By Amy Gardner, Emma Brown and Devlin Barrett Today at 3:55 p.m. EST
The attempted breach in Ohio occurred on May 4 inside the county office of John Hamercheck (R), chairman of the Lake County Board of Commissioners, according to two individuals with knowledge of the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigations. State and county officials said no sensitive data were obtained, but they determined that a private laptop was plugged into the county network in Hamercheck’s office, and that the routine network traffic captured by the computer was circulated at the same Lindell conference as the data from the Colorado breach.
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Together, the incidents in Ohio and Colorado point to an escalation in attacks on the nation’s voting systems by those who have embraced Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud. Now, some Trump loyalists pushing for legal challenges and partisan audits are also targeting local officials in a bid to gain access to election systems — moves that themselves could undermine election security.
An FBI spokeswoman confirmed Thursday that the bureau is investigating the incident in Lake County but declined to comment further. Investigators are trying to determine whether someone on the fifth floor of the Lake County government building improperly accessed the computer network and whether any laws were violated.
Investigators with the office of Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) believe a government official appears to have facilitated the attempted breach of the election network in Lake County, a spokesman for LaRose said.
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Asked in a telephone interview whether he knew of the attempted breach or participated in it, Hamercheck said he was advised not to discuss the investigation. “I’m aware of no criminal activity,” Hamercheck said, and added: “I have absolute confidence in our board of elections and our IT people.”
Ahead of the incidents in Ohio and Colorado, county officials in both places — including Hamercheck — discussed claims of election fraud with Douglas Frank, an Ohio-based scientist who has done work for Lindell, according to people familiar with Frank’s role, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.
Frank, who has claimed to have discovered secret algorithms used to rig the 2020 election, has been traveling the country trying to convince election officials that the vote was riddled with fraud — and that they should join the effort to uncover it, he told The Washington Post in a series of interviews.
Frank has told The Post in recent months that he has visited “over 30 states” and has met with about 100 election administrators. He would not say how many local election administrators he has persuaded to join his cause. “I deliberately protect my clerks. I don’t want anybody to know who they are,” Frank said.
In an interview Friday with The Post, Lindell said that although he has hired Frank for some projects, he does not fund Frank’s speaking engagements across the country and knew nothing about what happened in the election offices in Mesa County or Lake County. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.
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In April, Frank traveled to Grand Junction, Colo., where he made his pitch during a public talk and also privately to Tina Peters, the clerk in Mesa County, and several of her colleagues. He told The Post that his presentation persuaded Peters of the need to examine whether fraud occurred, and that he subsequently connected her with someone in Lindell’s circle who he believed could help.
Colorado election officials have since accused Peters of sneaking an outsider into Mesa County election offices to copy the hard drives of machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, a company cited in conspiracy theories by Trump and his supporters.
In October, a state judge prohibited Peters from supervising the upcoming local elections, citing her efforts to copy the hard drives. On Wednesday, FBI agents searched her home and that of several of her associates as part of an investigation into possible wire fraud and computer crimes.
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Peters has previously claimed that she has been targeted by powerful forces trying to block her from finding the truth. In a statement to The Post this week, a spokesperson for Peters’s legal defense fund said the searches constituted “a level of weaponization of the Justice Department we haven’t seen since the McCarthy era.”
Frank also took part in a discussion earlier this year with Hamercheck, the Lake County, Ohio, commissioner, according to an individual familiar with the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing inquiries.
In an interview with The Post on Thursday, Frank said he did not remember speaking to Hamercheck or have any record of the call. He said he has met so many people in the past six months that he cannot recall them all. But Frank said the version of events described in Lake County sounded “plausible” because it was “exactly the model that we did with Tina.”
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“Do I remember that call? No,” he said of the Hamercheck conversation. “Does it sound like me? Yes.”
County records obtained by The Post through a public-records request show that Hamercheck, an engineer and retired police officer, used his security badge to swipe into the fifth floor offices multiple times during the roughly six-hour period when, according to the leaked data, the laptop was intermittently connected to the county network on May 4, the date of Ohio’s spring primaries.
Ohio election officials said they first learned of the attempted Lake County breach after Lindell’s August symposium, where he promised to unveil evidence of widespread fraud across the country.
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Copies of the Mesa County hard drive were presented publicly there, and cyber experts in attendance said they also received copies of network data obtained from Lake, Mesa and Clark County, Nev. Lindell told The Post on Friday that the network data were distributed by a rogue attendee without his knowledge or permission.
Officials in all three states, as well as independent cyber experts interviewed by The Post, determined that the network data — known as packet captures, or PCAPs — contained no sensitive information from a protected network.
The data from Clark County — home of Las Vegas — was captured via the county’s guest wireless network, according to county officials. Rob Graham, a cybersecurity expert who attended the Lindell symposium and examined the data, said it was recorded on Dec. 1, 2020, with a laptop that was set up to capture only its own actions, not county network traffic.
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The attempted breach in Ohio occurred on May 4 inside the county office of John Hamercheck (R), chairman of the Lake County Board of Commissioners, according to two individuals with knowledge of the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigations. State and county officials said no sensitive data were obtained, but they determined that a private laptop was plugged into the county network in Hamercheck’s office, and that the routine network traffic captured by the computer was circulated at the same Lindell conference as the data from the Colorado breach.
Story continues below advertisement
Together, the incidents in Ohio and Colorado point to an escalation in attacks on the nation’s voting systems by those who have embraced Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud. Now, some Trump loyalists pushing for legal challenges and partisan audits are also targeting local officials in a bid to gain access to election systems — moves that themselves could undermine election security.
An FBI spokeswoman confirmed Thursday that the bureau is investigating the incident in Lake County but declined to comment further. Investigators are trying to determine whether someone on the fifth floor of the Lake County government building improperly accessed the computer network and whether any laws were violated.
Investigators with the office of Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) believe a government official appears to have facilitated the attempted breach of the election network in Lake County, a spokesman for LaRose said.
Story continues below advertisement
Asked in a telephone interview whether he knew of the attempted breach or participated in it, Hamercheck said he was advised not to discuss the investigation. “I’m aware of no criminal activity,” Hamercheck said, and added: “I have absolute confidence in our board of elections and our IT people.”
Ahead of the incidents in Ohio and Colorado, county officials in both places — including Hamercheck — discussed claims of election fraud with Douglas Frank, an Ohio-based scientist who has done work for Lindell, according to people familiar with Frank’s role, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.
Frank, who has claimed to have discovered secret algorithms used to rig the 2020 election, has been traveling the country trying to convince election officials that the vote was riddled with fraud — and that they should join the effort to uncover it, he told The Washington Post in a series of interviews.
Frank has told The Post in recent months that he has visited “over 30 states” and has met with about 100 election administrators. He would not say how many local election administrators he has persuaded to join his cause. “I deliberately protect my clerks. I don’t want anybody to know who they are,” Frank said.
In an interview Friday with The Post, Lindell said that although he has hired Frank for some projects, he does not fund Frank’s speaking engagements across the country and knew nothing about what happened in the election offices in Mesa County or Lake County. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.
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In April, Frank traveled to Grand Junction, Colo., where he made his pitch during a public talk and also privately to Tina Peters, the clerk in Mesa County, and several of her colleagues. He told The Post that his presentation persuaded Peters of the need to examine whether fraud occurred, and that he subsequently connected her with someone in Lindell’s circle who he believed could help.
Colorado election officials have since accused Peters of sneaking an outsider into Mesa County election offices to copy the hard drives of machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, a company cited in conspiracy theories by Trump and his supporters.
In October, a state judge prohibited Peters from supervising the upcoming local elections, citing her efforts to copy the hard drives. On Wednesday, FBI agents searched her home and that of several of her associates as part of an investigation into possible wire fraud and computer crimes.
Story continues below advertisement
Peters has previously claimed that she has been targeted by powerful forces trying to block her from finding the truth. In a statement to The Post this week, a spokesperson for Peters’s legal defense fund said the searches constituted “a level of weaponization of the Justice Department we haven’t seen since the McCarthy era.”
Frank also took part in a discussion earlier this year with Hamercheck, the Lake County, Ohio, commissioner, according to an individual familiar with the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing inquiries.
In an interview with The Post on Thursday, Frank said he did not remember speaking to Hamercheck or have any record of the call. He said he has met so many people in the past six months that he cannot recall them all. But Frank said the version of events described in Lake County sounded “plausible” because it was “exactly the model that we did with Tina.”
Story continues below advertisement
“Do I remember that call? No,” he said of the Hamercheck conversation. “Does it sound like me? Yes.”
County records obtained by The Post through a public-records request show that Hamercheck, an engineer and retired police officer, used his security badge to swipe into the fifth floor offices multiple times during the roughly six-hour period when, according to the leaked data, the laptop was intermittently connected to the county network on May 4, the date of Ohio’s spring primaries.
Ohio election officials said they first learned of the attempted Lake County breach after Lindell’s August symposium, where he promised to unveil evidence of widespread fraud across the country.
Story continues below advertisement
Copies of the Mesa County hard drive were presented publicly there, and cyber experts in attendance said they also received copies of network data obtained from Lake, Mesa and Clark County, Nev. Lindell told The Post on Friday that the network data were distributed by a rogue attendee without his knowledge or permission.
Officials in all three states, as well as independent cyber experts interviewed by The Post, determined that the network data — known as packet captures, or PCAPs — contained no sensitive information from a protected network.
The data from Clark County — home of Las Vegas — was captured via the county’s guest wireless network, according to county officials. Rob Graham, a cybersecurity expert who attended the Lindell symposium and examined the data, said it was recorded on Dec. 1, 2020, with a laptop that was set up to capture only its own actions, not county network traffic.
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