Trump attorney: 'Our team' examining Antrim voting equipment after judge issued order
Paul Egan
LANSING — President Donald Trump's legal team is examining and taking images from 22 vote tabulators in Antrim County Sunday morning after a judge issued an order later Friday, a Trump attorney said.
"A judge actually granted our team access … for us to conduct a forensic audit," Trump attorney Jenna Ellis told Fox News on Sunday.
Antrim County is solidly Republican but its unofficial results initially showed Democrat Joe Biden winning more votes on Nov. 3 than Trump did. The results were soon corrected and county and state officials have said the initial reporting inaccuracies were due to programming errors by the Republican clerk and not due to errors by the Dominion Voting Systems election equipment or related software.
"That was an unexplained and so-called glitch," said Ellis, an attorney who has been prominent in the Trump campaign's efforts to overturn election results that show Biden won the presidency.
"So our team is going to be able to go in there this morning and we'll be there for about eight hours to conduct that forensic examination and we'll have the results in about 48 hours and that will tell us a lot about these machines."
Judge Kevin Elsenheimer's order, issued late Friday, called for the preservation of Antrim's election information and allowed for the "forensic imaging" of 22 tabulators, subject to a protective order intended to keep proprietary and other confidential information from being made public. The order made no mention of the Trump legal team being involved in the examination.
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Antrim County said in a Saturday news release the examination of the computer equipment would be conducted by ASOG. That is an apparent reference to Allied Security Operations Group. Russell Ramsland, who has given inaccurate analyses, including one that confused districts in Minnesota with ones in Michigan, in support of Trump’s legal cases in Michigan and elsewhere, is described in media reports in the New York Times and elsewhere as an officer of Allied Security Operations Group. It was not clear whether Ramsland would be part of the team examining the voting equipment Sunday.
Elsenheimer issued the order despite concerns from the county that the examination would violate its licensing agreements with Dominion, which is not a party to the litigation and could not be reached for comment Saturday.
Dominion equipment is used in most Michigan counties and in states around the country.
Many election observers took to social media Saturday and Sunday expressing concern that the examination will be used to spread further disinformation and conspiracy theories about the election.
"This will be exploited by Trump et al to provide a basis for more disinformation and wild claims," said Mark Brewer, an election law attorney and former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party.
The lawsuit in Antrim County's 13th Circuit, which flew mostly under the radar until Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani touted the ruling in a tweet Friday night, was filed Nov. 23 by Central Lake resident William Bailey.
The suit cites the initial inaccuracies in the unofficial results from Antrim and claims the county's "tabulators were compromised."
But those claims were not cited in Elsenheimer's order. The judge's order said Bailey was concerned about a close outcome on a village marijuana proposal and alleges that ballots were damaged during a recounting of the county's ballots conducted Nov. 6. The result was that a marijuana proposal in the Village of Central Lake shifted from a tie vote to passing by one vote, according to the order.
Antrim County spokesman Jeremy Scott said he, seven representatives of ASOG, Bailey, Bailey's attorney, Antrim Clerk Sheryl Guy, Antrim administrator Pete Garwood, Antrim attorney Haider Kazim, the county IT director, a member of the sheriff’s department, and three county commissioners were inside the county building for the inspection Sunday morning.
Scott would not provide the names of the ASOG representatives.
A little more than 16,000 votes were cast in Antrim County, where Trump beat Biden by nearly 4,000 votes. Statewide, Biden beat Trump by more than 150,000 votes.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4. Read more on Michigan politics and sign up for our elections newsletter.