Arizona Attorney General’s office asks for federal investigation of conservative nonprofit True the Vote

By Kate Sullivan and Fredreka Schouten, CNN

The Arizona Attorney General’s office has asked for a federal investigation related to potential violations of the Internal Revenue Code by the conservative nonprofit True the Vote, which claims to be trying to expose voter fraud.

An investigator in Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office, Reginald Grigsby, said in a letter that the group has “raised considerable sums of money alleging they had evidence of widespread voter fraud” but has failed to provide any evidence to its office, despite publicly indicating they had shared the information with law enforcement agencies.

“Given TTV’s status as a nonprofit organization, it would appear that further review of its financials may be warranted,” the letter, released on Friday, reads in a striking move for an office overseen by a Republican. Brnovich had sought to win over former President Donald Trump and his supporters in his unsuccessful bid for the nomination for Senate earlier this year.

Grigsby detailed three meetings representatives from the attorney general’s office had with Catherine Engelbrecht, who founded the Texas-based nonprofit, and Gregg Phillips, who is a contracted partner.

The meetings were spread out over a year — the first took place in June 2021 and the following two occurred in April and June of this year. Grigsby said prior to each meeting, Engelbrecht and Phillips said they would provide the attorney general’s office with information to support their claims of voter fraud but they never provided any so-called evidence.

In a statement, True the Vote called the letter “false” and said it “smacks of retribution for the AG’s own decision to ignore suspicious voting activity.” The statement also countered that its hard drive of data is “available to any law enforcement agency which issues a lawful subpoena for the data” and said that it “has documentary records of correspondence with the State of Arizona and the FBI, detailing the evidence and its limitations.”

In its letter, the attorney general’s office stated that it had requested the information by electronic and US mail and by leaving voicemails after the latest in-person meeting, but it did not indicate whether it had formally subpoenaed the data.

An IRS spokesperson told CNN, “Due to privacy regulations, the IRS will not comment on the status of an individual or organization.”

True the Vote and Engelbrecht have advanced claims of election-fraud for years. But the group recently gained new prominence through the film, “2000 Mules” produced by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza. It claims “mules” were used to illegally collect and deliver ballots to drop boxes in key states in the 2020 election.

True the Vote has said it purchased cellphone geo-tracking data to identify devices that went repeatedly near drop boxes and certain nonprofits ahead of the election to advance the argument that illegal ballot harvesting occurred in key swing states.

Multiple fact-checkers have debunked those claims. And in testimony that aired during a hearing of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, former Attorney General William Barr called the film’s premise flawed.

The film has been touted by Trump and some Trump-aligned candidates. Earlier this year, the former President hosted a screening of the film at Mar-a-Lago, his waterfront Florida resort and home.

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