Washington - Two veteran investigative journalists who spent two years investigating then-President Donald Trump's alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia wrote a new book that called Georgia "ground zero for what was arguably the most anti-democratic plot in American history."
Last week, Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman's book, "Find Me the Votes: A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election," was released amid widespread coverage of its revelations, which shed new light on how the plot allegedly went nationwide and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis's investigation into it.
Trump and 14 co-defendants, including former White House top of staff Mark Meadows and attorney Rudy Giuliani, deny wrongdoing. Four more defendants charged by a Fulton County jury on Aug. 14, 2023, including former Trump legal advisers Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, have pled guilty for their collaboration. Unset trial date.
After reading the book and interviewing Isikoff and Klaidman, USA TODAY identified the book's 11 most significant unique takeaways. Many of the names below were unavailable for comment when USA TODAY contacted them.
Powell, an election lawyer who falsely claimed voter fraud, didn't merely arrange break-ins at election offices nationwide to take voting machines and software to prove that secret computer algorithms had shifted votes from Trump to Biden. She also reportedly wrote "hunting licenses," a code phrase for preemptive presidential pardons that then-President Trump may offer to break-in operators.
According to Isikoff and Klaidman, the QAnon conspiracy cult affected Trump's 2020 election falsehoods more than previously recognized. They alleged Georgia lawyer Lin Wood, a leading Trump legal advocate, was a QAnon member who promoted its allegations of a global conspiracy of high-level government pedophiles aiming to overthrow Trump.
Wood had “stop the steal” strategy sessions at Tomotley Plantation, his South Carolina plantation, with Powell, former Trump national security advisor Mike Flynn, and Zoom, a Qanon leader whose internet bulletin board started the movement. The writers claimed that Trump encouraged them by stating, “Go knock ‘em dead,” in a taped phone discussion with Wood and Powell. The writers said that Watkins, who was in Japan at the time of the meeting, could not be reached for comment. Wood and Powell did not reply to demands for a response from their attorneys.
Trump attorneys may have known some of their voter fraud claims were frivolous and filed them to stir controversy. Wood emailed Powell on Nov. 11, 2020, “I have so much data for you. But we won't need it. We only need to seem litigious. Ha!”