When you hear “Fulton County,” most of you would probably think of Fulton County, Georgia, where a long grand jury probe has been going on to determine whether criminal charges should be brought against former President Donald Trump and others for tampering in the 2020 election.

But tiny Fulton County, Pennsylvania (pop. 14,500), located in the south-central part of the state adjacent to Maryland, has caught the attention and ire of the state’s highest court, which has slapped sanctions in the form of a civil contempt on two of the county’s three commissioners and their attorneys.

The commissioners - Republicans Randy Bunch and Stuart Ulsh - are accused of secretly allowing an outside party to copy voting-machine data last year in an effort to help Trump overturn his re-election defeat in 2020.

Fulton County was ordered to reimburse the Department of State for legal costs and fees spent to protect the machines from outside examination. The high court also called for Dominion Voting Systems Inc. machines to be placed in the custody of a neutral agent at county’s expense.

The Department of State had sought sanctions after learning in September that Speckin Forensics LLC, of Lansing, Michigan, copied hard drives from voting machines that Fulton County rented from Dominion.

How brazen is it for a county to embark on a lone-wolf approach to election integrity by letting an outside entity to have access to its voting machine records! The result could be God-knows-what. There could be unauthorized changes or any number of other things that could impact the machines’ integrity in future elections. On top of that, why, especially in Fulton County, was there a need to confirm the results by doing something so stupid?

The heavily Republican county went for Trump in a big way giving him 86% of the vote (6,823-1,085). What could have possibly been gained from such a harebrained move?

“We find that Fulton County and its various attorneys have engaged in a sustained, deliberate pattern of dilatory (slow to act), obdurate (stubbornly refusing to change a course of action) and vexatious (causing annoyance and frustration) conduct and have acted in bad faith throughout these sanction proceedings,” wrote Justice David Wecht, in a 79-page opinion.

The commissioners claimed in a lawsuit against Dominion that it was looking into whether the machines recorded votes accurately. Did they think that Trump should have had more than 86% of the vote?

The two commissioners 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 held before special master, Commonwealth Court President Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer.

Dominion has been the subject of conspiracy theorists who claim without evidence the election was stolen from Trump. The company reached a nearly $800 million settlement with Fox News last week in one of several defamation lawsuits it has filed against Trump allies and broadcasters.

The high court also determined that Dominion was entitled to legal costs associated with protecting the voting machines going back to December 2021.

The Supreme Court was critical of the county’s attorneys in this case, too. Thomas J. Carroll of Pottstown, “incessantly transgressed the bounds of zealous but ethical advocacy,” repeatedly raising the same arguments before Cohn Jubelirer and the state Supreme Court, “long after it was clear that neither would grant the relief he sought,” Justice Wecht wrote.

The justices referred Carroll to the state Attorney Disciplinary Board for an investigation and ruled Carroll to be liable - along with Fulton County - for costs and fees expended by Dominion and the Department of State since Carroll entered the case in April 2022.

“We can hope that the sanctions will underscore for the county, Attorney Carroll, and other observers that if they trifle with judicial orders and time-honored rules and norms in litigation they do it at their peril,” Wecht wrote.

The justices sent the matter back to Cohn Jubelirer to calculate the legal fees and litigation costs to the Department of State and Dominion.

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.”

The Pennsylvania case comes as election conspiracy theorists have gained access to confidential voting machine data in Colorado and Michigan, too.

By BRUCE FRASSINELLI | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.