CNN reported Sunday that lawyers for the 2020 presidential campaign of President Donald Trump received a “written invitation” to inspect voting machines and software in Georgia’s Coffee County — though that is not how CNN’s headline portrayed it.
In the CNN story, Trump is described as being implicated in a “voting system breach,” implying that he had personally hacked into voting systems, or that his campaign had done so. But the “breach” happened after the election, and appeared authorized.
CNN’s lead story on Sunday is titled: “Messages show Trump’s team behind voting system breach.” The article itself connects the “breach” with an imminent indictment of Trump that is expected in Georgia’s Fulton County over 2020 election challenges.
The article’s first paragraph drops the hint that the “breach” occurred in Georgia, not nationwide; and that it was not prior to the 2020 election, or the 2024 election, but rather in the aftermath of the 2020 election, when questions arose about potential fraud.
It begins:
Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Donald Trump’s legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County, sources tell CNN.
Later, in the same article, CNN reports:
Six days before pro-Trump operatives gained unauthorized access to voting systems, the local elections official who allegedly helped facilitate the breach sent a “written invitation” to attorneys working for Trump, according to text messages obtained by CNN.
…
On January 1, 2021 – days ahead of the January 7 voting systems breach – Katherine Friess – an attorney working with Giuliani, Sidney Powell and other Trump allies shared a “written invitation” to examine voting systems in Coffee County with a group of Trump allies.
CNN reports that it has not actually examined the invitation, only that it has inferred its existence from other messages.
Fulton County District Attorney Fain Willis is expected to present the Trump case before a grand jury this week.
Critics of the former president allege that he told the Georgia secretary of state to “find me 11,780 votes,” when in fact what Trump said was “I just want to find 11,780 votes which is one more than we have because we won the state.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
