Georgia's State Election Board has issued four subpoenas in response to True the Vote's (TTV) ballot trafficking investigation in the state. One subpoena went to True the Vote seeking additional information to verify TTV's claim that individuals were paid to harvest and/or traffic ballots using dropboxes funded by the Chan-Zuckerberg Foundation. Ballot harvesting, which is the act of collecting multiple ballots for delivery to specific locations, is illegal in the state of Georgia.
True the Vote alleges that at least one whistleblower has come forward to state that individuals were paid by various NGOs to harvest ballots. TTV has previously stated that the state possesses enough information about the ballot harvesting/trafficking operations to prosecute and is reluctant to identify the whistleblower.
Atlanta's WSB-TV reported one of the subpoenas has been sent to TTV founder, Catherine Engelbrecht and the other has been sent to her partner in the investigation, Gregg Phillips of OPSEC Group, LLC. The other two subpoenas are addressed to TTV and OPSEC.
Just the News has published a copy of a subpoena that was sent to True the Vote on April 21. The news outlet obtained the subpoena through an open records request. The partially redacted subpoena requests the production of "documents and records described in Exhibit A" to investigator Dana DeWeese "no later than April 28." Exhibit A of the subpoena requests, among other things, the identities of "John Doe" (whistleblower) and his mother.
Exhibit A/Subpoena to TTV April 21
John Solomon of Just the News interviewed Engelbrecht on April 26. Engelbrecht explained the methodology TTV and OPSEC employed to "shape the evidence" in their investigation. She also mentions the upcoming movie set to release in early May from Dinesh D'Souza called "2000 Mules," while clarifying that she prefers to use the term "ballot trafficking" not "ballot harvesting" because this is a "grift" involving criminal activity. She explains that the patterns of behavior in the states she has looked at are "disturbingly consistent."
Brief Timeline Of The True The Vote Investigation
True the Vote announced in August their investigation using mobile and GPS data (geolocation technology) from apps on cellphones to track patterns of movement that may indicate ballot harvesting may have occurred during the 2020 election. TTV also obtained video surveillance footage from and around dropboxes in Georgia to support the evidence of ballot harvesting. On September 30, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) told TTV and the Georgia GOP that there wasn't enough evidence to "tie these cellphones to ballot harvesting."
Attorneys for TTV from the Bopp Law firm rebuked the GBI for "their irresponsible and dangerous leak of confidential information" to the press in an Oct. 22 letter to Governor Brian Kemp. Additionally, the letter contends that the GBI letter "mischaracterizes and selectively omits the evidence that True the Vote provided in a confidential meeting attended by representatives of your office, and representatives of the GBI, including the author of the letter in question, GBI Director D. Victor Reynolds. The letter appears designed to minimize activities that Georgia law enforcement officials failed to detect."
The letter to Kemp also speaks to some of TTV's findings, including "evidence that 279 cellphones had made 'multiple trips to within 100 feet of a voter drop box' during the 2020 General Election and U.S. Senate Runoff Election periods" as well as the alleged evidence from "data analysis, voter drop box surveillance video, chain of custody documents, and other corroborating evidence." The letter is highly critical of Director Reynolds who denied there was "probable cause" despite the fact that similar evidence from other states has led "to indictments related to election crimes in other states."
*To TTV's point, there was another letter from David Shafer, Chairman of the GA GOP, that substantiated the fact that GBI was "selectively omitting" information from their response. Shafer confirms in his correspondence that, indeed, there was much more information given to the GBI. Not only does Shafer mention a "single dropbox received 1,962 ballots during a time period when only 24 mobile devices came within 100 feet of the drop box" but he also states that there was an "unexplained disappearance of legally mandated surveillance video" from one of the drop box locations. Shafer's letter concludes that there were actually many detailed discussions with GBI over a period of six months detailing important evidence. The Oct. 22 letter from Shafer is captured in full below:
Chairman Shafer/GAGOP
On Nov. 30, 2021, TTV sent a letter of complaint to Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger prompting the opening of an investigation into the ballot harvesting claims. TTV has not released a copy of the letter, however, a video post on the TTV website shows Epoch TV's Roman Balmakov's explanation of the complaint letter. The letter lays out "what took place in the Atlanta Georgia metropolitan area" with regard to ballot harvesting.
On Jan. 4, Raffensberger announced his intention to issue subpoenas to investigate the allegations of ballot harvesting in Georgia's 2020 election. His initial investigation utilizing MITRE's election integrity tools to investigate ballot harvesting allegedly found "no anomalies." However, Raffensberger admitted in the same announcement that "credible allegations" of ballot harvesting had emerged and his office would continue to investigate the allegations. He was referring to the True the Vote investigation.
On Jan. 11, SoS Raffensberger delivered his remarks on elections and his plans to make them more honest and transparent. He criticized Biden administration policies that "rig the rules of elections to favor Democrats." Raffensberger called for a number of measures to ensure election integrity. Among the measures were calls to prevent noncitizens from voting in American elections, the use of voter ID, a nationwide ban on ballot harvesting, and improved and tightened list maintenance controls for voter rolls.
Since January Raffensberger has issued a number of press releases on election integrity, with his latest on April 11. The press release refers "1,634 cases of potential noncitizens registering to vote in Georgia to local district attorneys, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the State Election Board" found in the first citizenship audit conducted by his office.
Raffensberger posted a number of tweets on Wednesday referencing his condemnation of ballot harvesting in Georgia. He also called for TTV's cooperation to divulge the identities of the individuals who allegedly participated in ballot harvesting.
True the Vote and OPSEC are conducting ongoing ballot harvesting investigations in five states which could lead to evidence of RICO operations involving the trafficking of ballots—a criminal offense. TTV's testimony in front of the Wisconsin state legislature on March 24 showed compelling evidence to indicate that “seven percent or 137,551 votes” of the 1.9 million mail-in ballots in Wisconsin “were cast as a result of trafficking.”
*NOTE: This story has been updated to include an Oct. 22 letter from GA GOP Chair, David Shafer, to Director Vic Reynolds of the GBI.
