An investigator in the office of Arizona state Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) has referred a right-wing non-profit organization involved in promoting conspiracy theories related to the last election to the FBI and IRS for potentially further investigation.
The organization is True the Vote, which was instrumental in the creation of a widely discredited documentary promoting election fraud allegations called “2000 Mules.” That film, which Trump has personally promoted, hinges on claims geolocation data associated with mobile phones reveals so-called mules engaging in stuffing ballot drop boxes, around which these supposed mules were recorded multiple times. There’s no substantive evidence backing up these claims. Even if the data is real, plenty of people could have gone multiple times by a ballot drop box without any nefarious intent, if that box was located in a busy metropolitan area, as could easily be the case.
Leaders at True the Vote, including Catherine Engelbrecht, the group’s president, insisted to Brnovich’s office they would provide evidence documenting their claims of hundreds of so-called mules in Arizona. The group never gave investigators any such evidence, but they pointed the FBI to Brnovich’s office for further details, as though they’d actually made the non-existent transfer of info.
Lying to the FBI is well-established as a criminal offense, although the letter from Reginald Grigsby in the criminal division of Brnovich’s office doesn’t specify individual offenses of which True the Vote and its leaders may be guilty. Grigsby simply presented broad areas of concern, including regarding the group’s finances. “TTV has raised considerable sums of money alleging they had evidence of widespread voter fraud and their efforts would train the public to protect election integrity at the polls and to help protect all voters’ rights,” Grigsby said. “They indicate they have provided the information to law enforcement agencies; in our case they have not after promising to do so. Another law enforcement agency has also stated they have not provided them the information, informing them they had given the information to us.” That contention from True the Vote was false.
After pressing the group for details on its claims to no avail, and after the group claimed in public it provided information to the state attorney general’s team that was never actually produced, True the Vote claimed to Brnovich’s team “they had given all of the election fraud information to the Phoenix office of the FBI,” adding “they were working with the FBI as informants and they were not sure they could give the information to our office,” Grigsby explained. It was when Brnovich’s team sought clarification from the FBI team that they discovered the group was pointing the FBI back to Brnovich for additional details, although they hadn’t given supposedly documentary evidence — seemingly including the claimed geolocation data — to either interest. Brnovich’s investigators also discovered the group’s leaders weren’t actually FBI informants. Grigsby also pointed out how True the Vote has blatantly lied about being involved (via geolocation data it obtained) in helping solve a murder in Atlanta.
