Pa. voting official sues Trump, Giuliani, others over 2020 allegations

Savage is seeking monetary damages and a jury trial on charges of defamation and civil conspiracy. The suit against Trump, Giuliani, Ellis, local GOP officials and others was first reported by Law360. The defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series by targets of Trump’s false voter fraud claims seeking compensation for the wreckage they say Trump left as he and his allies pushed claims about malfeasance by state and local election officials.

Trump or his campaign, and many of his allies, have faced suits from employees of Dominion Voting Systems, Capitol Police officers who responded to the violent Jan. 6 attack and members of Congress who fled the pro-Trump mob seeking to halt certification of the election.

Savage’s attorneys conceded that Trump and the other defendants typically didn’t name Savage in public statements linking him to misconduct, but the new lawsuit says that doesn’t matter.

“Although the Defendants mostly referred to Mr. Savage by his job title, the Voting Machine Warehouse Supervisor, anyone who heard or saw these defamatory statements or insinuations would have known that they were referring to Mr. Savage, because he was the only Chief Custodian/Voting Machine Warehouse Supervisor position in Delaware County,” the suit says.

”It was obvious there was only one person who was being accused of election fraud by all of the Defendants herein,” the complaint adds.

As the warehouse supervisor, Savage “managed the storage, security, programming, testing, and delivery of all voting equipment in Delaware County.”

“As is well known by poll watchers and election officials, this position did not vest the Plaintiff with any ability to conduct vote tabulation whatsoever,” his attorney noted.

But two GOP poll watchers also named in the lawsuit — Greg Stenstrom and Leah Hoopes — accused him of tampering with machines by illegally uploading votes. Those claims became part of a patchwork of easily debunked allegations that Trump and his allies relied on to sow doubts about the integrity of the vote.

Hoopes and Stenstrom both spoke at a public hearing called in late November by Pennsylvania Republicans, attended by Giuliani and Ellis, and lodged their claims against Savage, claiming they witnessed him uploading USB cards to the voting machines in his custody, which altered the tabulation by 50,000 votes.

“I personally witnessed … that happen 24 times, over 24 times,” Stenstrom said at the hearing. “We have multiple other witnesses who saw it, including Democrat poll watchers.”

Trump, who called into the Pennsylvania hearing, referenced the 50,000 vote figure in his remarks but didn’t identify Savage specifically.

Stenstrom repeated those claims at a subsequent press conference, in an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity and in an affidavit filed in multiple lawsuits supporting Trump’s effort to overturn Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania.

“All Defendants herein knew that such fraud was impossible,” Savage’s attorney argues.

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