Subpoenas Issued in Georgia Ballot Trafficking Investigation

Subpoenas Issued in Georgia Ballot Trafficking Investigation
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger holds a press conference on the status of ballot counting in Atlanta, Ga., on Nov. 6, 2020. (Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
Steven Kovac
5/2/2022
Updated:
5/3/2022
0:00

Georgia election officials last week issued subpoenas to obtain the identities of individuals and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who may have engaged in the crime of ballot trafficking.

The offenses are alleged to have occurred in both the 2020 presidential election and the December 2020 U.S. Senate runoff election in Georgia.

Recipients of the subpoenas are the election watchdog organization True the Vote (TTV), the group’s founder Catherine Engelbrecht, and the research contractors that worked on the 15-month investigation into illegal vote trafficking in Georgia and a half-dozen other swing states.

“We presented our data a year ago to Governor Kemp (a Republican) and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. They covered it up for seven months,” alleged Engelbrecht in an April 30 television interview on Real America’s Voice.

“The GBI told us they had no jurisdiction," Engelbrecht said.

“We gave our data to the FBI in Atlanta. No response for seven months,” she said.

“We filed a full complaint with the Georgia Secretary of State in November of 2021. We heard nothing for six months. Finally, we got the subpoenas.”

True The Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht in an interview with Facts Matter, in April 2022, in a still from the video. (The Epoch Times)
True The Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht in an interview with Facts Matter, in April 2022, in a still from the video. (The Epoch Times)

In January 2022 Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, announced that an investigation into TTV’s allegations was underway.

An investigative team from TTV used cell phone tracking, geo-fencing, and video footage to show that 242 mules collected thousands of absentee ballots from voters and made 5,668 stops at drop boxes in the metro Atlanta area in late 2020.

The data is supplemented by statements from a whistleblower who also shed light on a number of NGOs orchestrating and funding the unlawful effort.

Ballot harvesting was outlawed in Georgia in 2019.

The evidence provided by TTV is the basis of Dinesh D’Dsouza’s new movie “2000 Mules”, which is scheduled to debut the first week of May at theaters nationwide and on streaming services.

Ballot trafficking is the act of a third-party intermediary, called a “mule,” collecting an unlimited number of absentee ballots from voters and depositing them in ballot drop boxes for money.

Ballot trafficking and ballot harvesting eliminate any documented chain of custody for the ballots and the practice makes official oversight of the handling of the ballots impossible.

The elections in Georgia figure prominently in D’Souza’s latest documentary film, but the scope of the problem of ballot trafficking affects all of the battleground states.

OPSEC Group's Gregg Phillips conducted the geospatial investigation into ballot trafficking featured in Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules” documentary to be released next week. (Screenshot/"2000 Mules")
OPSEC Group's Gregg Phillips conducted the geospatial investigation into ballot trafficking featured in Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules” documentary to be released next week. (Screenshot/"2000 Mules")

In addition to the 242 mules uncovered in Georgia, Engelbrecht said that TTV has documented the actions of 202 mules in Maricopa County, Arizona; more than 100 in Milwaukee, 500 in Wayne County, Michigan; and 1,000 in Philadelphia.

TTV recently announced that at least 137,500 absentee ballots were cast through unlawful vote trafficking throughout several of Wisconsin’s largest cities in the 2020 election.

Joe Biden won Wisconsin by 21,000 votes.

Gregg Phillips, a cyber expert working with TTV, estimates that 4.8 million votes were trafficked nationally based on studies conducted by his group in Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Michigan.

“The numbers are staggering. In order to stay in power, officials in these states engaged in an absolute subversion of the election process. Fraud has been institutionalized,” alleged Engelbrecht.

Engelbrecht believes politics may be playing a role in the recent issuing of the Georgia subpoenas.

“It wasn’t until the Trump rally held in Georgia (on March 26) that we saw some movement from the GBI,” she said.

U.S. President Donald Trump at a rally at the Banks County Dragway in Commerce, Georgia, on March 26, 2022. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
U.S. President Donald Trump at a rally at the Banks County Dragway in Commerce, Georgia, on March 26, 2022. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)

The subpoenas were issued just weeks ahead of the May 24 primary, where Raffensperger is facing a stiff challenge from Republican Congressman Jody Hice, a vocal critic of Raffensperger’s conducting of the 2020 elections.

Raffensperger provoked the ire of some Georgia Republicans when he administered the mailing out of absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in the state of Georgia in 2020.

Raffensperger maintains the 2020 elections in Georgia were conducted legally and fairly.

He also has spoken against the suggested decertification of the state’s 2020 presidential election results due to alleged cheating by Democrats.

Hice has been an outspoken advocate for decertification and for more robust election reform in Georgia.

According to a recent poll by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the University of Georgia, Hice, who has the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, is in a statistical tie with Raffensperger.

In the four-person race, Raffensperger is polling at 28 percent and Hice has 26 percent, with 37 percent undecided.

The remaining 8 percent is divided between the other two Republican candidates.

Mail-in Voting Bodes Ill for Republicans

One hundred fifty-nine million people voted in the 2020 presidential election.
According to the United States Elections Project, in that election, 101 million people voted early in some way—35.8 million people voted early in person, and 65.6 million cast mail-in ballots.

As of November 23, 2020, there were 26.6 million absentee ballots that were still outstanding.

Across the country, the percentage of mail-in votes cast broke in favor of Democrats in 2020 by huge margins.

For example, in Georgia Biden got 65 percent of the absentee votes to 34 percent for Trump.

In Pennsylvania Biden received 76 percent of the absentee votes to 23 percent for Trump.

15.4 million, or 87 percent of the votes cast in California, were cast somewhere other than a traditional polling place, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Biden defeated Trump in California by over five million votes.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp speaks during a press conference in Atlanta, Ga., on Aug. 10, 2020. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp speaks during a press conference in Atlanta, Ga., on Aug. 10, 2020. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

Through a process she calls “lawfare,” Engelbrecht said Democrat-dominated states have steadily worked to change state election laws in order to dramatically increase the use of mail-in voting even prior to the pandemic.

She voiced her displeasure with the incumbent Republicans seeking reelection that are presiding over the upcoming midterm elections in Georgia, including Kemp, Raffensperger, and Attorney General Chris Carr.

“They have publicly torched our data. They have done whatever they could to delegitimize our work," alleged Engelbrecht.

“A state official has tried to intimidate our contractors by warning them that there may be no more state contracts,” she said.

“It’s either fix 2020 or we have no hope for 2022,” she added.

Steven Kovac reports for The Epoch Times from Michigan. He is a general news reporter who has covered topics related to rising consumer prices to election security issues. He can be reached at [email protected]
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