Unsubstantiated and false voter fraud claims
In 2013,Phillips' firm partnered with the partisan-conservative,Texas-based organization True the Vote to,according to Phillips,update and analyze voter registration data in the U.S. to supposedly identify indicators of each person voting such as:citizenship or non-citizenship,identity,and felony status. [62] [15] He has falsely asserted that his organization has evidence that between three and five million votes were illegal in the 2016 presidential election. [63] [64] [65] Phillips made his voter fraud claims before voter history data was available in most jurisdictions. [65] Later the group changed its stance and blamed a lack of funding as the cause when Catherine Engelbrecht stated in a video message "As it stands,we do not have the funding to do what we want to do. We’ve gathered 2016 voter rolls,we’ve gathered information from thousands of [ Freedom of Information Act requests],but we’re limited by the lack of resources [...] Next steps up are for us to sort of pull back on the national audit,and focus on targeted investigations.”In March 2017,Phillips told The Texas Tribune the final results were still forthcoming but the audit was no longer going to happen. [66] He also claimed that the 2020 election was rigged to steal the election from Trump,but has not provided any such evidence other than fabricated evidence in the form of Russian maps manipulated to look like American maps tracking non-existing vote mules. [67]
2000 Mules (2022)
In May 2022, Dinesh D'Souza released 2000 Mules , a debunked [6] political film which falsely alleged that Democrat-aligned individuals were paid to illegally collect and deposit ballots into drop boxes in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential election, based on unsubstantiated allegations by True the Vote involving cellphone data. [68] [69]
Philip Bump of The Washington Post wrote about the faulty "reliability of [Phillip's] analysis of data collected from cellphones", saying "there's good reason to think that Phillips's analyses don't include precise measurements of proximity to ballot drop boxes". [68]
According to Houston Public Media and NPR, Phillips made a "false claim" that alleged research helped "solved a murder of a young little girl in Atlanta", with True The Vote acknowledging it had reached out to law enforcement "more than two months later", and had "played no role in those arrests or indictments". [70] [71]
Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger examined one instance of voter fraud falsely alleged by Phillips, whereby a man delivered multiple ballots to a dropbox. Raffensperger stated that his office found no wrongdoing: "We investigated, and the five ballots that he turned in were all for himself and his family members." [70]
Eight Arizona Republican officials held a meeting with about 200 others to hear a presentation from Phillips weeks after the release of 2000 Mules. Phillips characterized the press as "journalistic terrorists" [68] for demonstrating the film's lack of proof. Asked if he had turned over evidence to law enforcement, Phillips said he had given data to the Arizona attorney general's office and the FBI a year earlier, though the offices said they never received it. [72]
Jennifer Wright, chief attorney at Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich's election integrity unit, worked for Gregg Phillips at True the Vote before going to work for Brnovich. [73] Phillips alleged his group investigated the ballot harvesting in San Luis, Arizona, resulting in the arrest of former school board member and former San Luis Mayor Guillermina Fuentes. [74] Records show the investigation was done in August 2020 and the indictment occurred in December 2020. [75] [76] Phillips also claimed that these two indicted suspects pled guilty after having watched the film 2000 Mules. Alma Juarez pled guilty on January 18, 2022 [77] and Guillermina Fuentes pled guilty on April 11, 2022, [78] whereas the film had a wide release on May 25, and limited screenings May 2 and 4, 2022, making this impossible. [79]
Konnech, Inc. (2022)
In late 2022, Phillips falsely alleged in a social media and podcast campaign that his associates had discovered evidence that Konnech, a poll worker management software company, had stored data on a Chinese computer server and allowed the Chinese government to access it. Phillips said the discovery had been made by two associates who hacked Konnech's servers. Konnech filed a federal defamation suit against True the Vote in September, also alleging True the Vote acquired information on millions of poll workers from the alleged hack.
During an October court hearing, the involvement of a third Phillips associate was disclosed, but Catherine Engelbrecht and Phillips declined federal judge Kenneth Hoyt's demand to identify the man, asserting he was an FBI informant and in danger from drug cartels. Phillips and Engelbrecht also testified to being confidential informants for the FBI while under oath. [80] Hoyt told them if they didn't identify the man within two days, and present the poll worker data they allegedly obtained, they would be held in contempt of court and jailed; they were jailed for contempt on October 31, 2022. [81] [82] Engelbrecht and Phillips appealed their incarceration to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, a three-judge panel of which ordered them released on November 8. [83]
Phillips made a complaint about Konnech's data handling to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, which then used his information for beginning a prosecution of Konnech's CEO in October 2022. All charges were dropped by the DA a few weeks later, citing that the evidence presented had been potentially biased. Konnech's CEO sued the country, and settled for a $5 million settlement. [84] [85]
