Office of Open Records rules Fulton County, Pa., must turn over emails, lawyer pay records
Commissioners in Fulton County, Pennsylvania, have been ordered to reveal personal communications with a voting machine inspector and how their special counsel is being paid.
On April 12, the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records sided with the USA TODAY Network in a public information request standoff with the local government. Fulton County officials have been given 30 days to either provide the records or to dispute their existence through a sworn affidavit.
The ruling could illuminate county commissioners' probe of Dominion voting machines used in the 2020 election and their subsequent battles in court against both Dominion and the Pennsylvania Department of State.
Fulton County was among several counties across the country that authorized inspections of voting machines as former President Donald Trump and allies promoted conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud. West Chester company Wake TSI was among the first contracted by Fulton County to produce a report on its voting machines.
In a batch of emails first obtained by the nonprofit American Oversight, Wake TSI Vice President Gene Kern asked the county's Republican commissioners for their private email addresses just days before Wake's voting machine assessment was released in February 2021, raising questions about what might have been discussed.
Wake TSI's report stated that no "technology interference, fraud, or misconduct" had been discovered. But it noted some ballot scanning errors and a lack of pre-election accuracy testing from the commonwealth, its authors writing that "While these may seem minor the impact on an election can be huge."
Background: Cybersecurity firm was instructed to lie about 2020 Pa. voting machine hacks, lawsuit claims
The USA TODAY Network's Right-to-Know request also sought records of payments to special counsel Thomas Carroll and Stefanie Lambert since they were first retained in April 2022. Carroll was an alternate Pennsylvania elector for Trump in 2020 and Lambert has been a central figure in voting machine breaches across the country.
Though Carroll and Lambert have been described as pro bono attorneys for Fulton County, the USA TODAY Network is inquiring about whether a third party is involved in funding.
Both lawyers have been involved in the county's ongoing litigation related to the 2020 election. Commissioners have tried unsuccessfully to repeal contempt-of-court sanctions — issued because they permitted voting machine inspections after being order not to do so — and to find a different vendor to take custody of their now-decommissioned Dominion systems.
In its final determination related to the USA TODAY Network's information request, the Office of Open Records ruled against Fulton County because it didn't give a timely response or participate in the appeal process by providing a legal argument or evidence to support the withholding of records.
Bruce Siwy is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network's Pennsylvania state capital bureau. He can be reached at bsiwy@gannett.com or on X at @BruceSiwy.
This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Fulton County PA commissioners ordered to provide records
