter future.”Georgia Democrats’ claim as the clutch players of the 2020 cycle is earned — the state’s Electoral College votes went to a Democrat for the first time since 1992, and it elected two Democratic senators, giving the party control of the Senate. But it has no doubt ramped up the pressure for 2022, raising expectations that the far-from-solidly-blue state might not meet in 2022.Behind Democrats’ boasts at the convention, there is considerable anxiety among party activists. Democrats’ success hinges on a mix of sky-high turnout from the base along with a strong showing from moderate and independent voters in conservative-leaning counties. Now, with a racially diverse statewide ticket and more funding and manpower than the state party has ever seen, the party threw its support behind both its current slate of candidates and its strategy from the past cycle.Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor, said the slate of statewide candidates was “the most extraordinary ticket Georgia has ever produced.”David Walter Banks for The New York TimesRiding a wave of recent legislative wins on climate and health care, along with a boost from President Biden’s student debt relief plan, politicians at Georgia’s Democratic State Convention this weekend played up the role of their voters in securing those victories in Washington.One of the two senators Georgians elected in 2020, Raphael Warnock, is vying this year for a full term against the former University of Georgia football icon Herschel Walker. On Saturday, in a packed convention hall 100 miles southwest of Atlanta, Mr. Warnock joined the state’s top Democratic candidates and elected officials to pitch the party faithful on making the 2022 midterms a repeat of the last election cycle.Mr. Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church and the first Black Democrat to represent Georgia in the Senate, focused his speech on the policies that Democrats passed with a razor-thin majority in the Senate and his effort to push Mr. Biden to take action on student loan debt. After those wins, he said, Democrats need time to accomplish even more.“I believe that we’ve started to shape the future that embraces all of our children. But that work is not yet done,” Mr. Warnock told the large crowd of delegates, elected officials and supporters that gathered on Saturday, imploring them to organize in their communities to turn out in the same large numbers that elected him and Jon Ossoff to the Senate in 2021. “I’m glad you’re in this room,” he said. “But the work happens outside of this room.”The convention kicked off a 10-week stretch of campaigning and voter mobilization efforts that will determine the party’s fate in the November midterm elections and prove whether the party’s wins during the 2020 presidential election and U.S. Senate runoffs were a one-off in the state or the beginning of a trend toward blue.Among those counting on big Democratic gains is Representative Sanford D. Bishop Jr., a 15-term incumbent whose district is a top target for Republicans under new lines that make it more competitive. His Republican challenger is Chris West, a lawyer and first-time candidate who has campaigned on a heavily conservative platform and painted Mr. Bishop as disconnected from voters in the heavily rural district, which stretches from the Florida-Georgia line through the center of the state.Mr. Bishop said he did not believe that voters in his district would think of him as “out of touch” nor would they deny that he’s been “up close and personal” with constituents. He pointed to his staff and called them his “eyes and ears” in the district. Asked if that would be enough to set him apart, he underlined his decades spent in both the Georgia state house and U.S. House of Representatives and criticized Mr. West as having “no legislative experience.”As Georgia’s Republican candidates pummel Democrats on the economy and tie them to Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings, Democrats used Saturday’s convention to highlight the contrast between their policies and those of Republicans, especially on abortion access and preservation of democracy. Ms. Abrams exalted her running mates, calling Georgia’s slate of statewide candidates “the most extraordinary ticket Georgia has ever produced.”She added: “It looks like Georgia and sounds like Georgia — it knows Georgia.” More

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      Brian Kemp Must Testify in Trump Inquiry After Election

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      ATLANTA — A judge ruled on Monday that Gov. Brian P. Kemp of Georgia must appear before a special grand jury investigating election interference by former President Donald J. Trump, but will not be compelled to do so until after the Nov. 8 election.Mr. Kemp, who is running for a second term this year, is one of a number of high-profile Republicans who have been fighting subpoenas that call upon them to testify in the sprawling case. Unlike many of those other Republicans, Mr. Kemp does not appear to have been involved in efforts after the November 2020 election to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss in Georgia.Indeed, Mr. Kemp resisted a personal entreaty from Mr. Trump, in December 2020, to convene the state Legislature in order to appoint pro-Trump electors from Georgia, even though Joseph R. Biden, a Democrat, had won the popular vote in the state.Nevertheless, Mr. Kemp’s lawyers in recent days have tried to persuade Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court that under Georgia law, the sitting governor should not be subject to subpoenas. They argued, among other things, that the governor was protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, and that the subpoena had been issued “for improper political purposes” because his presence was being demanded before the November 2022 election. The investigation is being overseen by a Democrat, District Attorney Fani T. Willis of Fulton County, which encompasses most of Atlanta.In a prepared statement on Monday, a spokesperson for Mr. Kemp said the court had “correctly paused” his testimony until after the election, saying the governor’s office would work “to ensure a full accounting of the governor’s limited role in the issues being investigated is available to the special grand jury.”Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationCard 1 of 5Understand Georgia’s Trump Election InvestigationAn immediate legal threat to Trump. More

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      Is a Local Prosecutor Making the Strongest Case Against Trump?

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      Rachel Quester and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherSince he left office, former President Donald J. Trump has been facing several investigations.They include the congressional inquiry into the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol and the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago, his club and Florida residence, as part of an investigation into his handling of classified material.Of all the government investigations, the one that is receiving the least attention — a case being made by a local prosecutor in Georgia — may end up being the most consequential.On today’s episodeRichard Fausset, a correspondent based in Atlanta for The New York Times.Fani T. Willis, an Atlanta area district attorney, is casting a wide net as she looks at what happened in Georgia after the 2020 election.Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via APBackground readingOver a year into a criminal investigation of election interference by Mr. Trump and his allies, a Georgia prosecutor is beginning to show the broad contours of her inquiry.Fani T. Willis, the Atlanta area district attorney, is seeking to build a broad conspiracy case that encompasses multifaceted efforts by Trump allies to disrupt and overturn the 2020 election.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Richard Fausset contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Sofia Milan, Ben Calhoun and Susan Lee.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli and Maddy Masiello. More

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      Michigan GOP Set to Nominate Election-Denying Lawyer Backed by Trump

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      Several weeks after the 2020 election, as Donald J. Trump worked to overturn his defeat, he called a Republican lawmaker in Michigan with an urgent request. Mr. Trump had seen a report that made wild claims about rigged voting machines in a rural northern county in the state. He wanted his allies to look into it.The president told the lawmaker that a Michigan lawyer, Matthew DePerno, had already filed a lawsuit and that it looked promising, according to the lawmaker and two others familiar with the call.For that lawmaker, the lawyer’s name set off alarms. Mr. DePerno, a trial attorney from Kalamazoo, was well known in the Legislature for representing a former legislator embroiled in a sex scandal. Mr. DePerno had spent years unsuccessfully accusing lawmakers and aides of devising a complex plot to bring down his client, complete with accusations of collusion, stalking, extortion, doctored recordings and secretive phone tapping. Federal judges dismissed the cases, with one calling a conspiracy claim “patently absurd.”Mr. DePerno’s involvement will only undermine your cause, the lawmaker, who along with the others asked for anonymity to discuss the private conversation, told the president. Mr. Trump seemed to dig in: If everyone hates Mr. DePerno, he should be on my team, Mr. Trump responded, according to two of the people.Donald Trump endorsed the candidacy of Matthew DePerno, who pushed a conspiracy theory about the vote count in a rural Michigan county.Emily Elconin/ReutersBolstered by his association with the former president, Mr. DePerno on Saturday was nominated as the G.O.P. candidate for attorney general, the top legal official in the state, at a state party convention. He is among a coterie of election deniers running for offices that have significant authority over elections, worrying some election experts, Democrats and some Republicans across the country.This month, the Michigan attorney general’s office released documents that suggest Mr. DePerno was a key orchestrator of a separate plot to gain improper access to voting machines in three other Michigan counties. The attorney general, Dana Nessel, the Democrat Mr. DePerno is challenging for the office, requested that a special prosecutor be appointed to pursue the investigation into the scheme and weigh criminal charges. Mr. DePerno denies the allegations and called them politically motivated.Mr. DePerno played a critical role in the report mentioned by Mr. Trump about that rural county, Antrim. The report turned a minor clerical error into a major conspiracy theory, and was later dismissed as “idiotic” by William P. Barr, an attorney general under Mr. Trump, and “demonstrably false” by Republicans in the Michigan Senate.For some who have watched his career, there are parallels between Mr. DePerno’s dive into election conspiracies and his recent legal record. He has at times used the legal system to advance specious claims and unfounded allegations detailed in a blizzard of lengthy filings, according to an examination of court records in some of his cases and interviews with attorneys and judges.“The playbook is the same,” said Joshua Cline, a former Republican legislative aide whom Mr. DePerno sued as part of the conspiracy allegations involving the legislature. The case was dismissed in court. “It’s trying to play to a base of people and trying to get them to buy into something that when you put the magnifying glass to it, it falls apart,” Mr. Cline said. “It’s more than terrifying.”More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsThe Evidence Against a Red Wave: Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it’s increasingly hard to see the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage. A strong Democratic showing in a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley is the latest example.New Women Voters: The number of women signing up to vote surged in some states after Roe was overturned, particularly in states where abortion rights are at risk.Sensing a Shift: Abortion rights, falling gas prices, legislative victories and Donald J. Trump’s re-emergence have Democrats dreaming again that they just might keep control of Congress. But the House map still favors Republicans.Bruising Fights in N.Y.: A string of ugly primaries played out across the state, as Democrats and Republicans fought over rival personalities and the ideological direction of their parties.Mr. DePerno declined to be interviewed. In response to written questions, he stood by his claims and defended his legal tactics.“If you are criticizing me on being a bulldog of a lawyer who is well-versed in the law and procedure and who defends his client to the best of his ability, I take that criticism with pride,” he said in a statement.At least five times, Mr. DePerno’s clients or legal colleagues have asked Michigan’s Attorney Grievance Commission to investigate his conduct, according to records reviewed by The New York Times. Three requests have not been previously reported: The commission keeps the filings and investigations private unless they result in formal disciplinary complaints.Three of the five investigations were closed without disciplinary actions, the records showed. In at least one of those closed cases, however, the commission did find Mr. DePerno’s conduct — baselessly accusing a judge of taking a bribe — worthy of a private “admonishment,” according to a 2021 letter viewed by The Times. Mr. DePerno said a fourth inquiry, regarding the Michigan Legislature cases, also closed privately, and another, related to the Antrim County case, is still open. Mr. DePerno did not respond to a request for records confirming his account.Asked about the grievances, Mr. DePerno said: “I have never been disciplined. The reality is that any person at any time can file any garbage they want” with the commission.One of the completed investigations involved former clients who sued Mr. DePerno over malpractice, claiming he had taken actions without their consent, overcharged them and tried to foreclose on their home as payment. A federal magistrate judge also expressed concerns about Mr. DePerno’s conduct in the case, at one point sanctioning him for obstructing a deposition and coaching a witness. In the same hearing, the judge also said Mr. DePerno had “arrogantly tried to justify the unjustifiable” in a brief, and falsely and unethically accused another lawyer of being unprofessional.“Mr. DePerno, you get an F,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph G. Scoville said, according to a transcript.Mr. DePerno called the federal magistrate’s comments “overly harsh and unwarranted.” The malpractice lawsuit, which was first reported by Bridge Michigan, was later settled.A Scandal in the State HouseMr. DePerno also faced criticism in a far more prominent case. In 2015, he was hired by Todd Courser, a freshman state House member and Tea Party activist who was accused of trying to cover up an extramarital affair with a fellow legislator by producing a “false-flag” email, according to court filings and articles in The Detroit News.Mr. DePerno called in forensic experts to argue that audio recordings used by local media in reporting on the scandal had been doctored. He claimed that legislative leaders and aides had conspired to wiretap Mr. Courser and fabricate and destroy evidence. He lodged accusations of lying and bias against the lawyers and judges. He sued aides, lawmakers, The Detroit News, the Michigan State Police, the attorney general and even the hotel chain where Mr. Courser and the other lawmaker met.The legal blitz was not successful. Some claims were dismissed for procedural reasons; others were found to have no merit. One federal district judge, Gordon Quist, called the conspiracy claim “not only implausible, but absurd on its face.” Judge Quist did reject a request to sanction Mr. Courser and Mr. DePerno for filing claims with no basis in fact. An appeals court ruling also noted that one of his theories was “not entirely implausible,” but still found there was no merit to that claim.Another federal appeals court panel wrote that Mr. Courser spent “more time enumerating claims than developing arguments.”Mr. DePerno, left, with Todd Courser during a hearing in 2016. Mr. Courser was accused of trying to cover up an extramarital affair with a fellow legislator.David Eggert/Associated PressA state circuit court judge imposed a nearly $80,000 sanction against Mr. DePerno and Mr. Courser in a defamation lawsuit against The Detroit News, finding Mr. DePerno “does not have a reasonable basis that the underlying facts are true as represented,” according to a transcript of a state court hearing in 2019. Mr. DePerno later sued that judge in federal court, accusing him of bias. He eventually dropped the case against the judge and agreed to a settlement with the news organization that cut the payment to $20,000.The Courser cases became a legal morass, with criminal charges filed against Mr. Courser and a barrage of civil suits. The cases dragged on for years, exasperating lawyers and clients. Michael Nichols, a Michigan lawyer who represented a co-defendant in a related criminal case, said Mr. DePerno often seemed to be more interested in pushing his theory about political bias against Tea Party-aligned Republicans than defending his client against the criminal charges.“I think he wanted to make this all about getting attention as the doll of the Tea Party movement,” Mr. Nichols said.In August 2019, Mr. Courser pleaded no contest to willful neglect of duty by a public officer, a misdemeanor.Mr. Courser in a recent interview stood by his longtime contention that he is the victim of a conspiracy by the legislative aides, legislators and others.He said Mr. DePerno “did everything he had to do to defend his client against the tyranny and unjust prosecution.”“I have nothing but great praise and admiration,” Mr. Courser said. “He’s going to be a great attorney general.”2020 Election ClaimsShortly after Mr. Trump lost the presidential election in Michigan, Bill Bailey, a real estate agent in the state’s lower peninsula, noticed some anomalies in the initial vote count from his local county, Antrim.The results in the conservative county had suddenly, and briefly, been reported as a win for Joseph R. Biden Jr., owing to an error in the clerk’s office. Mr. Bailey connected with Mr. Trump’s legal team, which advised him to get a Michigan lawyer, according to an associate of the legal team.He found Mr. DePerno, who got a court order granting him access to data from Antrim County’s voting machines. That information became the basis for the Antrim report and also gave Mr. DePerno a place in the loose collection of Trump associates, self-proclaimed data gurus and lawyers who were searching for evidence that could propel the fiction that Mr. Trump won the race. Mr. DePerno, along with the others, have continued that quest.Mr. DePerno in October 2021, at an event calling for an “audit” of the 2020 election in Michigan, which Mr. Trump lost.Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal, via Associated PressAs his work in Antrim County gained national attention, he began raising money. By December 2020, Mr. DePerno had set up multiple donation links on his website under the banner of “The 2020 Election Fraud Defense Fund.” One was hosted by a Michigan resident and has raised $62,000 to date. Another was started by Mr. DePerno, and has raised more than $400,000, according to a live tracker on the site.Mr. DePerno eventually added a direct PayPal invoice button urging people to “Donate via PayPal.” The link went directly to his law firm’s website. Asked about the PayPal link, Mr. DePerno said it was meant for clients to pay their legal bills.Mr. DePerno has refused to answer further questions about how he has used the money. In June, Republicans in the State Senate asked the attorney general to investigate how people have used the Antrim County theory “to raise money or publicity for their own ends,” though they did not single out Mr. DePerno.By spring, as it became clear that Mr. DePerno was flirting with a run for attorney general, Republicans in Michigan grew fearful that his candidacy could be a drag on the entire ticket, according to multiple former members of the state party and others familiar with the state party discussions. They encouraged another Republican to run and tried — and failed — to head off a potential endorsement from Mr. Trump.In September, Mr. Trump issued an endorsement praising Mr. DePerno for being “on the front lines pursuing fair and accurate elections, as he relentlessly fights to reveal the truth.”Kitty Bennett More

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      Promoting His Memoir, Kushner Offers Tortured Defenses of Trump

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      Jared Kushner, who spent his years in the White House evading responsibility for his father-in-law’s most extreme moves, has had to answer for some of them on his book tour.WASHINGTON — Making the rounds promoting his new memoir, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald J. Trump, this week ran into the question he has managed for months to avoid commenting on publicly: Did he agree with Mr. Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen?“I think that there’s different words,” Mr. Kushner told the talk show host Megyn Kelly during a friendly interview on SiriusXM. He added, “I think there’s a whole bunch of different approaches that different people have taken, and different theories.”Pressed to say whether Mr. Trump lost, Mr. Kushner demurred. “I believe it was a very sloppy election,” he said. “I think that there’s a lot of issues that I think if litigated differently may have had different insights into them.”In reality, the words that election officials have used to describe the 2020 contest are “the most secure in American history,” and judges across the country rejected nearly all of the several dozen lawsuits that allies of Mr. Trump filed alleging fraud.Mr. Kushner’s reluctance to concede as much reflected the contortions he is now attempting as he tries to sell a book whose success hinges on his close ties to Mr. Trump. At the same time, he is seeking to keep his distance from the lies and misdeeds that paved the way for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Like the memoir itself, titled “Breaking History,” the task involves a highly selective narrative that casts Mr. Kushner as a young star getting things done in the White House without getting his hands dirty.“Before I came into office,” the unelected Mr. Kushner said on Tuesday, settling into the “Fox & Friends” couch, the “conventional thinking” had been that there could never be peace between Israel and Arab nations “until you have peace with the Palestinians.”In that interview, Mr. Kushner, who was a senior adviser in the Trump White House, credited himself with helping to bring an “outsider’s point of view” to the world’s intractable problems.“Before I came into office,” Mr. Kushner said, the “conventional thinking” had been that there could never be peace between Israel and Arab nations “until you have peace with the Palestinians.”Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesIn another interview, he noted that his father-in-law had “asked me to take lead on building the wall.”During a virtual book event, Mr. Kushner even suggested he might be immortal, saying that he had prioritized exercising since leaving the White House because his generation could be “the first generation to live forever.”When it comes to Jan. 6 and the election lies that spurred the riot, Mr. Kushner is less sure-footed. In the interview with Ms. Kelly, he labored to defend Mr. Trump’s feverish obsession with the 2020 election.“What’s happened over the last year is that there has been a debate that’s been badly needed in this country about election integrity,” he said. More

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      Election Data Breach Attracts Georgia Investigators

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      The district attorney in Atlanta is seeking to build a broad conspiracy case that encompasses multifaceted efforts by Trump allies to disrupt and overturn the 2020 election.The day after Donald J. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, a small group working on his behalf traveled to rural Coffee County, Ga., about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta.One member of the group was Paul Maggio, an executive at a firm based in Atlanta called SullivanStrickler, which helps organizations analyze and manage their data. His company had been hired by Sidney Powell, a conspiracy theorist and lawyer advising Mr. Trump, who was tasked with scouring voting systems in Georgia and other states. It was part of an effort by Trump allies in a number of swing states to access and copy sensitive election software, with the help of friendly election administrators.“We are on our way to Coffee County, Georgia, to collect what we can from the election/voting machines and systems,” Mr. Maggio wrote to Ms. Powell on the morning of Jan. 7, 2021, according to an email exchange that recently emerged in civil litigation. Weeks later, Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area Trump supporter and bail bondsman who traveled to Coffee County on a chartered plane, described what he and the group did there.“We scanned every freaking ballot,” he said in a recorded phone conversation in March 2021. Mr. Hall said that the team had the blessing of the local elections board and “scanned all the equipment, imaged all the hard drives and scanned every single ballot.”This week, court filings revealed that the Coffee County data breach is now part of the sprawling investigation into election interference being conducted by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., which encompasses most of Atlanta.Though Coffee County is well outside of her jurisdiction, Ms. Willis is seeking to build a broad conspiracy and racketeering case that encompasses multifaceted efforts by Trump allies to disrupt and overturn the lawful election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. On Aug. 16, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation also confirmed that it was working with the Georgia secretary of state’s office on an investigation into the Coffee County data breach, court records show. Many of the details of the Coffee County visit were included in emails and texts that surfaced in civil litigation brought by voting rights activists against Georgia’s secretary of state; news of the breach was reported earlier by The Washington Post.A Trump supporter protested election results at the Georgia State Capitol in 2020.Audra Melton for The New York TimesSimilar breaches coordinated by Trump allies played out in several swing states. This month, Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, a Democrat, sought the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate data breaches there. She is seeking to remove herself from the case because one of the people potentially implicated in the scheme is her likely Republican election opponent, Matthew DePerno. Ms. Powell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.SullivanStrickler, in a statement released by a law firm representing the company, said it “has never been part of a ‘pro-Trump team’ or any ‘team’ whose goal is to undermine our democracy,” adding that it was a “politically agnostic” firm that was hired to “preserve and forensically copy the Dominion voting machines used in the 2020 election.” The statement said it was “categorically false” that SullivanStrickler was part of an effort that “illegally ‘breached’ servers” or other voting equipment, adding that it was retained and directed by “licensed, practicing attorneys.”“The firm elected to cease any further new work on this matter after the Jan. 7 time period,” the statement said. “With the benefit of hindsight, and knowing everything they know now, they would not take on any further work of this kind.”Legal experts say the Fulton County investigation could be particularly perilous for Mr. Trump’s allies, and perhaps for Mr. Trump himself, given the phone call that Mr. Trump made as president to Georgia’s secretary of state on Jan. 2, 2021, asking him to “find” enough votes to help him overturn his election loss in the state.A special grand jury has been impaneled with the sole purpose of investigating election meddling in the state and has already heard testimony from more than 30 witnesses, including Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Giuliani is one of at least 18 people who have been notified by prosecutors that they could face indictment in the case.This week, prosecutors filed court documents indicating that they were seeking testimony from a number of other Trump allies, including Ms. Powell and Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. The petition seeking to compel Ms. Powell’s testimony notes that Ms. Powell coordinated with SullivanStrickler “to obtain elections data” from Coffee County, adding: “There is further evidence in the public record that indicates that the witness was involved in similar efforts in Michigan and Nevada during the same time period.”As a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump after the election, Ms. Powell made a number of specious claims about election fraud, including an assertion that Democrats had “developed a computer system to alter votes electronically.” Ms. Powell is among those who have been sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems, the company that provides the voting machines for Coffee County and the rest of Georgia. As part of that suit, lawyers for Ms. Powell have argued that “no reasonable person would conclude” that some of her wilder statements “were truly statements of fact.”Fulton County prosecutors are seeking to have Ms. Powell testify before the special grand jury next month. In their court filing this week, they said that she possessed “unique knowledge” about postelection meetings held at the South Carolina plantation of L. Lin Wood, a pro-Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist. Mr. Wood, prosecutors wrote, stated that he and a group of other Trump supporters, including Ms. Powell and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, met at the plantation to explore “options to influence the results” of the 2020 election “in Georgia and elsewhere.”President Donald J. Trump departed a campaign rally in support of Georgia’s Republican senators in 2020.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMs. Willis’s office cited the Coffee County data breach in its filing on Thursday seeking Ms. Powell’s testimony, which was the first time the matter had surfaced in connection with her investigation. It remains unclear to what extent Ms. Willis’s office will focus on the Coffee County matter in her inquiry, or what, if any, charges could flow from it.“There are a variety of avenues the state has to bring criminal charges,” said David D. Cross, a lawyer representing plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit brought by civic groups against the Georgia secretary of state’s office over election security. “There are specific laws in Georgia that prevent access to voting equipment in particular,” he said, as well as “general laws about accessing computer equipment that doesn’t belong to you.”Mr. Trump won nearly 70 percent of Coffee County, which is home to just 43,000 people. Trump officials most likely targeted the county’s voting system because the county was run by friendly officials who were eager to cooperate. Cathy Latham, who was chair of the local Republican Party at the time, was also one of 16 pro-Trump fake electors who convened in the Georgia State Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, despite Mr. Trump’s loss in the state. All of them, including Ms. Latham, have been identified as targets of Ms. Willis’s investigation.The costs of election security breaches have been onerous. In Antrim County, Mich., which was at the forefront of efforts to overturn the election, Sheryl Guy, the clerk, said on Thursday that officials had to rent voting equipment to replace equipment that is being held as evidence in civil litigation.In Colorado, the secretary of state’s office estimated that taxpayers incurred a bill of at least $1 million to replace voting equipment in Mesa County after a pro-Trump election supervisor was indicted on charges that she tampered with the equipment after the 2020 election. Election experts noted that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, recommended that the safest course of action was to decommission voting equipment that has been compromised.“We’re getting to the point where this is happening at an alarming rate,” Lawrence Norden, senior director of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center, said in an interview on Thursday. “When election officials permit or facilitate untrustworthy actors in gaining access to the system without any oversight, that is in and of itself going to leave the public questioning whether they trust these systems.”Nick Corasaniti More