Election Conspiracist Gets Job at FEMA

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Gregg Phillips is the “data guy” behind Catherine Engelbrecht’s election conspiracy group True The Vote. The Handbasket reported first that Phillips will be taking over the Office of Response and Recovery something that an employee there called “the heart of what FEMA does.”

True the Vote is kind of the OG modern vigilante election denialist group led by former Tea Party leader Catherine Engelbrecht. Their group says that their “work focuses on empowering citizens to safeguard the electoral process and to protect their vote from fraud so their voice is not diminished as we determine the direction of our government and hold our politicians accountable.” What it really has done is empowered thousands of Americans across the country to harass and deny the right to vote to millions of Americans through citizen voter challenges.

All of this has been documented in the film I researched, filmed and produced with director David Ambrose and reporter Greg Palast in 2024 called Vigilantes Inc. You can watch the whole film for free below:

But long before we produced the award winning documentary with Martin Sheen and narrated by Rosario Dawson, True the Vote did a documentary with ex-felon Dinesh D’Souza. This was the film that was supposed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the 2000 election was stolen from Donald Trump. It did not. It claimed, using Gregg Phillips data that there were thousands of “mules” falsifying votes in key states across the country.

These “mules” were just normal citizens dropping off their households ballots - something allowed for under Georgia law.

The book based 2000 Mules from D’Souza was pulled from stores and the film was pulled by it’s distributor Salem Media.

Salem Media claimed, after the threat of a lawsuit by one of the accused “mules” that:

“In publishing the film and the book, we relied on representations made to us by Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote, Inc. (“TTV”) that the individuals depicted in the videos provided to us by TTV, including Mr. Andrews, illegally deposited ballots. We have learned that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has cleared Mr. Andrews of illegal voting activity in connection with the event depicted in 2000 Mules.

It was never our intent that the publication of the 2000 Mules film and book would harm Mr. Andrews. We apologize for the hurt the inclusion of Mr. Andrews’ image in the movie, book, and promotional materials have caused Mr. Andrews and his family. We have removed the film from Salem’s platforms, and there will be no future distribution of the film or the book by Salem.

Even former Attorney General Bill Barr claimed that Phillips film 2000 Mules was “singularly unimpressive” in a January 6th hearing. Poytner quoted Barr as saying, “If you take 2 million cell phones and figure out where they are physically in a big city like Atlanta or wherever, just by definition, you will find many hundreds of them have passed by and spent time in the vicinity of these boxes.” Phillips and True the Votes claimed that their information that the 2020 election was stolen came from using cell phone tracking data.

Phillips was the man behind the 2016 Trump claim that he won the election by many millions. Trump was referencing the Phillips tweet saying that “more than three million votes [were] cast by non-citizens.” While the non-citizens voting conspiracy has been something that Republicans have been claiming for decades - this was the first time a major Presidential candidate referenced it.

The Handbasket spoke to a FEMA employee who told them, “This is not a game. Americans will lose their lives because this administration refuses to put in competent leadership,” the FEMA staffer said of Phillips’ hiring. “There is no genuine effort to make sure that we can help people in their time of need and instead they are making it impossible for experienced emergency managers to do their job.

While I DO NOT recommend seeking out D’Souza’s 2000 Mules I do recommend listing in to my chat with investigative journalist Greg Palast about the movie.

I should add that as someone who covers in person the effects of the 2020 election denial movement - there has never been a more influential documentary than 2000 Mules. For months if I spoke to a conservative about the 2020 election they referenced it either by name or by proxy. Even as the movie has been pulled, sued and factchecked Phillips influence on the American populace is unchecked.