Republican clerk, pro-Trump lawyer charged in Michigan voting-system breach

A Michigan township clerk was charged with multiple felonies on Wednesday, the latest turn in a state inquiry into efforts by Donald Trump supporters to tamper with voting machines to prove his false claim that he lost the 2020 election due to fraud. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement that former Adams Township Clerk Stephanie Scott, 52, has been charged with five felonies related to unauthorized use of a computer, concealing a voting machine, and misconduct in office, and one misdemeanor for disobeying the secretary of state. The most serious count carries a potential seven-year prison term.

Nessel also added three felonies to the charges faced by Scott's attorney Stefanie Lambert, who was already facing multiple charges over allegations she accessed and tampered with voting machines in other incidents across the state. "When elected officials and their proxies use their positions to promote baseless conspiracies, show blatant disregard for voter privacy, and break the law in the process, it undermines the very essence of the democratic process," Nessel said in the statement.

Lambert's attorney, Daniel Hartman, said in a statement that his client violated no laws and was working to "bring powerful entities to account" and bring "transparency to the people's election data, processes and procedures." Scott did not respond to a request for comment.

Scott, a Republican, had overseen voting in rural Adams Township until the state revoked her authority over elections in 2021 for resisting state orders to allow testing and maintenance on the voting tabulator in her care, claiming it would erase evidence of potential fraud. Scott withheld a critical component of the tabulator until it was seized by state police, law enforcement records show. In addition to disregarding orders from the state authorities regarding the tabulator, Nessel accused Scott and Lambert of providing a computer examiner unauthorized access to non-public voter information in violation of state law.

Reuters reported on the potential violation in 2022, detailing Scott's sharing of a file containing confidential voter data with Benjamin Cotton, an information-technology expert who had worked with voter-fraud conspiracists seeking unauthorized access to election systems in other states. Scott and Lambert's actions were part of a national effort by lawyers, public officials and others seeking evidence of Trump's false stolen-election claims. A Detroit defense lawyer, Lambert emerged as a critical figure in the movement, pushing conspiracy theories in court, joining efforts to break into voting machines and advancing a failed lawsuit aimed at overturning Trump's loss in Michigan, a key swing state.

The allegations against Scott have parallels to the high-profile case of Tina Peters, the clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, who is set to go to trial this year over an alleged scheme to breach secure equipment in her own elections office in 2021 to try to uncover evidence of election fraud. (reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut. Editing by Gerry Doyle and Chizu Nomiyama)