Who is Cathy Latham?

Cathy Latham is the former chair of the Coffee County Republican Party and a member of the Georgia Republican Party’s executive committee. She is one of 19 defendants indicted in the Fulton County grand jury investigation into the 2020 scheme to overturn the presidential election results in the state. Cathy Latham was one of the 16 fake presidential electors from Georgia during the 2020 election.

Background

Cathy Latham is a former teacher. She taught economics at Coffee High School until her participation in the failed attempt to overturn the 2020 Georgia presidential election. After those events, she retired and moved back to her home state of Texas.

Why Was Latham Indicted?

Fake Elector Plot

As part of the scheme to overturn the election results, Latham and 15 others signed a fraudulent electoral college certificate for Donald Trump, despite the fact that Joe Biden had won the popular vote in Georgia. The goal of this was to send two slate of presidential electors–the true slate of electors for Biden and the false slate of electors for Trump–to Congress, in order to have that body or Vice President Pence ultimately proclaim Trump to be the winner of the state.

Latham was indicted in Fulton County, GA in August 2023 on 11 charges. In total, 84 fake electors – including those in Georgia as well as the six other states where such electors organized – signed and submitted fake Electoral College certificates to the National Archives declaring Donald Trump the winner.

Voting Machine Breaches

Cathy Latham was also involved in other attempts to interfere in election procedures. Released security camera footage shows Latham leading individuals from a third-party company into the secure area within the Coffee County, GA elections office on January 7, 2021. The people involved then illegally accessed the server and voting machines to copy voter data and voting software. The third-party company, SullivanStrickler, was hired by co-defendant Sidney Powell, a Trump lawyer that has since pled guilty to 6 criminal counts of conspiracy to commit interference with election duties.

Cathy Latham is alleged to have participated in this effort with fellow co-defendants Misty Hampton and Powell, as well as Scott Hall, who pled guilty to five counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties.

Her charges include:

• violating Georgia’s Racketeer and Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (“RICO”) Act,

• forgery,

• criminal attempt to file false documents,

• two counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud, and

• conspiracy to commit computer theft and computer trespass.