Pennsylvania seeks legal costs from county that let outsiders access voting machines to help Trump
A rural Pennsylvania county and its elected officials may have to pay the state’s elections agency hundreds of thousands of dollars to reimburse it for legal fees and litigation costs
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A rural Pennsylvania county and its elected officials may have to pay the state elections agency hundreds of thousands of dollars to reimburse it for legal fees and litigation costs in a three-year battle over allowing outsiders to examine voting machines to help former President Donald Trump's claims of election fraud.
Last week, Secretary of State Al Schmidt asked a “special master” appointed by the Supreme Court to order the Republican-controlled Fulton County government, Commissioner Randy Bunch, former Commissioner Stuart Ulsh and their lawyer Thomas Carroll to repay the state an updated total of $711,000 for outside counsel’s legal fees and related costs.
Most of the latest set of $263,000 in fees, wrote Schmidt’s lawyers, came about because the Fulton officials “requested an evidentiary hearing regarding the appointment of a third-party escrow agent to take possession of the voting machines at issue — and then did everything in their power to delay and obstruct both the hearing itself and, more generally, the impoundment of the voting machines ordered by the Supreme Court.”
The reimbursement request was made based on a decision against the county issued by the high court in April.
