Judge to address disclosure of court-protected images in Antrim election lawsuit

Sep. 17—BELLAIRE — A judge will consider whether to lift a stay order in a dismissed Antrim County election-related lawsuit, after Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said she received information showing court-protected images from the county's voting equipment were shared during a "cyber symposium" hosted by Trump supporter and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell.

A hearing in front of 13th Circuit Court Judge Kevin Elsenheimer is scheduled for Oct. 11 at 9:30 a.m., records show.

Benson, who is represented by attorneys with the state's Attorney General's office, said in court filings Col. James P. Waldron and Douglas Frank, two of the plaintiff's expert witnesses, appeared as speakers at the symposium and that Waldron told attendees "the Antrim information" would be available and invited them to view the images.

The plaintiff is Bill Bailey of Central Lake Township, who sued Antrim County on Nov. 23, after he said his constitutional rights had been violated by the county's handling of the 2020 presidential election, and that its Dominion Voting Systems equipment was programmed for fraud — an accusation repeatedly denied by Dominion.

Bailey is represented by Portage attorney Matthew DePerno, who in July announced he is seeking the Republican nomination for Michigan's attorney general.

Court filings show DePerno was advised of the distribution of the Antrim County images in an email sent Aug. 12 by Assistant Attorney General Erik A. Grill.

"We have received information that during an event earlier this week, Mike Lindell publicly displayed or distributed images of the Antrim County EMS software," Grill said in the email.

The same court filing shows DePerno answered Grill, also by email, stating he'd sent Lindell a "cease and desist demand."

"Understood and just to be clear, on Wednesday at 9:49 a.m., as soon as I heard, I sent the following cease and desist demand to Mike Lindell," DePerno said in the email.

The demand from DePerno to Lindell stated, "This is a demand that you immediately cease and desist disclosing or displaying any forensic images of Antrim County. Those images are under protective order. Neither you or your team are permitted to display or use those images."

On Jan. 11, 13th Circuit Court Judge Kevin Elsenheimer ruled certain "individual images" contained in a report of a forensic examination by a team that conducted the inspection on behalf of Bailey and DePerno, be under a protective order.

"Again, Mr. DePerno's experts should have the opportunity to review those materials, as should the experts of any other entity — be it the intervenor, or the county, or any of the other defendants in this case," Elsenheimer said, according to court transcripts. "But mass distribution of that information is not something that the Court is countenancing at this time."

DePerno did not respond to an email seeking comment.

A data security expert , Harri Hursti, said a link to download an image which appeared to have originated from Antrim County was shared on social media by one of the event's speakers — CodeMonkeyZ — who has nearly 400,000 followers.

In a declaration submitted to the court as part of Secretary Benson's motion, Hursti said he attended Lindell's cyber security symposium in Sioux Falls, South Dakota from Aug. 10-12 where organizers made available to attendees copies of forensic images of three Dominion Election Management System Server installations.

"The organizers did not give consistent explanations for how the images were made, where they were made, or any other details," Hursti said. "Two of the images appear to have originated from Mesa County, Colorado and one from Antrim County, Michigan."

According to court filings, another expert, J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer science professor — who in March authored a 54-page report stating initial mistakes in Antrim County's handling of the 2020 Presidential election were the result of human error, not fraud —authenticated the image as from Antrim County.

"The data obtained from the 'Cyber Symposium' includes a nearly complete forensic image of the Antrim County Election Management System (EMS)," Halderman stated in an affidavit filed in 13th Circuit Court. "It is missing only one file (out of 37), but is otherwise a complete copy of the forensic image collected by Plaintiff's forensic team and provided to me for review in this case."

"The data also includes complete forensic images of the Antrim County tabulator memory cards that were provided to me for review in this case," Halderman said. "In addition, the data distributed at the 'Cyber Symposium' includes forensic images of thumb drives that purport to be from Antrim County and include metadata indicating that they were collected by Plaintiff's forensic team, but which were not provided to me for review in this case."

Hursti and Halderman both expressed concern over the release, stating it was sufficiently detailed to assist those who might be planning or developing ways to compromise voting systems in Antrim County and elsewhere.

"In my professional opinion, global public release of the server images lowers the barrier to planning an attack against any election management system running this Dominion software, and therefore makes future attacks against such systems more likely," Hursti said.

Dominion issued a lengthy statement in response to the reported public release of court-protected images, stating they'd reported the incident to the proper authorities, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.