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Groton Daily Independent
Thursday, Nov. 02, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 116 ~ 40 of 44
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Georgia attorney general quits defense in server wiping case By FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press
The Georgia attorney general’s of ce will no longer represent the state’s top elections of cial in an elec- tions integrity lawsuit led three days before a crucial computer server was quietly wiped clean.
The lawsuit aims to force Georgia to retire its antiquated and heavily questioned touchscreen election technology, which does not provide an auditable paper trail.
The server in question was a statewide staging location for key election-related data. It made headlines in June after a security expert disclosed a gaping security hole that wasn’t xed for six months after he rst reported it to election authorities. Personal data was exposed for Georgia’s 6.7 million voters, as were passwords used by county of cials to access les.
The assistant state attorney general handling the case, Cristina Correia, noti ed the court and participat- ing attorneys Wednesday that her of ce was withdrawing from the case, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press. Spokeswoman Katelyn McCreary offered no explanation and said she couldn’t comment “on pending matters.”
Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the main defendant, is running for governor in 2018 and his campaign said in a statement emailed to the AP that the attorney general’s of ce has a con ict of interest and cannot represent either Kemp’s of ce or the state elections board. Campaign spokesman Ryan Mahoney said in a text message that the con ict stems from “too many co defendants with potential differences in strategy, approach, etc.”
The secretary of state’s of ce had said in an earlier statement that the law rm of former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes would represent Kemp and other state election of cials. It made no mention of a con ict of interest.
The campaign statement quoted Mahoney as saying: “There is no scandal or vast conspiracy. This is a tasteless nothingburger cooked up by liberal activists who know their lawsuit is nothing short of stupid.”
Both Kemp and state Attorney General Chris Carr are Republicans. Barnes is a Democrat.
The server’s data was destroyed July 7 by technicians at the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University, which runs the state’s election system, Correia informed attorneys in the case in an Oct. 18 email. Twelve days earlier, she had informed the same group of attorneys that the data on the server was wiped on March 17, the same day it was returned to the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University by the FBI after a probe into the security incident. No one at the state attorney general’s of ce has explained Correia’s source for the apparently erroneous information on timing. The AP obtained both emails.
KSU email records obtained by the AP last week in an open records request say the server data was destroyed July 7.
The erased hard drives are central to the lawsuit because they could have revealed whether Georgia’s most recent elections were compromised by hackers. Russian interference in U.S. politics, including at- tempts to penetrate voting systems, has been an acute national preoccupation since last year.
It’s not clear who ordered the server’s data irretrievably erased.
Kemp has denied ordering the data destruction or knowing about it in advance. His of ce’s general coun- sel issued a two-page report Monday claiming Kennesaw State of cials followed “standard IT practices” in wiping the server that “were not undertaken to delete evidence.” It said it rst learned of the wiping of the main election server on Oct. 24, when the AP rst asked about it.
In a public statement on the server wiping two days later, Kemp’s of ce decried the KSU’s wiping of the server as reckless, inexcusable and inept.
The report released Tuesday says “current indications are” that the FBI retains an image of the server that it made in March when it investigated the security hole. The FBI has not responded to AP inquiries