Georgia Sues 'True The Vote' Election Deniers For Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, A-holes

How do you like them peaches!

This week the State Election Board of Georgia sued True the Vote, Inc in Fulton County Superior Court to force the non-profit to turn over evidence undergirding its election fraud claims.

True the Vote (TTV) has been kicking around the wingnutosphere for years, and has recently been dogged by allegations of tax shenanigans and "loans" made to its founder Catherine Engelbrecht. But two years ago it was flying high, after its preposterous claims of election fraud were featured in Dinesh D'Souza's "documentary"  2000 Mules  . TTV claimed to have uncovered rings of ballot stuffers by correlating bulk-purchased cellphone data to prove that "mules" were delivering batches of fraudulent ballots from "stash houses" to dropboxes. They also claimed to have video of those "mules" stuffing ballots into the boxes in violation of state law.

That second allegation had already netted them one defamation lawsuit from a Georgia man who dropped off ballots for himself and his family, only to find the security tape of him played over and over again in the movie as he's described as a ballot stuffer. And now they've got themselves another, as they were stupid enough to file an election complaint citing the cell phone "evidence" and claiming to have an informant who admitted to being a part of a ballot harvesting scheme.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first flagged the case and posted all the documents online, including TTV's original November 30, 2021, complaint to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In it, they refer to a "John Doe" who "admitted to personally participating and provided specific information about the ballot trafficking process." TTV insisted that it could not reveal this very real person's identity because of an "agreement of anonymity."

"True the Vote is primarily concerned for the safety of individuals willing to come forward to speak about such sensitive topics," it intoned somberly. "True the Vote is not a law enforcement agency, we do not have the resources of the State, and we are unable to provide any safety guarantees to those individuals willing to provide information other than to keep our word that their identity will not be disclosed."

The complaint failed to explain why turning over the identity of said John Doe to IRL law enforcement officials would be impossible, but assured the secretary of state that "the identity of any individual who may have information pertinent to your efforts is discoverable in the data set now available to you."

In hindsight, perhaps TTV would have elected not to poke the bear. Because in April of 2022, the State Election Board (SEB) subpoenaed TTV for all relevant documents undergirding its election fraud allegations. Among documents demanded were:

• the identities of TTV's "researchers"

• audio from its "tip line"

• the identity and contact information for "John Doe"

• the identities of the "network of non-governmental organizations that worked together to facilitate a ballot trafficking scheme in Georgia"

• the identities of the "ten hubs" in Atlanta which TTV alleges participated in a ballot harvesting scheme

• the identity of the "bartender who came in from South Carolina" to help with the alleged ballot harvesting scheme

• any confidentiality agreements which TTV granted to its employees or informants

This set off 15 months in which TTV tried to wriggle out of complying with the subpoena. Finally, in May of 2023, TTV sought to withdraw its original complaint to avoid disclosing "personal identifying information of persons to whom Complainants have pledged confidentiality and who came forward at risk to their personal safety and security to varying degrees based on their individual circumstances." That request was promptly denied, after which TTV switched tactics.

Where once TTV had claimed it was protecting secret sources, it now insisted that it had already handed the information to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI). It further claimed to have deleted all the contact information for John Doe, as well as the recordings from its tip line. It also made the apparently contradictory claims that it could not verify "the identities and contact information for the cell phone owners" tracked by their geospatial data, but that one of them was said "bartender who came in from South Carolina," whose identity they also did not know.

Then in June, TTV decided that it would not be complying with any further subpoenas.

"The landscape has changed, and this gives us pause for several reasons," their lawyer Michael Wynne wrote. Citing a pending legal challenge to Georgia's newly enacted vote suppression law, including restrictions on drop boxes, TTV now claims that it cannot turn over evidence because "there likely will be a protective order limiting production to third parties of any kind." Similarly it claims that, although its counsel accepted subpoenas for Engelbrecht and other related parties, those subpoenas are now invalid, either because too much time has passed, or because they were procedurally defective. Plus they're still telling the state election board to go get all the data from the GBI, which is ... not how any of this works.

And that brings us to Monday, when the state election board finally filed suit.

"After multiple good faith efforts by the SEB and its counsel to obtain the requested information and documents, True the Vote continues to indifferently vacillate between statements of assured compliance and blanket refusals, leaving the SEB with no recourse but to report, per the foregoing statute, such conduct to this Court and seek an immediate remedy," they wrote.

“Allegations of election irregularities need to be accompanied by evidence,” Raffensperger told the AJC. “I encourage anyone with such evidence to turn it over and it will be fully investigated. But if you don’t have the evidence, don’t come into Georgia and make far-fetched and hyperbolic claims. It’s long past time to put up or shut up.”

TLDR: Sowing election lies is fun, but reaping totally sucks.

[ AJC / Complaint ]

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