Pa. Supreme Court angrily sanctions county for violating order on Dominion voting machines

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Wednesday said Fulton County had blatantly defied the court when it allowed a third-party company to access its 2020 voting machines.

The county had first given a firm access to its Dominion voting machines in the weeks after the 2020 election, prompting the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections, to decertify the machines and ask the court to block the county from giving any further access. The court agreed, ordering the machines be kept secure.

Fulton County gave another company access to its voting machines anyway, leading the justices to impose sanctions on the county and its attorneys in the form of repaid legal fees for both the state and Dominion. “No remedy can undo the harm that the county’s contempt caused,” Justice David Wecht said in his majority opinion, but “simply are the next best thing.”

“There can be no orderly and effective administration of justice if parties to litigation do not comply with court orders. Our close review makes clear that Fulton County willfully violated an order of this Court,” Wecht wrote. “As well, we find that Fulton County and its various attorneys have engaged in a sustained, deliberate pattern of dilatory, obdurate, and vexatious conduct and have acted in bad faith throughout these sanction proceedings.”

The sanctions — and the at times clearly angry opinion — were also a message about the authority of the courts.

“[W]e can hope that the sanctions will underscore for the County, Attorney Carroll, and other observers that they trifle with judicial orders and time-honored rules and norms in litigation at their peril,” he wrote.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Kevin Dougherty said “it is difficult to recall a more brazen abuse of the judicial process during my more than two decades on the bench” and used his opinion to explicitly lay out an additional message about elections in particular.

“In fact, let it be known far and wide that this Court can — and will — exercise the full might of its constitutional authority against those who seek to delegitimize this Commonwealth’s elections, or its judiciary,” Dougherty wrote.

Messages left with the Fulton County commissioners were not returned. A spokesperson for Gov. Josh Shapiro said the ruling “is further proof that those who abuse our legal system to peddle dangerous lies about our elections will continue to be held accountable.”

The court was unanimous in agreeing on the sanctions. Wecht, a Democrat, was joined in his opinion by the other three Democrats, including Dougherty. The two Republicans on the court agreed with the outcome without joining the opinion.

The court also found Thomas Carroll, one of the county’s attorneys, guilty of bad-faith conduct that violated the court order and said they would refer him to the Pennsylvania Attorney Disciplinary Board. The justices also ordered him to pay legal fees. And they said they would refer another attorney for the county, Stefanie Lambert of Michigan, to that state’s Attorney Grievance Commission.

Wednesday’s ruling followed more than two years of fighting over Fulton County’s voting machines.

In December 2020, weeks after the presidential election, the county gave a third-party firm, Wake TSI, access to its Dominion voting machines as conspiracy theories swirled about that company’s election equipment. As then-President Donald Trump’s lies about the election being stolen fueled mistrust of the results, State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin) — a leading election denier and conspiracy theorist in the state — requested that the county allow an audit of its machines. He was joined by State Sen. Judy Ward (R., Blair), whose district includes Fulton County.

In the wake of Wake TSI’s inspection of the machines, the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections, decertified the equipment. Third-party access of voting equipment is considered a major breach of security, and the state said the machines could no longer be trusted for further use.

A complex legal fight, including a countersuit from Fulton County, followed. And the county continued to grant access to its voting machines.

In December 2021, a Republican-led effort in the state Senate to review the 2020 election sought to have another company, Envoy Sage, gain access to the Fulton County machines. The county agreed, prompting the Department of State to ask the state Supreme Court to block that access. The court agreed.

But months later, the county — while suing Dominion in county court — revealed that it had allowed another company, Speckin Forensics, LLC, to access and inspect its voting machines. That led the Department of State to ask the Supreme Court to impose sanctions, saying Fulton County was in contempt of the court order.

Commonwealth Court President Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer, appointed by the Supreme Court as special master, agreed with the state and recommended that the Supreme Court penalize the county and also order the voting machines to be taken from county custody and given to a neutral third party.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court agreed. The court ordered that the machines be given to a third-party to hold, with any future attempts to access them going through Commonwealth Court. The justices also assigned Cohn Jubelirer to review the legal costs in the case to determine the total to be paid.