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Charges dropped against Gwinnett Co. sheriff
After nearly three years, the Attorney General's office announced it would drop the case of alleged extortion against Gwinnett County Sheriff Keybo Taylor. Authorities decided the evidence against him was too weak. FOX 5 I-Team reporter Randy Travis says the main witness against Sheriff Taylor also happens to be linked to the Fulton County Grand Jury probe into alleged election interference.
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - Surveillance tapes from two Georgia counties.
Two unrelated GBI investigations.
And one metro bonding company owner connected to each, including an incident that is now part of the Fulton County Grand Jury investigation into possible 2020 election interference.
Scott Hall with "alternate" Trump elector Cathy Latham inside the Coffee County Elections Office (evidence photo)
The first involves the now-closed investigation into Gwinnett County Sheriff Keybo Taylor.
During his initial campaign in 2019, a security camera recorded Taylor when he stopped by Anytime Bonding in Lawrenceville.
Then-candidate Keybo Taylor inside the Anytime Bonding office in Lawrenceville in 2019.
Here’s what Taylor told an unidentified worker in the office:
"If folks don’t support me, I’m not going to let them bond here. I mean, I’m just not going to do it."
Anytime Bonding did not support Taylor’s candidacy. Owner Scott Hall originally contacted the GBI to report allegations of extortion and included a portion of the security video. Hall did not save the raw video.
In 2021, the day he took office, Taylor immediately suspended Anytime and several other bonding companies from doing business at the jail.
At the time, Taylor told the FOX 5 I-Team the 25-second clip took his words out of context, and the support he was requesting didn’t involve money to him but contributions for community programs like book bag giveaways.
Nearly three years later, the Georgia Attorney General’s Office dropped the case.
According to an Interoffice Memo dated July 12, prosecutors said "critical context is missing" from the video clip and the GBI could not find "similar statements were made to other bonding companies."
Taylor had no comment. Hall did not respond to requests for comment.
The FOX 5 I-Team also wanted to ask Hall about the second GBI investigation, this one involving his role in the so-called Stop the Steal movement.
One day after the attack on the US Capitol, Hall led a group of cyber experts to the Coffee County Courthouse about 200 miles south of Atlanta.
Scott Hall's involvement in the Coffee County voting machine incident is part of a civil case and GBI probe. This comes from the civil case filing.
Security cameras recorded Hall warmly interacting with Cathy Latham, the former county GOP chair and one of the so-called false electors for Trump. Latham was also given a target letter from the Fulton County Special Grand Jury.
According to those behind an unrelated lawsuit filed by the group Coalition for Good Governance, Hall was working with Trump attorney Sidney Powell hoping to prove security flaws in Dominion Voting Systems.
The Coalition for Good Governance sued the state in 2017, worried about the security of touchscreen voting. That lawsuit prompted the state to add paper ballots to the process in 2020, a change that still falls short of the group’s goal.
"We’re not taking a position one way or the other on the 2020 election," coalition director Marlyn Marks told the FOX 5 I-Team. "We’ve been standing in the middle the whole time saying we must have a secure, auditable election."
Executive Director Marilyn Marks said her Coalition for Good Governance isn't taking a position on the validity of the 2020 election. Scott Hall's surprise phone call to Marks led to exposure of the Coffee County incident.
On March 7, 2021, Marks said Hall phoned her out of the blue demanding records he thought she had that would help prove fraud in the 2020 election.
She eventually put Hall on speaker and began recording the conversation which is now part of the lawsuit.
Hall: "I’m the guy that chartered the jet to have them go down to Coffee County and inspect all those computers and we’ve heard nothing. We scanned every freaking ballot."
Marks said at least some of those copied records were later made public online. Her group eventually obtained the security video that confirmed Hall’s boasts about being inside the Coffee County Elections Office.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the effort was unauthorized. The state had to spend $400,000 to replace the tampered voting equipment. No flaws were ever confirmed.
Marks said she tried to subpoena Hall but he dodged their efforts.
"We chased him all over the place," she said. "Spent thousands of dollars and he would not come to the door."
Marks believes the efforts of Hall and others created a vulnerability in the Dominion system overall for future hacking. Raffensperger has dismissed those concerns.
The Fulton County Grand Jury investigation expanded last year to include what happened in Coffee County.
"I think we have laid out a very clear road map of culpability of a number of people we believe that the grand jury is looking at," said Marks.