Federal Judge Jails True the Vote Leaders After Contempt Ruling

[Eupher]

Remember Dinesh D'Souza's movie "2,000 Mules"? Remember the man and woman who put together the cell phone geocaching data to illustrate how some of the Dem cheating of the 2020 election occurred? Ballot box stuffing at 2 AM by people wearing gloves. The same person visiting 6 or more ballot boxes during the course of a single day. The police state has reacted, and this is the result:

True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht and former board member Gregg Phillips were taken into federal custody on Monday after U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt found them in contempt of court for refusing to disclose a confidential informant.

It is the latest development in a defamation case brought against them by election management software company Konnech, which the group claims allowed the Chinese government to have access to a server with the personal information of nearly 2 million election workers in the U.S.

The Texas Tribune has the backstory:

Konnech, the election management software company at the center of those claims, filed a federal lawsuit in September alleging that True the Vote’s viral social media campaign targeting the company’s founder and CEO, Eugene Yu, led to personal threats to him and his family and damaged his company’s business.

In podcasts and interviews, Phillips described a dramatic night in early 2021 in a Dallas hotel, where a man he later identified as Mike Hasson revealed what True the Vote has said was hard evidence of Konnech’s alleged influence on the 2020 election.

The involvement of a third man was unknown until a Thursday hearing, when Konnech’s attorney’s pressed Phillips for additional information about what Phillips claimed was an hourslong Konnech research session in Dallas that night. On the stand, Phillips revealed that another “analyst” was present in the room when Hasson allegedly offered evidence he’d uncovered about Konnech, showing the company had stored American poll worker data on a server in China. Neither he nor Engelbrecht would release the third man’s name, saying he was in danger from “drug cartels.”

While True the Vote’s former attorney on the matter, Brock Akers, released Hasson’s name after U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt demanded he do so earlier in the month, True the Vote’s new legal team has chosen a different path. Akers has not appeared in court since providing Hasson’s name. Last week, Engelbrecht and Phillips were represented by Michael Wynne, a different Houston attorney, who told the court Akers was on vacation “on the Mediterranean” and would be withdrawing from the case. Wynne said Akers remained away, on a cruise, on Monday morning.

Phillips and Engelbrecht bring the number of people who have served time in jail related to the case to three. Yu was arrested in his home state of Michigan on Oct. 4 before facing charges in Los Angeles County, where he was briefly held on house arrest. He has now posted bond and returned to Michigan with an ankle monitor.

Yu is facing felony charges of grand theft by embezzlement and conspiracy to commit a crime. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office said Yu and Konnech violated the company’s contract with Los Angeles County by illegally giving contractors in China access to data that was supposed to be stored only in the United States. Yu has filed a motion to dismiss the charges, arguing that even if the charges are true, they aren’t criminal. Los Angeles prosecutors have acknowledged receiving an early tip from Phillips. (The Texas Tribune)

Judge Hoyt orders that Engelbrecht and Phillips be held in custody for a day or more, until they bring forth the information they are withholding. — Ivory Hecker (@IvoryHecker) October 31, 2022

Judge says he never got a straight answer on who was in the Dallas hotel room January, 2021, and he doesn’t know how many people were there. Judge says the way Phillips and Engelbrecht talked suggests True the Vote did have access to the hacked computer data, though they deny it. — Ivory Hecker (@IvoryHecker) October 31, 2022

“Trust, honesty, and respect will always be our highest values, regarding both our work and our lives,” Engelbrecht said in a statement. “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 [temporary restraining order]. 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.”

Today in Konnech

True the Vote-
1 - Discovers Konnech server in China
2 - Reports this to FBI in Jan 2021
3 - Tipped the LA DA
4 - Dragged into court by Konnech
5 - LA DA confirms China server
6 - Testified before LA grand jury
7 - Founder of Konnech charged
8 - Federal payback pic.twitter.com/PXXVZJq50j

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) November 1, 2022

I might be missing something here, but isn't it supposed to be the plaintiff's responsibility to support charges made against a defendant by providing evidence? Since when does a judge demand that the name of an informant be released in court? Something about this ain't passing the smell test.....

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2022/11/02/true-the-vote-leaders-arrested-n2615343

[SVPete]

Publishing something that is true is, by US legal definition, not defamation. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt is ignoring this basic fact and is in a snit because he is being defied. Konnech's & Yu's case should be dismissed with prejudice and discovery thereby terminated.

[Eupher]

Publishing something that is true is, by US legal definition, not defamation. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt is ignoring this basic fact and is in a snit because he is being defied. Konnech's & Yu's case should be dismissed with prejudice and discovery thereby terminated.

Hoyt was nominated by Reagan in 1987 and took the bench in 1988. Since his court is in the southern district of Texas, you'd think that he understands the cited defense for not revealing the identity of this 3rd party -- the cartels and the threat they pose. Whether or not any of that is viable is immaterial -- the cartels are real.

But yeah, Hoyt is pissed because  Engelbrecht and Phillips told him to pound sand.

[Eupher]

Court Orders Release of True the Vote Leaders From Jail

Two leaders of True the Vote organization will be released from jail after an appeals court overruled a judge’s order that they be locked up.

Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips were ordered released by a panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit late Nov. 6.

“IT IS ORDERED that Petitioners’ opposed motion for release from detention is GRANTED pending further order of this court,” the panel said in the order, which was obtained by The Epoch Times.

The panel consisted of Circuit Judges Catharina Haynes, a George W. Bush appointee; Kurt Engelhardt, a Trump appointee; and Andrew Oldham, a Trump appointee.

Engelbrecht and Phillips were expected to be released on Nov. 7, a spokesman for True the Vote told The Epoch Times via email on Monday morning.

“They will be released when the paperwork is complete, probably sometime this morning,” the spokesman said.

Engelbrecht and Phillips were imprisoned on Oct. 31 after U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt, a Reagan appointee, found them in contempt of court for not revealing the identities of people who allegedly accessed information from Konnech, a Michigan-based election management software company whose founder was recently arrested for allegedly stealing poll worker data and hosting it on servers in China.

The order for confinement was to be in place until the defendants “fully comply” with an order that they reveal certain information, including the identities, Hoyt said.

Engelbrecht and Phillips say they passed on information that was legally obtained from Konnech to the FBI. One of their attorneys named one of the individuals in question, Mike Hasson, during an October hearing. But they have declined to share the name of the second person. Both the individuals are FBI informants, Phillips said during one hearing.

“Those who thought that imprisoning Gregg and I would weaken our resolve have gravely miscalculated. It is stronger than ever,” Engelbrecht said in a statement. “The right to free and fair elections without interference is more important than our own discomforts and even this detention, now reversed by a higher court.”

“We are profoundly grateful for that. We will continue to protect and defend those who do the vital work of election integrity, and we will make sure that their findings become a matter of public record,” she added.

The imprisonment order came after Konnech sued True the Vote and its founders for defamation.

Hoyt entered a temporary restraining order against the defendants, ordering them to return all property and data to Konnech and identify people who were involved in accessing the company’s computers.

In their filing for release from detention, Engelbrecht and Phillips said that Hoyt’s confinement order “represents a clear abuse of discretion and a manifest miscarriage of justice.”

“Petitioners pray that this Court enter an Order releasing them from the district court’s draconian order of detention for refusing to identity a federal confidential informant in open court whose identity in any event has no bearing on the merits of this defamation case hinging on competing accounts of alleged historical events,” they added.

The pair also said that they never possessed or controlled the information in question. Phillips said Engelbrecht does not know the name that he is withholding and that, if the name were revealed, the person’s life would “be jeopardized by border drug and smuggling cartels.”

In its opposition to the petition, Konnech said that the True the Vote founders were trying to “strip the District Court of its contempt power” and that they “have no one but themselves to blame for their confinement” after defying Hoyt’s order.

“Petitioners’ imprisonment is not an emergency especially in this case where the Petitioners are contemnors and recalcitrant witnesses who hold the keys to the jailhouse, and can free themselves immediately upon purging their contempt,” lawyers for the firm said.

Epoch Times