Mike Lindell wants secret report on alleged Georgia voting system vulnerabilities

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell hopes to get his hands on an unredacted copy of a secret report detailing alleged vulnerabilities in Dominion Voting Systems equipment, machinery he claims was hacked during the 2020 election.

Attorneys for Lindell shared with the Washington Examiner two filings submitted this month in federal court in Georgia, where there is a long-running lawsuit seeking to get the state to ditch electronic voting machines for hand-marked paper ballots. Although Lindell is not directly involved in that case, his lawyers argue an assessment done for the plaintiffs by J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, will help in their fight against Dominion’s $1.3 billion defamation suit against MyPillow and Lindel

“The Halderman report strongly supports the conclusion that Dominion’s electronic voting machines are vulnerable to intrusion, manipulation, and fraud,” said a memo in support of their motion to intervene for a limited purpose.

The analysis, which remains under seal, has become a flashpoint in the debate over election security. U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, who is presiding over the Georgia case, has largely resisted pressure to disseminate the report’s findings, even in redacted fashion. The judge allowed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of the Homeland Security Department, to review the findings last month. The agency is expected to provide some sort of a status report in the coming days, but a CISA spokesperson told the Washington Examiner on Friday they had no update to share at this time.

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David Cross, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said a version of the analysis’s findings, even if it is only an executive summary, should be released soon. But Cross supports a release for the public — creating a way voters at the very least can know about the reliability of ballot-marking devices and make informed decisions on how they want to cast ballots before early voting begins for the May primaries — rather than a targeted disclosure to people like Lindell “who don’t have a track record of being accurate in public claims,” he told the Washington Examiner.

Halderman, who conducted a similar analysis in Michigan after the 2020 election, was granted access to Dominion voting equipment in Fulton County and produced a 25,000-word report. Halderman found that malicious software could be installed in voting touchscreens to alter QR codes printed on ballots that are then scanned to record votes, or a hacker could wreak havoc by gaining access to election management system computers, according to court records reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. While Halderman may have found vulnerabilities in the election technology, he has not said there is evidence they were actually exploited to create widespread fraud, as Lindell has been claiming since the 2020 election.

Lindell is one of the most vocal boosters of former President Donald Trump’s cries of a stolen election and has often talked of trying to overturn the results despite the courts and election officials nationwide rejecting claims of widespread maleficence. Just in the past couple of days, Lindell, who was at a campaign event in Arizona, said he is planning a class-action lawsuit against “all” voting machines.

Dominion filed its lawsuit against Lindell in February 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming the businessman “exploited another chance to boost sales: marketing MyPillow to people who would tune in and attend rallies to hear Lindell tell the ‘Big Lie’ that Dominion had stolen the 2020 election.”

Lindell’s lawyers, in their Georgia filings, argue Hadlerman’s report will help in the fight against “Dominion’s baseless defamation actions,” and assist the “MyPillow parties” in similar defamation litigation brought by another electronic voting machine manufacturer, Smartmatic. They seek “unrestricted” access to the report in accordance with the court’s confidentiality order and insist the “MyPillow parties do not seek in any way to delay or affect the adjudication of the claims and defenses between the original parties.”

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While it remains to be seen if the judge allows Lindell access, election officials in other states and Fox News, which faces a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion, have also expressed interest in Halderman’s report. Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin asked to see the report, as his state also uses Dominion touchscreen technology for elections. However, this was denied by Totenberg, who said she “remains concerned about the risks associated with further dissemination of the report.” The judge further said granting access to Louisiana could “open the floodgates” to similar requests from others, “which would also increase the potential for hacking and misuse of sensitive, confidential election system information.”

In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican official who has vehemently defended the integrity of the 2020 election in the face of fraud claims by Trump and his allies, has supported the analysis’s release. His focus, however, has been to denigrate Halerman’s analysis as “not an objective, academic study by a non-biased actor” and warn that media reporting about it is sowing distrust ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Dominion also cut at the credibility of Halderman’s review in Georgia and voiced support for releasing his findings.

“Security assessments of any system, including voting systems, should always include a holistic approach of all safeguards in place, including procedural and technical safeguards. There is a reason why US voting systems rely on bipartisan election officials, poll-watchers, distributed passwords, access controls, and audit processes. The review conducted in the Curling case did not take this approach,” John Poulos, president and CEO of Dominion, said in a statement released by Raffensperger’s team in January. “Dominion supports all efforts to bring real facts and evidence forward to defend the integrity of our machines and the credibility of Georgia’s elections.”

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The federal government warned against a premature release of Halderman’s report before CISA, and the vendor got a chance to take appropriate mitigation action, Justice Department lawyers wrote in a filing submitted in the Georgia case in February.

“CISA’s goal is to disclose any confirmed vulnerabilities and associated mitigations to the public in a coordinated way, so the entire cyber ecosystem can benefit while minimizing the risk of harm to election security,” they wrote.

“CISA works regularly with companies and researchers to identify, mitigate, and disclose vulnerabilities in a timely and responsible manner. We are working through the established Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Process with the relevant parties pursuant to the Court’s authorization. Otherwise, we are not able to comment on ongoing litigation,” a CISA spokesperson told the Washington Examiner last month.

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