Trending
HARRISBURG -- A Pennsylvania Republican-majority county government where two commissioners secretly allowed a third party to copy voting-machine data last year to help former President Donald Trump overturn his 2020 reelection defeat received contempt sanctions Wednesday from the state's highest court.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against Fulton County commissioners Stuart Ulsh and Randy Bunch -- and their lawyers -- for their behavior late last fall during pending litigation.
"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," wrote Justice David Wecht, in a 79-page opinion that announced the county was being held in civil contempt.
Fulton County was ordered to reimburse the Department of State for its legal costs and fees spent seeking to protect the machines from outside examinations since December 2021. The justices also called for the Dominion Voting Systems Inc.-owned machines in question to be placed in the custody of a "neutral agent" at the county's expense.
The Department of State had sought sanctions after learning in September that Speckin Forensics LLC, of Lansing, Michigan, copied hard drives in July from voting machines Fulton County rented from Dominion. Messages seeking comment were left for Speckin Forensics, which was not accused of wrongdoing in the matter before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Fulton had claimed in a lawsuit against Dominion that it was looking into whether the machines recorded votes accurately.
Manuel Bonder, a spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, called the high court decision "further proof that those who abuse our legal system to peddle dangerous lies about our elections will continue to be held accountable."
Ulsh said in a phone interview Wednesday he had not seen the court opinions but had no regrets over how he and Bunch handled the machines in their effort to review the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.
"Nothing happened in Fulton County. I know that because of what I did," Ulsh said. Fulton County gave Trump more than 85% of its vote in 2020.
Ulsh and Bunch both invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to the vast majority of questions asked of them on direct examination in the contempt proceedings late last year before the high court's special master, Commonwealth Court President Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer.