The Mysterious Case of the Missing Trump Trial Ransomware Leak

This week, the notorious ransomware gang known as LockBit threatened a kind of disruption that would have been a first even for a criminal industry that has crippled hospitals and triggered the shutdown of a gas pipeline: leaking documents from the criminal prosecution of a former president and presidential candidate. 

Then, without explanation, that threat evaporated, leaving plenty of unanswered questions behind. 

For the past five days, LockBit promised on its dark-web site to publish data stolen from the Fulton County, Georgia, government, which it listed as one of its extortion victims, unless the county paid an unspecified ransom. One administrator for the group went so far as to post the specific threat of releasing documents related to Fulton County's high-profile prosecution of Donald Trump: the Superior Court of Fulton County is the venue where Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, stands accused of a criminal conspiracy to interfere in the 2020 election.