Co-Defendants and Unindicted Co-Conspirators: What Public Records Reveal About Trump Allies’ Election Denial Activities

On Aug. 1, the U.S. Justice Department indicted former President Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The indictment laid out a damning narrative detailing Trump and his allies’ efforts to reverse his loss, which led to the violent Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and the ongoing movement to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections. 

Just two weeks later, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., charged Trump and 18 others with engaging in a “criminal enterprise” to overturn the results of the election in Georgia. All defendants were charged with violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which broadly targets organized crime. 

The Justice Department’s indictment mentions six unnamed “co-conspirators” who allegedly assisted Trump in his criminal efforts to stay in power. Based on context and details provided in the indictment, five of them have been identified as Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark, and Kenneth Chesebro; the sixth co-conspirator is speculated by many to be Boris Epshteyn. 

While those five co-conspirators were not charged in the Justice Department’s indictment, they were among the 19 charged in Georgia. The Georgia indictment also mentions 30 unindicted, unnamed co-conspirators. Outlets such as CNN and the Washington Post have closely reviewed clues in the indictment to determine some of their identities.

Several of Trump’s allies who were active in his schemes to overturn the election — including those named as well as those speculated to have been mentioned — didn’t cease their efforts to undermine democracy after the fake-electors plot failed or even after President Joe Biden took office. American Oversight has been investigating the ongoing election denial movement and its threats to democracy, and has uncovered thousands of pages of public records that shed light on the movement’s activities after the 2020 election. Below, we take a look at a number of those allies and the records we have obtained that provide details about their work, from the immediate post-election hunt for evidence of widespread fraud to partisan election investigations, alleged voting machine breaches, and ongoing efforts to erode trust in democracy.

Justice Department Indictment Co-Conspirators

Co-Conspirator 1: Rudy Giuliani 

Giuliani is described in the Justice Department indictment as “an attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not.”

Through American Oversight’s investigation into the Arizona Senate’s sham “audit” of Maricopa County’s election results — one of the many anti-democratic efforts that emerged after the 2020 election — we obtained several records demonstrating Giuliani’s communications with state leaders who would eventually spearhead the biased election review, as well as his continued connection to the operation. 

Early Influence in Arizona
On Nov. 30, 2020, Giuliani hosted an unofficial hearing with Republican state lawmakers in Phoenix. Three weeks later, a staffer from the office of U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks — a congressman from Alabama who on Jan. 6 gave an inflammatory speech to Trump supporters near the White House — emailed state Rep. Mark Finchem and wrote that the office was “putting together a master memo on the valid grounds” for objecting to the Electoral College certification. The staffer asked Finchem for a memo detailing any “allegations of fraud and other election irregularities” from the meeting with Giuliani. Around this time, Finchem and incoming state Sen. Kelly Townsend were active in trying to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory. 

During the same time period, Giuliani was in close contact with Arizona Senate President Karen Fann as he, Trump, and Trump’s team attempted to rally state legislators around their baseless claims of voter fraud. On Dec. 6, Fann wrote in an email to a constituent that she had “spoken with Mayor Giuliani at least 6 times over the past two weeks” and that she, House Speaker Rusty Bowers, and their staff had had a “private two hour meeting” with Giuliani and the Trump legal team the day before. In other emails sent later that month, Fann told constituents that she had Giuliani’s “full support” as well as “a personal call from President Trump thanking us for pushing to prove any fraud.” 

Communications Through Christina Bobb
Giuliani also appears to have communicated with Arizona officials’ sham election investigation through Christina Bobb, a reporter for the right-wing One America News Network who later fundraised for the “audit” and in 2022 joined Trump’s legal team. On Dec. 4, 2020, Bobb sent Fann an email titled “AZ Evidence/Affidavits,” writing, “Mayor Giuliani asked me to send you these declarations. He will follow up with you as well. I will have one more email follow[ing] this one.” 

According to records, Giuliani may also have directly or indirectly been involved in the “audit” after it began in April 2021. “I was just asked to help on the AZ Audit starting on April 22nd for 15 days,” a 

volunteer wrote in an email that month. “This is all under the authorization of Christina Bobb, who works with Rudy.”

Co-Conspirator 2: John Eastman

The DOJ indictment refers to Eastman as “an attorney who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election.” Eastman — who also faces potential disbarment in California for his actions — outlined his plan for states to submit false electoral certificates in his infamous memo calling for Mike Pence to reject the results from states that submitted “dual slates of electors,” stating that Article II of the Constitution grants state legislatures “the plenary power to determine the manner for choosing presidential electors.”

Records we obtained indicate that state Sen. Fann may have met with Eastman in the weeks after the election. In a Dec. 13, 2020, email to a constituent who had demanded that the election results

 be decertified, Fann appears to allude to Eastman and echoed the legal theory advanced in his memo: “With respect to the US Constitution Article 2 and 3 provisions, we spent an hour and a half with a nationally accredited constitutional attorney which was extremely interesting and I learned a lot,” she wrote. “He stated that the ‘plenary clause’ allowing us to convene ourselves with a simple majority applies ‘when there is no clear winner of an election.’”

We also obtained a text message sent to Fann by Phil Waldron — a prominent election denier active in efforts to challenge the election, including having briefed members of Congress fraud theories in the days before Jan. 6 — indicating that he was “on [a] call with Prof Eastman.” Waldron’s firm, Allied Security Operations Group, was nearly hired by Fann to conduct the “audit,” and had previously written a thoroughly debunked report on alleged election irregularities in Michigan.  

Eastman was also invited to a recurring “Election Integrity Call” involving voter-fraud activists and high-profile election deniers like Waldron and True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht, as well as sympathetic state officials like Rep. Finchem. According to records we obtained, the calls appear to have begun before June 2021 and lasted through at least September 2021, and focused on “the election remedy process at the state level.” 

According to ABC News, prosecutors at Eastman’s August 2023 disciplinary trial presented a letter that ​​Eastman sent to former Wisconsin Rep. Timothy Ramthun in which he wrote that “state legislatures … do have the authority to de-certify the election of presidential electors.” We obtained that letter, dated Dec. 31, 2021. At that time, Ramthun was calling for the state legislature to overturn the results from the election that had occurred more than a year before. 

Co-Conspirator 3: Sidney Powell

The DOJ indictment refers to Powell as “an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud the Defendant privately acknowledged to others as ‘crazy’” but whose disinformation was “embraced and publicly amplified” by Trump. According to public records obtained by American Oversight, Powell’s far-fetched and deceitful claims of fraud also reached election-denying efforts in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. 

Pennsylvania and Connections to Wake TSI
Powell’s nonprofit, Defending the Republic, reportedly has ties to Wake TSI, the firm that conducted the 2020 and 2021 inspection of voting machines in Fulton County, Pa. At the instigation of state Sen. Doug Mastriano — as revealed in records we obtained — election officials in Pennsylvania’s Fulton County allowed the firm Wa

ke TSI to conduct a review of ballots. According to a handwritten note on an agreement between the county and Wake TSI, the firm was “contracted to Defending the Republic.”

American Oversight filed a lawsuit against Fulton County in January 2022 for records related to the review, and added Wake TSI as a defendant in April 2023. Wake TSI was also a subcontractor in the Maricopa “audit.”

Funding the Arizona ‘Audit’
American Oversight has obtained a number of documents that provide details about Wake TSI’s role as a Cyber Ninjas subcontractor in the Arizona “audit,” including a list of election deniers hired by Wake TSI to work on the review as well as emails regarding contract disputes with Cyber Ninjas. In addition, Powell’s Defending the Republic donated $550,000 to the “audit,” and we obtained other records of payments from Powell, including a $22,000 payment to Cyber Ninjas made in December 2021. 

On June 25, 2021, Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan wrote to Todd Sanders of the America Project, another “audit” funder, that he was “supposed to talk to Sidney later today,” seemingly referring to Powell. Two hours later, Logan wrote that he spoke with Powell and that she said “she’ll send something small.”

Powell had also been present at the so-called “unhinged” White House meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, along with Trump allies Patrick Byrne and Michael Flynn, both of whom were later to help fund the review as well, donating a combined total of more than $4.2 million through their nonprofits. 

Co-Conspirator 4: Jeffrey Clark

Clark is described in the DOJ indictment as “a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and who, with the Defendant, attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of fraud.”

As explained in both the DOJ and Fulton County indictments, on Dec. 28, 2020, Clark sent an email to acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue with an attached draft of a letter that he wanted the Justice Department to send to officials in Georgia. The draft letter, which 

American Oversight also obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, falsely claimed that the department was investigating claims of election irregularities and attempted to

 legitimize the fake elector plot, stating that a slate of electors supporting Trump had submitted their votes to Congress. 

The copy of Clark’s letter that American Oversight obtained included a handwritten note by a senior Justice Department official, which read, “Draft letter from Jeff Clark. Rejected by OAG, ODAG, + OLC,” referring to DOJ leadership. We also obtained a copy of Donoghue’s email response, which also included a handwritten note at the top of the page: “This letter was opposed by A/AG + OLC. Discussed w/ POTUS on January 3, 2021, and he rejected AAG Clark’s idea to send it.”

The indictment also refers to a Jan. 3 meeting between Clark and Rosen, in which Clark reportedly told the acting attorney general that Trump had decided to replace him with Clark. We obtained a calendar entry that indicates Rosen met with Clark at 3 p.m. that day. Rosen then requested a meeting with Trump to push back on the plan; the calendar indicates that he attended a meeting at the White House at 6 p.m., likely the same meeting where senior DOJ officials threatened to resign en masse if Rosen were fired. We previously obtained text messages sent by top Justice Department officials who opposed Trump’s plans, including one that said, “Justice is our client.” 

Clark’s Departure from the Trump Administration
Two days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Clark emailed Rosen about his plans to leave the administration at noon on Jan. 14. “I believe I’ve left a legacy of accomplishment starting after my confirmation in 2018,” Clark wrote. “On most matters, we have been in total and vigorous agreement or in virtually all sit

uations in at least in substantial agreement. But no one can agree on all things and reasonable minds can differ. Yet friendships and mutual professional respect endure.”

The records show that Rosen did not respond to Clark’s email, instead forwarding the message to DOJ official Claire Murray and writing: “I am not going to respond to Jeff Clark’s message given the events that took place with him. Those were not things on which ‘reasonable minds can differ’ and simply move along. It appears he still does not recognize how harmful his actions and proposals were.”

Co-Conspirator 5: Kenneth Chesebro

Chesebro, as the indictment describes him, is “an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.” A Nov. 18 memo that Chesebro sent to a Trump campaign lawyer in Wisconsin is one of the earliest records pointing to the hatching of the fake electors plot. Last year, American Oversight obtained emails indicating that in the weeks after Election Day, legislative leaders in Arizona and Wisconsin sought legal advice about whether legislators had the power to alter the selection of electors after the election had taken place. 

Boris Epshteyn

While the identity of the sixth co-conspirator is less certain than that of the others, events referenced in the indictment indicate that the individual may be Trump 2020 campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn. The indictment describes the sixth co-conspirator as “a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.” 

Following the indictment, the New York Times wrote that it had previously reported on an email apparently referenced in the charging document as an exchange between Co-conspirators 1 and 6. In the email, Epshteyn provided Giuliani with a list of recommended attorneys “for the memo on choosing electors.” American Oversight has filed several records requests seeking communications between government officials and Epshteyn. Epshteyn is also unindicted Co-conspirator 3 in the Georgia case.

Fulton County Indictment Defendants

Along with Trump, Giuliani, Eastman, Powell, Clark, and Chesebro, 13 others were charged in the Fulton County indictment. Below are records we have obtained through public records requests about several of those other 13. 

Mark Meadows

The indictment accuses former White House Chief of Staff Meadows of assisting Trump with attempting to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia by organizing and participating in certain conversations, including the infamous phone call in which Trump asked former Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.” Meadows is also accused of arranging the Dec. 23 phone call between Trump and Frances Watson, the state’s chief elections investigator, in which he pressured her to find “the right answer.” We obtained audio, also released to the Wall Street Journal, of that phone call.

Also mentioned in the charging document is Meadows’ December 2020 visit to Cobb County to observe a ballot audit. While he was there, according to the indictment, he spoke with Watson and Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs. On Dec. 30, 2020, Special Assistant Cassidy Hutchinson — who later 

testified before the House committee investigating Jan. 6 — emailed Fuchs and wrote, “I just spoke to Chief Meadows regarding his visit with you in Cobb County last week.” Hutchinson also asked Fuchs to call her. 

That same day, Trump-allied lawyer and voting-restriction activist Cleta Mitchell emailed Meadows a press release announcing that the Trump campaign was filing a petition in Georgia seeking to invalidate the state’s election results, attaching a copy of the court filing. Meadows forwarded the message to acting Attorney General Rosen and asked if Rosen could “have [his] team look into these allegations of wrongdoing. Only the alleged fraudulent activity.”

We also obtained calendar entries documenting Meadows’ meetings with Rosen and top DOJ officials on Dec. 21, Dec. 29, Jan. 11, and Jan. 14. In addition, we obtained text messages exchanged by Jeffrey Clark and Rosen in advance of the Jan. 3 White House meeting at which several senior DOJ officials threatened to resign. “Meadows says 615,” Clark texted late that afternoon.

Jenna Ellis

Records we obtained, reported on by Rolling Stone, show that on Dec. 8, 2020, Phil Waldron emailed Arizona lawmakers with a proposal for eliminating some ballots from the vote totals. Waldron included Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, along with Bernard Kerik and Katherine Friess, on the email.

We also obtained documents from 2018 that shed light on how anti-LGBTQ groups lobbied to exclude a provision from the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement calling for the countries to establish policies tackling job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In October of that year, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative C.J. Mahoney held a meeting with Ellis, who was then working for the conservative evangelical James Dobson Family Institute, and other conservative religious groups about the provision. The Trump administration later added a footnote to the trade agreement saying it did not need to establish policies against LGBTQ employment discrimination. The records show Mahoney allowed Ellis to review some draft language for this footnote.

Robert Cheeley

Cheeley, a lawyer, was part of an email thread we uncovered about Favorito v. Cooney, a lawsuit brought by conspiracy theorist Garland Favorito alleging election fraud in 2020. Most of the substance of the email thread is redacted.

Michael Roman

Documents we uncovered show that Mike Roman, formerly director of Election Day operations for Trump’s 2020 campaign, was involved in the Arizona “audit” both operationally and as a funder.

• He was a leader of the America Project’s “Fund the Audit” effort.
• He was also on a list of employees retained by subcontractor Wake TSI, the firm that led the hand count of ballots until mid-May 2021. Records we obtained also include emails sent from Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan to Roman about Wake TSI documents and volunteer background checks, and text messages in which Logan and the America Project’s Todd Sanders (another potential Fulton co-conspirator) discussed Roman’s role in the “audit.”
• On May 5, 2021, Logan emailed Roman and Sanders about Logan’s draft response to a letter from Arizona Secretary of State KatieHobbs to Senate “audit” liaison and former secretary of state Ken Bennett, regarding her office’s concerns about the review. 
• On May 8, Roman sent a list of notes and clarifying questions about “audit” procedures and equipment to Logan and former state Rep. Steve Montenegro.  

Cathy Latham, David Shafer, Shawn Still

Latham, Shafer, and Still were among the 16 Trump supporters who signed Georgia’s fraudulent electoral certificate, which American Oversight obtained in 2021. The three fake electors have been charged, while the other 13 appear to be mentioned among the unnamed, unindicted co-conspirators.  

We uncovered a record of a September 2020 meeting between the Georgia secretary of state’s office and a political strategist, which was titled “GA GOP (Coffee County) – South GA Multi Areas – Chairwoman Cathy Latham.” Coffee County was the site of a voting system breach by Trump supporters in January 2021, and Latham — who was at the time the county’s Republican Party chair — allegedly helped the operatives to access and examine the voting system data.

Scott Graham Hall

Hall, who was allegedly involved in the Coffee County security breach, was copied on a late November 2020 email in which Fulton County Elections Director Richard Barron told Garland Favorito that poll watchers from the Constitution Party would not be allowed at the vote recount.

Misty Hampton

Hampton is the former elections director of Coffee County who on Jan. 7, 2021, admitted pro-Trump outsiders into the election office to copy election data from county equipment. Later that same month, Hampton admitted Doug Logan and Jeff Lenberg, both of whom were also allegedly involved in a voting machine breach in Michigan that spring.

On Sept. 22, 2021, Phil Waldron texted Logan, “Misty from coffee co is getting hammered like Tina in Mesa Co.” Waldron appears to have been referring to Tina Peters, the former clerk in Mesa County, Colo., who at the time was being investigated for a similar security breach. While it’s unclear exactly what outside pressure Waldron was referring to that was comparable to what Peters was facing, there was concern at the time that a possible security breach had occurred in Georgia earlier in the year. “Do you have a copy of the image?” Waldron wrote. “We need to get it to our lawyer – Bundren – ASAP for her defense.” It is unclear what image he is referring to. Charles Bundren was a lawyer with Allied Security Operations Group.

Fulton County Indictment Co-Conspirators 

While the identities of individuals 1 through 30 are not revealed in the indictment, outlets like the Washington Post, CNN, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, and Just Security have used clues to deduce who some of these unnamed, unindicted co-conspirators may be. Below are documents we have obtained through public records requests about several of these individuals. 

Robert Sinners

We have obtained a number of communications from Sinners, Trump’s Election Day operations lead in Georgia, during late 2020 and early 2021 in which he raised concerns about the election.

• In September 2020, Sinners forwarded an email containing details about an alleged case of “ballot harvesting” to Chris Harvey, then Georgia’s elections director.
• The next month, Sinners forwarded an email to Deputy Secretary of State Fuchs from Marilyn Marks of the Georgia-based Coalition for Good Governance, a group that was behind a lawsuit targeting the state’s voting machines. The email referenced complaints about voting systems, and Sinners wrote, “Received a number of emails from confused election workers.”
• Sinners reached out to Fuchs again in December, according to records, to express concerns that people in food trucks at early voting locations may have been attempting to influence the vote.
• In a series of January 2021 emails, Sinners claimed that poll watchers had been denied access to voting locations in Fulton County. Rick Barron — then Fulton County’s elections director — told Sinners that an elections officer had authorized a poll manager to ask the poll watcher to leave because she had presented “credentials for someone else.” Sinners responded that the dismissed poll watcher was “the wife of one of our attorney volunteers.”

Bernard Kerik

Trump ally Kerik and Jenna Ellis were recipients of the email from Phil Waldron proposing that Arizona lawmakers use untested technology to scan and toss out supposedly “invalid” ballots from the vote totals. 

Phil Waldron

Phil Waldron is a retired Army colonel who was active in the former president’s attempt to overturn his election loss. We obtained extensive records of his involvement in early efforts to cast doubt on the election results nationwide and in Arizona. 

• On Dec. 8, 2020, Waldron forwarded a document titled “Arizona Report” to Jenna Ellis, Bernie Kerik, Katherine Friess, and Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem. In the email, Waldron pitched his services for an audit, writing that he would “identify fraudulent ballots using optimal scanning technology” and “pull invalid votes out of the totals … so that your state can certify normal elections and potentially not have to take extra legislative action.”
• On Dec. 11, Waldron emailed Finchem and other Arizona legislators with attached affidavits — written by conspiracy theorist Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, who was copied on the email and later worked on the Arizona “audit” — regarding “existing technology that has been adapted to detect kinematic features of scanned or actual ballots to determine indicators of fraudulent activity.” Waldron proposed a plan in which “our local consultant and advisor, Dr. Lyle Rapacki,” would “take a hard drive to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, upload the export/audit file requested, and get the files to us.” 
• Waldron emailed Chad Mizelle, then a Trump administration lawyer at DHS, on Dec. 21 to share a “request memorandum.” It is unclear what memorandum Waldron is referring to.

Waldron was affiliated with Allied Security Operations Group, a firm that was nearly hired by Arizona Senate President Fann in early February 2021 to conduct the Maricopa County “audit.” Allied Security had also been behind a discredited report claiming election irregularities in Michigan’s Antrim County and was involved in the wider election denial movement.

• On Jan. 26, 2021, Fann asked Waldron over text, “Could you please send me text when you are ready to email the proposal plz? We are getting hundreds of email in this and I don’t want your email getting lost in the pile.” 
• Records suggested that Allied was dropped as a contractor because of its political reputation. Waldron even offered to do business as a different company, with a different name but the same personnel. Fann told Waldron that because of media “spin” to “trash Allied,” the Senate needed a “Plan B.” 
• Fann and Waldron remained in communication, however, with Fann seeking Waldron’s opinion about Cyber Ninjas in late February. “Are you familiar with Doug Logan and Cyber Ninja?” Waldron responded, “Yes Ma’am – Doug is very reputable.”

According to a calendar entry and agenda for the July 2021 “election integrity call” involving a number of election-denying activists, state officials, and Trump allies — including Eastman — Waldron was slated to give an update on lawsuits, audits, and rallies in Arizona, which was labeled a “Tier 1” state. Other Tier 1 states included Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Alex Cruce

Alex Cruce was allegedly involved in the Coffee County elections system breach. Cruce worked on the Arizona “audit,” according to a list of employees retained by subcontractor Wake TSI, the firm that led the hand count of ballots until mid-May 2021. His name also appears in a shorter list of employees in an email from Wake TSI’s lawyer following the expiration of the firm’s contract with Cyber Ninjas. 

Doug Logan

Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan is another individual likely referred to in the indictment as a participant in the Coffee County security breach. American Oversight conducted an extensive investigation of Logan’s activities as the head of operations behind the expensive and conspiracy-fueled Arizona “audit.” Through records requests and litigation, we obtained thousands of pages of emails and text messages from Logan and allies detailing the audit’s origins in the attempt to decertify the election, the funders and money behind the sham investigation, and Logan’s’ efforts to undermine elections in other states, including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. 

In the indictment, an individual is identified as having downloaded election data from servers in Coffee County, Ga., on four separate days in 2021. Security video footage released in 2022 revealed that Logan and Jeffrey Lenberg had visited the county elections office for several hours over two days in early 2021. 

In addition to his September 2021 text to Logan about Misty Hampton, Phil Waldron also asked Logan the next month if he could “come to Texas” because “the cyber team” would be “working on Mesa and Coffey [sic].” Waldron added that he wanted “to get strategy to link all the counties together and get your optic on a couple whistleblowers.”

Logan was also initially named in the Michigan attorney general’s investigation into the alleged voting machine breach in Michigan, but was not charged with any crimes when the charges were announced in the summer of 2023. We obtained text messages revealing his discussions about accessing voting machines with CyFIR executive Ben Cotton and attorney Stefanie Lambert, who was one of the three charged in the Michigan investigation. On March 18, 2021, Logan texted Cotton: “The MI team has gotten access to another tabu

lator & [ballot marking device]. They’re asking if we can have someone there tonight to start a data extraction from the two devices as early as tomorrow morning.” Logan provided more details about the devices and added, “The equipment is in the greater Detroit area.” According to the records, Logan and Cotton arranged flights to Detroit and arrived the next day. That same week, Logan told Lambert, “Ben [Cotton] can do all the capture and Jeff [Lenberg] can lead any mock elections.”

Todd Sanders

Sanders, whom the indictment alleges was involved in the Coffee County breach, assisted the Arizona “audit” with both funding and operations work. Along with Mike Roman, Sanders was a leader of the America Project’s “Fund the Audit” effort. Emails we obtained also revealed Sanders’ operational role — he received materials regarding expenses and the work of Wake TSI, as well as a list of volunteers. American Oversight also previously obtained emails in which Sanders helped review Logan’s grant applications to another organization. 

Conan Hayes

According to the indictment, Hayes also participated in the Coffee County security breach. Hayes is an election conspiracy theorist who was allegedly involved in the voting machine breach in Mesa County as well as a hunt for voter fraud Antrim County, Mich., where false claims of fraud surfaced shortly after the election. Hayes, Todd Sanders, and Doug Logan helped push those claims alongside lawyer and later Michigan attorney general candidate Matt DePerno, who this summer was indicted for his alleged role in the Michigan voting machine breach. There has also been some speculation that Hayes may have been involved in the Arizona “audit.” 

We obtained a series of emails with the subject line “Possible Threat” that were forwarded by a Cyber Ninjas employee to Logan and someone who appears to be Hayes in July and August 2021, alerting them to harassing messages directed toward Cyber Ninjas that had been submitted to an online submission form. Other emails exchanged between the same Cyber Ninjas employee and what appears to be Hayes in April 2021 referenced a carnival that was taking place outside of the Phoenix venue where Maricopa County ballots were being counted — an event that at the time conspiracy theorists said was an attempt to disrupt the “audit.”

Jim Penrose

Jim Penrose, a cybersecurity consultant and former National Security Agency official who was also allegedly involved in the Coffee County breach, worked closely with Doug Logan in the weeks after the election in an effort to access voting machines in Georgia. Other documents we obtained suggest that Penrose also worked with Logan and conspiracy theorist Jovan Hutton Pulitzer on the Arizona audit’s final report.

• In a March 2022 email to a reporter, Logan stated that he and Penrose had the previous November attempted to “capture forensic images” of voting machines in several counties in Georgia. Logan also said that Penrose had hired private investigators to look into false claims spread by Arizona-based election denier Staci Burk, and that the investigation had turned up no evidence to support the claims.
• Logan mentioned Penrose in a June 2021 text to attorney Stephanie Lambert, which was released to American Oversight.
• In August 2021, Logan texted Pulitzer that Penrose had been helping him with the “audit” report and would be reaching out. Pulitzer responded that they had spoken. That same month, Ben Cotton told Logan that Penrose had requested forensic images, for which Logan gave approval.

Jeffrey Lenberg

Lenberg is an election denier who visited the Coffee County elections office in 2021 with Doug Logan to access voting data. Lenberg was also named in the 2022 investigation into the alleged voting machine breach in Michigan, but was not charged with any crimes. In text messages we obtained from March 2021, Logan told attorney Stefanie Lambert, who helped orchestrate the scheme, on March 20, “Ben [Cotton] can do all the capture and Jeff [Lenberg] can lead any mock elections,” possibly referring to the kinds of “tests” the group allegedly ran on the voting machines they seized. 

Stefanie Lambert

Attorney Stefanie Lambert was indicted in early August for her role in the Michigan voting machine breach. We obtained text messages from Lambert and others about accessing and running tests on voting equipment in March and April 2021. 

• On March 18, Logan texted Lambert, “I created a new group with Ben [Cotton], Matt [DePerno], you and I.” The next day, Lambert wrote, “I hope the hotel is ok with Ben. I’ll have to explain why my office wasn’t possible.” Logan replied, “We’re in enemy territory, I’m sure he’ll get it :-).” 
• Lambert asked Logan on April 12 when he would “be able to test it” himself. Two days later, apparently referring to tests run by the group, she texted Logan that they had “no fresh ballots” for “the township we have been running” and asked whether it mattered “which ballots” they used.

Records also suggest that Lambert may have been involved with the Arizona “audit.” In the days leading up to the release of Cyber Ninjas’ final report on Sept. 24, 2021, Pennsylvania-based activist and “audit” worker Heather Honey emailed Logan what appears to be sections of the draft report. “I have asked Stefanie to verify the violation of the law here as well,” she wrote on Sept. 15, potentially referencing Lambert. In another email sent the same day, Honey wrote that “this also needs legal confirmation—waiting for Stefanie to let me know if she is aware of a loophole that would exempt” first-time voters from a voting law requirement. 

Read more here about American Oversight’s investigations into election denial and threats to democracy.