DONOR LETTER 11-2-22 TTV 2021

Dear ,If we were living in normal times, Catherine would be updating you on the work of True the Vote. However, as you may have heard, she and Gregg Phillips were arrested Monday morning, October 31, 2022, for refusing to divulge the name of an FBI confidential informant. My name is Karen, and I am a True the Vote team member. Catherine has asked me, from her jail cell, to fill you all in on recent troubling developments.Since it has been a while since our last newsletter, let’s review the investigations by True the Vote that have become public in the last few months and have led to the standoff in federal court in Texas this week.Since January 2021, True the Vote has worked to uncover the role Konnech, a Michigan-based election management software company with what appears to be deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and has potentially played in the subversion of America's elections. The True the Vote team was made aware that the personal information of nearly two million American election workers was stored on a server in China, in violation of US law, as well as Konnech’s contracts between many states and counties. This information included poll worker names, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers and bank account numbers. Realizing the severe national security implications of the data breach, Gregg Phillips and True the Vote immediately turned over the findings to the FBI. For 15 months Catherine and Gregg worked with FBI field agents in Texas on a counter-intelligence operation to end Konnech’s involvement in America’s elections. The FBI already had Konnech “on the radar” due to questionable activities that extended far beyond US elections.

In April 2022, everything changed.Catherine received a call from one of the Texas-based FBI agents, who informed her that the FBI’s Washington D.C. office was now involved in the investigation. The Texas agent informed them that it was possible that they were going to be the targets of the FBI. He suggested that their best option was to go public with what they had learned.  In August 2022, Catherine and Gregg convened a meeting called “The Pit.”  At the event they told their story for the first time in public to an audience that included citizen researchers, journalists, and law enforcement personnel.  In September 2022, Konnech sued True the Vote for defamation, racism, and xenophobia for revealing their findings publicly. The court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) to Catherine and Gregg that required them, among other things, to provide to Konnech the names of all the individuals who were involved in the discovery of the poll worker data in China. To put this in context, here is a quote from this recent article in AND Magazine by former CIA operations officer, Sam Faddis:

“Let’s imagine that a drug dealer facing criminal charges filed a lawsuit in civil court to make the cops provide the name of a source inside his organization. Would anyone think for a moment that would be a reasonable request? Would anyone have any doubt as to the fate of the informant if he was identified?That’s how ludicrous this is and how obscene.” 

On October 4, 2022, the company’s CEO, Eugene Yu, was indicted in California on charges including fraud, embezzlement, and data breach resulting in the theft of the personal information of election workers in LA County. The arrest was announced by LA District Attorney, George Gascon. The arrest was the result of an indictment by a grand jury convened in Los Angeles, which is the nation’s largest voting bloc.LA County is just the first of many counties that True the Vote is working to support. There are far more layers of subversion still to be exposed, with this company …. and potentially many others. October 7, 2022, Catherine and Gregg’s attorneys made an initial appearance in federal court in Houston to answer the civil lawsuit filed by Konnech. It was at this hearing that the judge issued a highly unusual order...that Catherine and Gregg (through their attorneys) reveal the name of the individual who originally presented them with the poll worker data on the server in China. Their attorney reluctantly complied and revealed the name of this individual.October 27, 2022, Catherine and Gregg appeared in federal court in Houston prepared to demonstrate that there was a criminal matter in LA County regarding Eugene Yu and Konnech. The judge refused to consider this evidence and directed Catherine and Gregg to reveal publicly the name of the other individual in the hotel room where Gregg viewed the poll worker data in January 2021. Catherine and Gregg offered to cooperate with the court and Konnech’s lawyers by providing the name of this individual under seal. The judge refused this offer. At the end of a long day of testimony by Catherine and Gregg, the judge found them in contempt of court. They were provided an opportunity to “cure” the contempt on Monday, October 31 at 9:00 AM by revealing the name of the second individual in the hotel room. If they did not “cure” it, they would be immediately remanded into custody by the US Marshals.October 31, 2022, Catherine and Gregg refused to name the individual who was in the hotel room in January 2021 because he was not involved in the sourcing of the poll worker data. Catherine and Gregg strongly believe that this individual’s life would be in danger should his name be revealed publicly. They were immediately remanded to the custody of the US Marshal’s Service.

In a statement last night, Catherine Engelbrecht said, “Trust, honesty, and respect will always be our highest values, regarding both our work and our lives. As a result, we will be held in jail until we agree to give up the name of a person we believe was not covered under the terms of the judge’s TRO. We ask that you keep us in your prayers. Thank you to those who continue supporting and believing in us and our mission to make elections safe for all parties and for all people.” I spoke to Catherine today and she wanted me to pass this on to all of you. She met a woman in prison who said, “One thing you need to understand is that, in this place, your life is not your own.”  Catherine was struck by this because it drives home that Election Day is coming very soon and right now ‘your life is your own and you have choices.’ Choose to vote. Choose to be heard. If you give that right away, slowly but surely your life will not be your own, just like the woman told her in prison. “We all have such lives of convenience, and you think it could never happen, like it could never get this bad. I’ll tell you this has been a real wake-up call-- to our justice system and to our federal government. Be heard…be heard. The only way we can do that in a Constitutional Republic is to vote.“ “Vote Serve Pray. It’s like the story of the frog in the pot that is slowly boiling. We are all so comfortable in our daily lives that we do not notice as our freedoms are being taken.” We are extremely grateful for the prayers and support of so many people. This is a critical moment in history and we have no intention of stopping now. As CE would say…Ever Onward.

KAREN VENTURA

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