This episode explores two stories of fights over the right to vote.
Texas-based nonprofit True the Vote claims to have evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election—an idea Trump loudly echoes as part of “the big lie.” But True the Vote has never shown any proof. The lack of evidence hasn’t stopped the group from netting millions of dollars in donations. As reporter Cassandra Jaramillo explains, True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht and board member Gregg Phillips took home hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal loans and payments to companies they’re associated with. Despite this grift, True the Vote’s influence is still expanding. The group provided “research” for a new film called 2000 Mules that promises to expose widespread voter fraud—with no evidence to back it up.
The big lie sparked the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, an event that is now part of the nation’s election history. But this was not the first time that a violent mob tried to challenge election results. In 1898, a group of armed white supremacists carried out a coup in Wilmington, North Carolina, and seized power from legally elected Black leaders. The Wilmington coup created a blueprint for taking voting rights away from people of color—a legacy of voter suppression that the country is still grappling with today. Host Al Letson pieces together the story with help from the grandson of a prominent member of the Black community in Wilmington.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is pretty familiar with Catherine Engelbrecht. He’s been a guest on her podcast, chatting about their shared passion: rooting out voter fraud. They both have gone to great lengths to try to support former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
And when Engelbrecht, founder of the nonprofit True the Vote, has found herself in hot water, Paxton’s office has turned out to be a helpful ally.
Most recently, a state judge sided with Engelbrecht’s argument that it should be Paxton’s office – not a court – that should probe allegations made by a True the Vote donor who says he was swindled out of $2.5 million.
But more than a year after the case was dismissed, Paxton’s office won’t say whether it ever investigated the donor dispute. Last month, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found that True the Vote had engaged in a series of questionable transactions that sent more than $1 million to Engelbrecht and other insiders, while failing to back up its voter fraud claims.
In the reporting of that story, Paxton’s office withheld financial documents and email communications from Reveal and issued contradictory and inaccurate statements about the nonprofit, which has been a leading voice in driving the voter fraud movement from the political fringes to the core of GOP ideology.
The embattled attorney general this year skated through a contested primary race. But he faces potential disbarment for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, is under investigation by the FBI, is getting sued by whistleblowers in his office and awaits trial for a seven-year-old felony indictment for securities fraud. In their lawsuit, former staff members have accused him of using his office to provide legal favors to an ally, saying he appointed a special prosecutor to target adversaries of a donor who was under investigation.
His office advocated on Engelbrecht’s behalf before the Texas Supreme Court in 2016 when she got into legal trouble with her previous nonprofit organization, King Street Patriots, for being overtly political. He appeared on her podcast in July 2020, during which Engelbrecht said she considers Paxton a friend.
“I can’t say thank you enough for the dignity and the respect that you bring to that office,” she said.
“I feel blessed to have this opportunity, especially in a time like this. It’s really a crisis,” Paxton replied.
“God bless you. God bless you, Ken Paxton, God bless you. And thank you for all that you and your team do,” Engelbrecht added.
Months later, the two went to extraordinary lengths to support Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Paxton filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Texas seeking to overturn the election in key states where Trump had lost, a suit that the Supreme Court eventually dismissed because Texas had no legal standing to challenge other states’ results.
Engelbrecht, meanwhile, accepted $2.5 million from a major conservative donor to lead a legal and PR campaign to contest the election results. However, True the Vote quickly dismissed the lawsuits it filed and provided no evidence of voter fraud. The donor, Fred Eshelman, became disillusioned and sued True the Vote in rural Austin County, Texas, in February 2021 for misusing his donation.
Anytime a charity in Texas is sued, the state attorney general’s office is notified under law. On March 9, 2021, Assistant Attorney General Zeenia Challa wrote to the Austin County district clerk, notifying the court that the office learned about the dispute. Challa said she was “currently reviewing the documents provided in the proceeding to determine if Attorney General participation is warranted.”
On the same day, an attorney for True the Vote wrote to Challa that he anticipated that she would want to know “that the funds spent by this charitable organization are being spent consistent with the purposes for which the entity was formed.”
“You will see, if it comes to that point, that all of the expenditures of True the Vote have been made in order to evaluate, investigate and ultimately educate on the issues of voter integrity,” attorney Brock Akers said in the letter, which was produced in response to an open records request.
Neither court records nor records released by the attorney general’s office indicate whether Challa responded to letters from True the Vote’s attorneys.
On March 31, attorneys for True the Vote argued that the lawsuit did not have standing because it was a matter for the Texas attorney general’s office.
“Instead, the only true party in interest relative to money donated to this charitable organization is the State of Texas, as represented by the Attorney General,” True the Vote argued, according to court records.
The Austin County judge agreed with True the Vote’s argument April 8, freeing Engelbrecht’s nonprofit from the specter of having to return $2.5 million.
More than a year after the case was dismissed, Paxton’s office won’t say whether it ever investigated. And it refused to answer questions about whether it will examine the organization’s finances. Engelbrecht did not respond to questions related to her relationship with Paxton.
Eshelman has appealed the judge’s ruling.
Paxton’s Office Withholds Records and Claims True the Vote Isn’t a Charity
As Reveal sought to better understand True the Vote’s finances and whether Paxton looked into the donor dispute, we requested various records related to the nonprofit, which are public records under the Texas Public Information Act and held by the attorney general’s office. We also requested internal attorney general communications about True the Vote.
In response to the request for the records, Assistant Attorney General June Harden said True the Vote was no longer a charity and closed the request without turning over any documents.
When pressed on the decision, Harden later said she “misspoke.” Indeed, records with the state indicate True the Vote is an active charity. The request was reopened.
As is the case in many states, the Texas attorney general can keep records of nonprofits, like their tax filings. The attorney general’s office first said it did not have True the Vote’s tax filings, then later acknowledged it had the nonprofit’s 2019 return but refused to release it. To make its case, it cited a general statute that says tax returns are confidential for the average person.
Joe Larsen, a First Amendment attorney and board member of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said that statute didn’t apply. “That’s the kind of information that’s supposed to be available to the public,” Larsen said. The attorney general’s office “has no basis for withholding that.”
In Texas, it’s usually possible to appeal records decisions made by public agencies. However, the attorney general is the party that decides on the appeal.
Ultimately, we received versions of True the Vote’s tax returns from other sources, and they show a series of questionable financial transactions.
At one point, Engelbrecht provided Reveal a copy of the 2019 tax return that was significantly different from the version on the IRS website. The IRS version showed that True the Vote had loaned her more than $113,000; the version provided to Reveal didn’t list that information. The two versions listed different board members as well.
When Reveal requested records from the attorney general, Paxton also withheld some communications related to True the Vote, citing attorney-client privilege. It’s unclear what those records could be. Larsen said there could be some communications that can be withheld under attorney-client privilege about True the Vote, but it doesn’t mean it can withhold all communications.
It’s commonplace for law enforcement agencies to not comment on pending investigations, but in other cases, Paxton has publicly acknowledged when he’s investigating a charity.
The Texas State Bar in May filed a lawsuit against Paxton for falsely saying he’d uncovered evidence that cast doubt on the 2020 election result. Paxton could face a reprimand or have his legal license revoked.
“Texas Bar: I’ll see you and the leftists that control you in court,” Paxton said in response.
Paxton announced his office was investigating the Texas Bar Foundation, which is the nonprofit arm of the State Bar that offers legal services and education. He claimed the nonprofit was “facilitating mass influx of illegal aliens” by donating money to groups that “encourage, participate in, and fund illegal immigration at the Texas-Mexico border.”
True the Vote’s Research Debunked at Jan. 6 Hearing
While Paxton has remained silent on True the Vote, the nonprofit’s research grabbed attention during the hearings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In a video shown during the second hearing last month, former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr mocked the film “2000 Mules,” which used True the Vote’s claims that anonymized cellphone data around ballot drop boxes pointed to “ballot harvesting.” That’s when a third party – like a household member, activist group or nursing home – collects and submits absentee ballots on behalf of others, which is legal in a majority of states.
In his videotaped testimony, Barr said True the Vote’s data and video evidence were “lacking.”
“My opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen by fraud,” Barr said. “And I haven’t seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that, including the ‘2000 Mules’ movie.”
He broke out in a laugh.
Shortly after the hearing, Engelbrecht joined former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room” show, where the two bashed Barr’s testimony and made veiled threats against the former U.S. attorney general.
“Bill Barr, we are coming for you, bro,” Bannon said. Engelbrecht nodded her head.
“Beware the fury of a risen people, this is not going to go well if they continue to push this aside,” Engelbrecht said.
In the weeks following the film’s May 7 release, Engelbrecht has hosted a series of question-and-answer forums. However, she engages only with people who pay to subscribe to her content creator platform on Locals.
Several commenters recently asked Engelbrecht when she planned to release the voter fraud evidence following the debut of “2000 Mules.” She did not address a specific date.
Engelbrecht, arriving late to a recent livestream and from her car, read aloud from a lengthy commenter’s post about election fraud that went on to say: “I’m not happy about being scammed by True the Vote. And given the apparent holes in the arguments and perhaps the shadiness of the graphics, I certainly cannot publicly endorse ‘2000 mules.’ ”
She paused.
“This one would have been a fun question to start from the bottom and read up,” she said.
“Sorry you didn’t like the movie and that you didn’t like the graphics. Take that up with Dinesh,” Engelbrecht said, referring to director Dinesh D’Souza. “And if you feel like you’re being scammed, then why are you on this Locals channel? You had to subscribe to even ask the question. That’s your choice.”
Shortly after, Engelbrecht ended her livestream early.
This story was edited by Andrew Donohue and Sumi Aggarwal and copy edited by Nikki Frick.
A review of thousands of pages of documents paints the picture of True the Vote as an organization that enriches insiders rather than rooting out voter fraud.
Over the last two presidential election cycles, True the Vote has raised millions in donations with claims that it discovered tide-turning voter fraud. It’s promised to release its evidence. It never has.
Instead, the Texas-based nonprofit organization has engaged in a series of questionable transactions that sent more than $1 million combined to its founder, a longtime board member romantically linked to the founder and the group’s general counsel, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.
A former PTA mom-turned-Tea Party activist, True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht has played a pivotal role in helping drive the voter fraud movement from the political fringes to a central pillar in the Republican Party’s ideology. Casting herself as a God-fearing, small-town Texan, she’s spread the voter-fraud gospel by commanding airtime on cable television, space on the pages of Breitbart News and even theater seats, as a new feature film dramatizing her organization’s exploits, “2000 Mules,” plays in cinemas across the country.
Along the way, she’s gained key allies across the conservative movement. Former President Donald Trump, who shouts her out by name during rallies and held a private screening for the film at his Mar-a-Lago resort, exploited the group’s declarations to proclaim that he won the popular vote in 2016. Provocateur Dinesh D’Souza partnered with Engelbrecht on the film. And she’s represented by the legal heavyweight James Bopp Jr., who helped dismantle abortion rights, crafted many of the arguments in the Citizens United case that revolutionized campaign finance law and was part of the legal team that prevailed in Bush v. Gore.
James Bopp Jr. (from left), Gregg Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht make a presentation to the Wisconsin Assembly’s elections committee in March. Credit: Courtesy of WKOW
A review of thousands of pages of documents from state filings, tax returns and court records, however, paints the picture of an organization that enriches Engelbrecht and partner Gregg Phillips rather than actually rooting out any fraud. According to the documents, True the Vote has given questionable loans to Engelbrecht and has a history of awarding contracts to companies run by Engelbrecht and Phillips. Within days of receiving $2.5 million from a donor to stop the certification of the 2020 election, True the Vote distributed much of the money to a company owned by Phillips, Bopp’s law firm and Engelbrecht directly for a campaign that quickly fizzled out.
Legal and nonprofit accounting experts who reviewed Reveal’s findings said the Texas attorney general and Internal Revenue Service should investigate.
“This certainly looks really bad,” said Laurie Styron, executive director of CharityWatch.
And while the claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election have been dismissed out of hand by courts and debunked by audits, even those led by Republicans, the story of True the Vote highlights how exploiting the Big Lie has become a lucrative enterprise, growing from a cottage industry to a thriving economy.
The records show:
True the Vote regularly reported loans to Engelbrecht, including more than $113,000 in 2019, according to a tax filing. Texas law bans nonprofits from loaning money to directors; Engelbrecht is both a director and an employee.
Companies connected to Engelbrecht and Phillips collected nearly $890,000 from True the Vote from 2014 to 2020. The largest payment – at least $750,000 – went to a new company created by Phillips, OPSEC Group LLC, to do voter analysis in 2020. It’s unclear whether OPSEC has any other clients; it has no website and no digital footprint that Reveal could trace beyond its incorporation records. The contract, which one expert called “eye-popping” for its largess, did not appear to be disclosed in the 2020 tax return the organization provided to Reveal.
True the Vote provided Bopp’s law firm a retainer of at least $500,000 to lead a legal charge against the results of the 2020 election, but he filed only four of the seven lawsuits promised to a $2.5 million donor, all of which were voluntarily dismissed less than a week after being filed. The donor later called the amount billed by Bopp’s firm “unconscionable” and “impossible.”
The organization’s tax returns are riddled with inconsistencies and have regularly been amended. Experts who reviewed the filings said it makes it difficult to understand how True the Vote is truly spending its donations.
The IRS version showed Phillips as a board member. Englebrecht’s version did not. The IRS return showed Engelbrecht had a loan balance of $113,396. Engelbrecht’s version indicated the loan’s balance was gone. In response to questions from Reveal, Engelbrecht said she was going to submit an amended version of the group’s 2019 tax return – the one she’d provided to Reveal – to the IRS.
Engelbrecht declined to be interviewed for this story, routing specific inquiries through Bopp and her accountant. Bopp wouldn’t answer questions about the loan and who approved the contracts, saying that was confidential financial information. He said there was “nothing inherently wrong or improper with contracting with board members to do services for the corporation.”
“I’ve represented not-for-profits for 45 years,” Bopp said, “and it is common.”
However, experts questioned whether True the Vote had the proper structure and policies to safeguard against self-dealing the way other nonprofits would.
As True the Vote has gained prominence, Engelbrecht has maintained an oversized control of the charity as its only employee in recent years and a member of a small board of directors that’s been packed with potential conflicts of interests. “That’s a real problem,” said Styron, of CharityWatch.
The federal government grants nonprofit organizations a special status, allowing them to operate tax-free in recognition of their public benefit. In exchange, they are subject to greater scrutiny and transparency to ensure that donor funds are being used properly.
Experts said an organization with more than $1 million in revenue typically would have more employees and a larger board. “These are public dollars, and the board members and officers of a charity have a fiduciary duty to … spend all of the resources of the charity carrying out the mission of the organization to the best of their ability in ways that benefit the nonprofit,” Styron said. “Not in ways that benefit them personally.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has appeared on Engelbrecht’s podcast and been an active supporter of attempts to overthrow the 2020 election. In court filings in a donor lawsuit against True the Vote, his office said it would review the case to see if any action is warranted. Reveal sought his office’s communications about True the Vote through Texas public records law, but he refused to disclose them, citing attorney-client privilege.
Meanwhile, True the Vote’s work continues to get airtime in Trump’s speeches. At a rally earlier this year in Southeast Texas, the former president celebrated Engelbrecht as a champion.
“What a job she’s done, thank you, thank you, Catherine,” Trump said. “If you have any information about ballot harvesting in your state, call Catherine Engelbrecht.”
True the Vote’s Tea Party Roots
In the late 2000s, Engelbrecht was a small-business owner in Southeast Texas who was not deeply involved in politics. But Barack Obama’s election as president in 2008 concerned her enough that she got active in local Tea Party efforts, attending rallies and meetings.
Along with her then-husband, Bryan Engelbrecht, she created a nonprofit called King Street Patriots, which trained volunteers who ended up poll watching in mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods in Harris County. It ran into problems for violating the law that prohibits nonprofits from being overtly political, and the Engelbrechts spun off True the Vote.
Catherine Engelbrecht speaks at the Tea Party Patriots American Policy Summit in Phoenix in 2011. Credit: Gage Skidmore
Catherine Engelbrecht earned regular appearances on Fox News, where she once offered a $1 million bounty for testimony. She advocated for Texas’ strict voter ID law in 2013. A year later, Engelbrecht and her husband filed for divorce and Bryan Engelbrecht left True the Vote’s board. Gregg Phillips, a longtime conservative operative, took his seat.
Phillips had been dogged by allegations of financial impropriety, accused of leveraging his government positions in Mississippi and Texas to make himself money. The same year Phillips joined True the Vote’s board, the nonprofit began to pay entities he controlled.
In 2014, True the Vote paid $25,000 to American Solutions for Winning the Future for a “donor list rental.” Phillips was the director, records show. The next year, True the Vote gave $30,000 to a company called Define Idea Inc. for “IT support services.” Phillips was a director of the company, according to its formation documents.
That year, Engelbrecht began receiving questionable payments from True the Vote as well.
According to its 2015 tax filings, it issued Engelbrecht a $40,607 loan. Under Texas law, nonprofit directors can’t receive loans, though employees can. Engelbrecht is both a director and an employee. True the Vote wouldn’t answer questions about who approved the loan, its conditions and whether Engelbrecht voted on it as a board member.
“I’m not going to respond to you on this,” Bopp said. “If you want free legal research, go pay a lawyer to do it.”
But that wasn’t the only way Engelbrecht got access to her nonprofit’s coffers. ARC Network LLC and Ao2 LLC were paid a total of $82,500 in 2015 and 2016 for “database license fees” and “software license fees,” respectively, according to the tax filings, which disclose that the companies are tied to Engelbrecht. Court filings indicate that she owned 100% of ARC Network; she is listed as the owner of Ao2 in registration documents in Wyoming.
ARC Network and Define Idea were barred by Texas in 2015 from doing business, state records show.
A business can be forfeited when a company doesn’t file a mandatory annual report showing its owner, directors and registered address – or when it does not pay taxes. Reveal couldn’t find other clients or a footprint for the two companies Engelbrecht owned.
Brian Mittendorf, an Ohio State University accounting professor who specializes in nonprofit accounting, said the records raise a series of red flags.
“We always have concerns from a governance standpoint about organizations engaging in such transactions with insiders, and the organization’s behavior, in terms of its accounting and inconsistencies, only inflame those concerns,” he said.
Engelbrecht and Phillips’ ties go beyond True the Vote. Their companies have shared the same mailing address, and Engelbrecht in 2016 was named the CFO of one of Phillips’ companies. In court filings, a donor later alleged that the two were “lovers,” something they haven’t denied.
When Reveal asked Bopp about their relationship, he said: “I do not know the facts because it’s none of my business, whether they’re in a romantic relationship or not.”
True the Vote Fuels Trump’s Conspiracies
In 2016, just weeks after pulling off his stunning presidential victory, Trump made an unprecedented claim: Millions of people had voted illegally in the election. And, he said, that’s why he’d lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton – by what would ultimately be about 2.9 million votes.
He didn’t offer up any evidence. But weeks later, Phillips appeared on CNN claiming he had the data analysis to show that more than 3 million voted illegally in the 2016 election. But when asked to show proof, Phillips said he needed time to verify the data.
“(We) believe that it will probably take another few months,” Phillips said. Trump tweeted shortly after the interview: “Gregg Phillips and crew say at least 3,000,000 votes were illegal. We must do better!”
Gregg Phillips appeared on CNN in January 2017, claiming he had the data analysis to show that more than 3 million people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election. Credit: CNN.com screenshot
True the Vote quickly used the opportunity to push a $1 million fundraising campaign to audit its data.
“Our audit team will include world-class technologists, researchers, data miners, statisticians, scholars, analysts, and subject matter experts. This isn’t B team stuff,” Engelbrecht wrote in a fundraising email. “The integrity of our election is too important.”
But Engelbrecht and Phillips never completed the audit or released the evidence behind their claims. In a video posted on YouTube in June 2017, Engelbrecht said they dropped the effort because donor promises didn’t materialize.
In 2017, the organization was in the red by more than $139,000. It reported having one employee, Engelbrecht, down from 11 employees in 2012. The $40,607 loan to Engelbrecht remained on the books in 2017, accounting for more than 66% of the nonprofit’s total assets.
The next year, True the Vote reported it had $4,754 in cash.
But that didn’t stop True the Vote from giving ever-growing loans to Engelbrecht. In 2018, it disclosed an outstanding $61,896 loan to Engelbrecht. It’s unclear whether Engelbrecht took one loan that grew over the years or multiple loans.
The nonprofit’s tax returns make it difficult to follow.
Lloyd Mayer, a nonprofit law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said there’s “a lot of sloppiness” in the financial statements. Documentation around Engelbrecht’s loan at times contradicted itself, saying in one section she paid it off but then still had a balance in another.
“The changes over time and the fact that in 2017, it doesn’t say which way the money’s flowing, would make me ask if I was in the attorney general’s office, at least ask: Could you clarify?” Mayer said.
In a number of years, True the Vote doesn’t answer important governance questions in its tax filings, such as whether it has policies around conflicts of interest, whistleblowers, document retention and how it determines Engelbrecht’s pay. “Importantly, it fails to answer questions about family or business relationships between officers and board members,” said Styron, the leader of CharityWatch. She called True the Vote “a governance black hole.”
It’s also unclear when Phillips left the board. In court documents, he says he left the board in 2017. However, the 2018 tax return listed him as a board member, as did the original 2019 filing. Phillips didn’t respond to multiple attempts to reach him for comment; he has previously denied wrongdoing in the Mississippi and Texas cases.
“To me, that makes no sense,” said Philip Hackney, a former IRS official who teaches tax law at the University of Pittsburgh.
True the Vote’s Plan to Challenge the 2020 Election
As the November 2020 election approached, Engelbrecht and attorney James Bopp Jr. warned on the nonprofit’s podcast that Democrats planned to use the courts to expand mail-in voting and said the organization had a plan to challenge it.
“We’re going all in on this,” Engelbrecht said on her show in May 2020. “If you would have asked me two months ago, I would have not told you that litigation was any part of what we plan to do at True the Vote in 2020, but now it’s the most important thing we can do.”
Yet as Election Day neared, conservative leaders were sounding the alarm about True the Vote. During a private meeting of the Council for National Policy in August 2020, a group of panelists was asked what they thought about True the Vote. Conservative journalist John Fund said he was the one who’d given Engelbrecht her first national publicity.
“I like Catherine, but she has gone astray. She has hooked up with the wrong associates. And I have to say this with the greatest of sadness, because I have to be honest with you, because you’re the people who actually have to make decisions on your own about who to support. As much as I like Catherine personally, I would not give her a penny,” he said, according to a recently leaked video obtained by Documented. “She’s a good person who’s been led astray. Don’t do it.”
Then Election Day came, and Trump demanded that states stop counting votes as it appeared Biden would win.
He claimed victory, saying – without proof – that he’d been the victim of massive fraud. Trump’s campaign promised action: a legal campaign challenging the outcome in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia. Rumors and conspiracy theories about illegal voting – often in Democratic areas home to Black and Brown voters – ramped up in earnest.
Fred Eshelman watched in angst. A pharmaceutical entrepreneur from North Carolina, Eshelman was concerned that the election had been riddled with fraud.
A political consultant emailed some of those conspiracies to Eshelman the morning of Nov. 5, according to records filed as part of a lawsuit in rural Austin County, Texas.
Eshelman responded eight minutes later. “This stuff really needs to be verified, quantified, and a massive information campaign launched at American people,” he wrote. “You want a revolt from the Silent Majority, you got it.”
He told the consultant, Tom Crawford, that they needed the best and most powerful public relations firm “cranked up now,” and they had to “figure out how to get it out in spite of the media.”
At 6:36 a.m. that same morning, Bopp emailed Engelbrecht with the urgent plea to call him. The email’s subject line: “voter fraud and a legal challenge.”
“I have been contacted by a friend with access to substantial funding regarding an idea about lawsuits re voter fraud,” Bopp wrote. “You might be central to that. I would like to discuss.”
Within hours, Engelbrecht prepared a donor pitch for what she called Validate the Vote, a litigation plan to challenge the election using data and whistleblower testimony.
The two teams had a brief call, and Eshelman decided he was in. He wired True the Vote $2 million, records show.
Attorney James Bopp Jr. represents U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (left) of Georgia during a hearing in April in Atlanta. Bopp also serves as general counsel for True the Vote. Credit: John Bazemore/Getty Images
True the Votes’ plan laid out the details: Bopp, touted as the lead attorney in Citizens United and Bush v. Gore, would file lawsuits in seven states across the country to “nullify the results of the state’s election, so that the Presidential Electors can be selected in a special election or by the state legislature.” OPSEC would “aggregate and analyze data to identify patterns of election subversion.” True the Vote would build public momentum and “galvanize Republican legislative support in key states.” The total cost of the campaign: $7.3 million.
“Thank you for this opportunity. We will not let you down,” Engelbrecht wrote in a Nov. 5 email.
But days later, the plan started to show strains. On Nov. 7, the Associated Press called the election for Biden. By then, many lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign started to get dismissed in multiple states. The day after, Engelbrecht sent a text message saying Eshelman wanted to talk about their game plan moving forward.
“He’s getting skittish that we can’t do this because the Trump camp is falling apart and people are jumping ship,” she said.
Still, they pushed ahead and began spending Eshelman’s donation. On Nov. 9, Phillips’ OPSEC submitted a bill to True the Vote for $350,000, according to court records. The invoice for the services is sparse; it bills for “Validate the Vote.” The quantity: one. It includes a litany of items ranging from “data” to “analysis,” “whistleblower” and “security,” all lumped in the six-figure bill.
The next day, True the Vote paid Bopp a $500,000 retainer, according to court records. It also paid Engelbrecht a total of $30,000, the records indicate.
By Nov. 11, Eshelman was getting impatient, according to the communications. He wanted to know what the team was uncovering through its state-of-the-art computer programs and whistleblower tip line.
“I know you’re running very hard, and I don’t want to pile on. However, I do want to know what money is accomplishing, where this is headed and the odds of winning,” he wrote to Engelbrecht.
But Eshelman began to question the team as he failed to get the concrete follow-ups he expected from Engelbrecht.
“I cannot continue to spend millions if this is quixotic,” he wrote to Engelbrecht and the consultant, Crawford, the morning of Nov. 11.
He saw an analogy in his own work that could be applied to his new calling. It was similar to a drug development process: Get the technology and then get the hard data to support the claims. This wasn’t “rocket science,” he wrote to Crawford. True the Vote said it had both handled.
By the end of that week, Engelbrecht said she needed more money for the project, according to court records. The $2 million hadn’t been enough. The consultant told Eshelman that they may need “additional short term money for Bopp.” Eshelman wired another $500,000 on Nov. 13.
The next day, Engelbrecht touted knowledge of four whistleblowers but never identified who they were. When the consultant followed up with Engelbrecht later to get details on the whistleblowers, it led to tension.
“I just had a difficult call with Catherine,” Crawford wrote to Eshelman on Nov. 15. “She is resistant to sharing ANY details with us about whistleblowers or the data work and took an ‘I run this’ tone with me.”
That day, Eshelman implored Engelbrecht again to share whatever information she had on data and whistleblowers for the lawsuits so he could send it to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Crawford, who’d said earlier that he had Fox News’ Sean Hannity waiting to break the news.
The consultant updated Eshelman that Graham’s team was “growing more skeptical every hour that passes with nothing from Catherine.” And he shared what he said Cleta Mitchell, an attorney aiding Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, thought of Engelbrecht.
“Again, I am sorry for this headache. Cleta Mitchell, a well known election attorney called to cheer us on for helping Bopp and told me Catherine ‘is crazy as a shithouse rat,’ ” Crawford wrote to Eshelman.
(Mitchell, who had once represented True the Vote, denied ever making that comment. “I’ve never used that term in my life,” she said in an email to Reveal. “I’ve got lots of colloquialisms. That isn’t one of them.”)
On Nov. 16, True the Vote convened a conference call with Eshelman and his consultant. The big donor learned that the group had voluntarily dismissed the four lawsuits. Emails show Eshelman was furious about the decision.
“I cannot believe they did this without giving us a chance to get to Trump or be in on the decision,” Eshelman wrote later that dayto his consultant, according to records.
“Very frankly I was physically sick after our call,” Eshelman wrote to Engelbrecht. “I have to tell you this is a total disaster from a coordination, communication, and representation perspective.”
By that point, True the Vote had spent one-third of Eshelman’s gift in 11 days and failed to produce anything meaningful in evidence, the records show.
In an email to Eshelman and Bopp following the meeting, Engelbrecht indicated they fell short of funding goals. She told them that “our not having full funding was well known and often discussed.” She mentioned that she assumed the Trump campaign would be pitching in.
“I’d written in my 11/14 email to you that it appeared our legal fees would have been covered by the Trump campaign, which I described in a statement of our cash position, described as best possible given the tight timeline with so many moving parts,” Engelbrecht wrote in a Nov. 16 email.
Later that night, Crawford began to express regrets about going with True the Vote. He told Eshelman he had been told that Bopp “was the guy” they needed for the legal efforts.
“To get him I had to go through True the Vote. Given timing, I ran with that and am just kicking myself as it is clear from many friends and insiders that Catherine is a disaster,” Crawford wrote to Eshelman. “Her story is utter Bullshit.”
Eshelman ultimately sued the nonprofit in federal and state court, accusing True the Vote of using his donation to enrich Engelbrecht, Phillips and Bopp. In court filings, True the Vote argues that Eshelman wasn’t entitled to his money back because there were no strings attached to the donation and that the relationship became strained after True the Vote didn’t want to pay a $1 million invoice connected to one of Eshelman’s consultants for communications. (The federal suit was withdrawn. In the state suit, True the Vote argued that the court didn’t have jurisdiction to handle the dispute, saying it was the purview of the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton. A judge agreed and threw out the case. Eshelman has appealed the decision.)
In a recent deposition in a separate lawsuit, Engelbrecht admitted that True the Vote had not identified widespread voter fraud at the time she pitched the Validate the Vote plan to Eshelman, despite proclaiming there was “significant evidence” in the one-page proposal she emailed to him on the project.
“This was a promotional piece,” Engelbrecht said of the document during the deposition, according to court records.
Bopp never served on True the Vote’s board and doesn’t face the same potential conflicts of interest as Engelbrecht and Phillips do for some of their transactions, but he has come under scrutiny for the amount he billed for the aborted legal campaign.
In the court records, Eshelman’s team said Bopp’s firm billed for more than $183,000 over a five- to seven-day period, in addition to more than $97,000 to supervise those attorneys.
“After spending in excess of $280,000 to draft and file the nearly-identical complaints in those cases, Mr. Bopp and his law firm then dismissed them all just days later,” the lawsuit reads. “Not only is the amount charged for these cookie-cutter complaints unconscionable – and likely impossible given the size of his firm (only five attorneys) and the number of hours available – but the goal was actually unachievable.” Eshelman said he later learned that the voter data Bopp sought in the suits would not even have been available before the election results would’ve been certified.
Bopp said there were no cookie-cutter lawsuits – each state had different laws and procedures, requiring lawsuits to be tailored for each. “These people are so ignorant,” he said of Eshelman’s group. “This was ignorance.”
He said he dropped the lawsuits because courts didn’t act on them fast enough for him to acquire voter data.
Bopp said his work was efficient – “remarkably cheap” – and dropping the lawsuits was the financially responsible thing to do. “Why the hell am I being criticized for trying to save my clients money rather than just go forward?” he said. “Knowing that it’s highly unlikely that any of the legal work that I do will bear any fruit whatsoever? I mean, I should be praised for saving the client’s money.”
Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, called the lawsuits “bogus” to begin with. “Jim probably withdrew the lawsuit so that he wouldn’t have to perpetuate a fraud on the court,” he said.
As for the $30,000 payment to Engelbrecht from Eshelman’s donation, Bopp said it was to oversee the project. True the Vote said it was part of her $197,000 annual pay.
And Phillips’ OPSEC continued to bill True the Vote after Eshelman had broken ties, according to court records. On Dec. 7, OPSEC billed the nonprofit for $400,000 for a project called Eyes on Georgia.
At the same time, Phillips and Engelbrecht had another business going. While she reported working full time for True the Vote, Engelbrecht also was the president, according to records, of another software company Phillips owned that had a nearly $800,000 contract with Mississippi’s Department of Information Technology Services.
At the end of 2020, Engelbrecht and Phillips received an extension to the contract. They renamed their company, which promises to detect fraud and abuse in government programs, from AutoGov to CoverMe Services Inc. It is a health care software company.
Trump and True the Vote have moved past the failed election lawsuit strategy and are on to the next conspiracy theory: illegal ballot harvesting.
That’s when a third party – like a household member, activist group or nursing home – collects and submits absentee ballots on behalf of others, which is legal in a majority of states. It may be a new angle for Engelbrecht and Phillips, but they already have a similar refrain.
In an interview with conservative talk show host Charlie Kirk, Engelbrecht and Phillips said they planned to show their evidence following the May 7 launch of the film “2000 Mules.”
A photo collage shows part of the poster for the film “2000 Mules” and a still from its trailer, featuring Catherine Engelbrecht. Credit: Photo collage by Reveal with images from “2000 Mules”
“At some point, shortly after the video runs, we are going to pull the ripcord, we are going to release all of this,” Phillips said.
In a scene that mimics a spy thriller, the film’s trailer depicts two characters, who appear to be Phillips and Engelbrecht, making a tension-filled decision to release earth-shattering information.
The film touts part of True the Vote’s new strategy: using anonymized cellphone data sold by vendors to show when a person was near a ballot dropbox multiple times – ostensibly hinting at “ballot harvesting” activity.
Engelbrecht and Phillips still haven’t released the evidence. At one point in the film, they claim to have used the cellphone data to help solve the murder of a young Atlanta girl; that, too, has been debunked.
So far, True the Vote’s cellphone data analysis is not convincing state officials in Wisconsin that illegal votes were cast.
In a hearing in Madison earlier this year, Engelbrecht and Phillips said their analysis suggested people were delivering ballots that weren’t their own.
But again, when asked to show the evidence, they declined.
Reporter Ese Olumhense contributed to this story. It was edited by Andrew Donohue, Sumi Aggarwal and Kate Howard and copy edited by Nikki Frick.
True the Vote has been a key player in giving rise to the myth that widespread voter fraud is undermining U.S. elections.
Yet the Texas nonprofit hasn’t proven its big claims – or even produced the evidence it promises.
Our new investigation shows what True the Vote has been doing with its donations: It has engaged in a series of questionable transactions that has directed more than $1 million combined to its founder, a longtime board member and its general counsel. Based on thousands of pages of tax filings and court documents, the story highlights how promoting former President Donald Trump’s Big Lie has become a thriving economy.
Here are six takeaways from our investigation:
1. True the Vote has loaned founder Catherine Engelbrecht significant amounts of money. Under Texas law, it is illegal for nonprofits to give loans to their directors.
According to its tax filings, True the Vote issued Engelbrecht a $40,607 loan in 2015. It was still on the books in 2017. And in 2018, True the Vote disclosed an outstanding $61,896 loan to Engelbrecht. In its original 2019 tax return, the nonprofit reported giving her a $113,396 loan.
It’s unclear whether Engelbrecht took one loan that grew over the years or multiple loans.
The loans raise some potential legal issues for True the Vote. Under Texas law, it is legal to lend employees money under certain conditions. And while Engelbrecht is an employee of True the Vote, she’s much more than that. She’s also a member of the board of directors.
We asked True the Vote a number of questions about the loan: Was it approved by the board of directors? Did Engelbrecht vote on it? What are the terms of the loan? Did Engelbrecht’s business associate and alleged romantic partner, Gregg Phillips, vote for it while he was on the organization’s board?
True the Vote wouldn’t answer questions about who approved the loan, its conditions and whether Engelbrecht voted on it as a board member.
“I’m not going to respond to you on this,” said general counsel James Bopp Jr. “If you want free legal research, go pay a lawyer to do it.”
True the Vote originally reported the $113,396 loan to the IRS in its 2019 tax filing, yet it provided us with a return that shows no loan balance. An accountant for True the Vote said there “are no outstanding advances” but didn’t explain the differences between the two documents.
2. The year that Gregg Phillips joined the True the Vote board, the nonprofit began regularly paying money to entities connected to him.
Phillips replaced Engelbrecht’s ex-husband, Bryan, on the True the Vote board in 2014. In the years since, Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht have become closely linked. Engelbrecht has served in key roles in Phillips’ private companies. In a court filing, a disgruntled donor said Phillips and Engelbrecht are lovers.
They haven’t acknowledged the relationship, but they haven’t exactly denied it either. Here’s what Engelbrecht told The New York Times: “You know, Gregg and I have actually talked about this and how we would answer this question. And the best answer that I think either of us are going to give is, it is totally unrelated and unimportant.”
Before he joined the board, Phillips had been dogged by allegations of financial impropriety, accused of leveraging his government positions in Mississippi and Texas to make himself money. Phillips in previous news stories has denied wrongdoing. He did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
In 2014, True the Vote paid $25,000 to American Solutions for Winning the Future for a “donor list rental.” Phillips was the director, records show. The next year, True the Vote gave $30,000 to a company called Define Idea Inc. for “IT support services.” Phillips was a director of the company, according to its formation documents.
Those payments all dwarf Phillips’ 2020 payments, however. That year, he created a new company, OPSEC Group LLC, to do voter analysis in 2020, and it received at least $750,000 from True the Vote. It’s unclear whether OPSEC has any other clients. One expert called the contract “eye-popping” for its largess.
True the Vote didn’t respond to questions about whether it was appropriate to contract with Phillips.
It’s unclear when Phillips left the nonprofit’s board. In court documents, he says he left in 2017. However, the organization’s 2018 tax return listed him as a board member, as did the original 2019 filing. True the Vote’s amended 2019 filing removes him as a board member.
Engelbrecht and Phillips’ ties go beyond True the Vote. Their companies have shared the same mailing address.
While she reported working full time for True the Vote, Engelbrecht also was the president of a health care software company owned by Phillips that promises to detect fraud and abuse in government programs, according to records.The state of Mississippi awarded the company a nearly $1.7 million contract for work through 2023.
3. Engelbrecht’s own companies also have received contracts from True the Vote.
In 2015 and 2016, True the Vote paid ARC Network LLC and Ao2 LLC a total of $82,500 for “database license fees” and “software license fees,” respectively, according to its tax returns, which disclose that the companies are tied to Engelbrecht.
Court filings indicate that Engelbrecht owned 100% of ARC Network; she is listed as the owner of Ao2 in registration documents in Wyoming.
We couldn’t find other clients or a footprint for the two companies. But ARC Network was barred by Texas in 2015 from doing business, state records show. A business can be forfeited when a company doesn’t file a mandatory annual report showing its owner, directors and registered address – or when it does not pay taxes.
Bopp wouldn’t answer questions about who approved the contracts, saying that was confidential financial information. He said there was “nothing inherently wrong or improper with contracting with board members to do services for the corporation.”
“I’ve represented not-for-profits for 45 years,” Bopp said, “and it is common.”
However, a number of nonprofit legal and accounting experts who reviewed the documents said the transactions with Engelbrecht and Phillips raise a series of red flags.
“We always have concerns from a governance standpoint about organizations engaging in such transactions with insiders, and the organization’s behavior, in terms of its accounting and inconsistencies, only inflame those concerns,” said Brian Mittendorf, an Ohio State University accounting professor who specializes in nonprofit accounting.
Laurie Styron, executive director of CharityWatch, put it more bluntly: “This certainly looks really bad.”
4. The organization’s tax returns are riddled with inconsistencies and have regularly been amended, making it difficult to understand how True the Vote is truly spending its donations.
In one case, Engelbrecht provided us a copy of a 2019 tax return that was vastly different from the one available on the IRS website. The differences strike at the heart of our findings.
The IRS version showed Phillips as a board member. Englebrecht’s version did not. The IRS return showed Engelbrecht had a loan balance of $113,396. Engelbrecht’s version indicated the loan’s balance was gone. In response to questions from Reveal, Engelbrecht said she was going to submit an amended version of the group’s 2019 tax return – the one she’d provided to us – to the IRS.
What’s more, in the original IRS filing, True the Vote didn’t answer questions about whether it has policies around conflicts of interest, whistleblowers, document retention and how it determines Engelbrecht’s pay. “Importantly, it fails to answer questions about family or business relationships between officers and board members,” said Styron, of CharityWatch.
Because of that, she said True the Vote is “really a governance black hole.”
True the Vote says it did answer those questions in the amended return, but these kinds of omissions are common throughout its years of tax filings.
And as True the Vote has gained prominence, Engelbrecht has maintained an oversized control of the charity as its only employee in recent years and a member of a small board of directors that’s been packed with potential conflicts of interests. “That’s a real problem,” Styron said.
The federal government grants nonprofit organizations a special status, allowing them to operate tax-free in recognition of their public benefit. In exchange, they are subject to greater scrutiny and transparency to ensure that donor funds are being used properly.
Experts said an organization with more than $1 million in revenue typically would have more employees and a larger board. “These are public dollars, and the board members and officers of a charity have a fiduciary duty to … spend all of the resources of the charity carrying out the mission of the organization to the best of their ability in ways that benefit the nonprofit,” Styron said. “Not in ways that benefit them personally.”
5. One of the two agencies that would hold True the Vote accountable, the Texas attorney general’s office, is led by an ally of Engelbrecht’s, Ken Paxton.
Experts called on the IRS and Paxton to investigate whether insiders were improperly benefiting from donor money.
And Paxton’s office has already played a key role in a lawsuit filed by a True the Vote donor who said his $2.5 million donation to stop the certification of the 2020 election was essentially pocketed by Engelbrecht, Phillips and Bopp.
In court filings in that lawsuit, Paxton’s office said it would review the case to see if any action is warranted. The suit eventually was dismissed by a judge, who sided with True the Vote when it argued that it was up to Paxton – not the courts – to resolve. It’s unclear what, if any, action the attorney general has taken.
Reveal sought his office’s communications about True the Vote through Texas public records law, but he refused to disclose them, citing attorney-client privilege.
Paxton has appeared on Engelbrecht’s podcast and been an active supporter of attempts to overthrow the 2020 election.
6. True the Vote’s questionable financial transactions have also ensnared one of the legal architects of the modern conservative movement, James Bopp Jr.
Bopp has helped dismantle abortion rights, crafted many of the arguments in the Citizens United case that revolutionized campaign finance law and was part of the legal team that prevailed in Bush v. Gore. He’s also True the Vote’s general counsel.
He never served on the organization’s board and doesn’t face the same potential conflicts of interest as Engelbrecht and Phillips do for some of their transactions, but he has come under scrutiny for the amount he billed for a failed challenge to the 2020 election.
True the Vote provided Bopp’s law firm a retainer of at least $500,000 to lead a legal charge against the results of the election, but he filed only four of the seven lawsuits promised to a $2.5 million donor, all of which were voluntarily dismissed less than a week after being filed.
In court records, the donor said Bopp’s firm billed for more than $183,000 over a five- to seven-day period, in addition to more than $97,000 to supervise those attorneys. The donor called the amount billed by Bopp’s firm “unconscionable” and “impossible.”
Bopp said he dropped the lawsuits because courts didn’t act on them fast enough for him to acquire voter data.
He said his work was efficient – “remarkably cheap” – and dropping the lawsuits was the financially responsible thing to do. “Why the hell am I being criticized for trying to save my clients money rather than just go forward?” he said. “Knowing that it’s highly unlikely that any of the legal work that I do will bear any fruit whatsoever? I mean, I should be praised for saving the client’s money.”
Reporter Ese Olumhense contributed to this story. It was edited by Andrew Donohue and copy edited by Nikki Frick.
