THE WEEKLY REVEAL
Saturday, July 23, 2022
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Hello! In this issue:
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How a $2.5 million donation for a campaign to contest the 2020 presidential election results has put a (further) spotlight on embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
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The growing global network of White nationalist groups.
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Helping a local newsroom continue accountability reporting into D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department.
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NEW
Texas Charity That Backs Trump’s Stolen-Election Lie Has Deep Ties to Ken Paxton
By Cassandra Jaramillo
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton outside the U.S. Supreme Court in April. Credit: STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
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Texas-based nonprofit True the Vote has raised millions in donations claiming there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. One major conservative donor even gave the organization $2.5 million to lead a legal and PR campaign to contest the results. But that donor later sued, saying True the Vote had swindled him.
The nonprofit argued that the Texas attorney general’s office – not a court – should probe the donor’s allegations. A state judge sided with True the Vote, freeing it from the specter of having to return $2.5 million.
But more than a year after the case was dismissed, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his office won’t say whether they ever investigated the donor dispute. And they refused to answer questions about whether the office will examine the organization’s finances.
- Last month, we found that True the Vote had engaged in a series of questionable transactions that sent more than $1 million to founder Catherine Engelbrecht and other insiders.
- In the reporting of that story, Paxton’s office withheld financial documents and email communications from us and issued contradictory and inaccurate statements about the nonprofit.
It turns out Paxton is pretty familiar with Engelbrecht.
- His office advocated on Engelbrecht’s behalf before the Texas Supreme Court in 2016 when she got into legal trouble with her previous nonprofit organization, King Street Patriots, for being overtly political.
- Paxton was also a guest on Engelbrecht’s podcast in July 2020, during which Engelbrecht said she considers Paxton a friend. “God bless you, Ken Paxton, God bless you. And thank you for all that you and your team do,” she added.
For now, the donor has appealed the judge’s ruling. And True the Vote has remained in the headlines, grabbing attention during the Jan. 6 committee hearings, where its research into voter fraud was debunked.
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DIG DEEPER
More from our coverage on the threats to democracy
Inside the GOP’s Purge of Local Election Officials in Michigan. Proponents of Trump’s Big Lie have “been able to infiltrate the Republican Party right down to the precinct level in a way that I’ve been astounded by,” says a former GOP head. Read.
How Michigan Became the Test Lab for the Anti-Democratic Movement. Across the nation, many Republicans are campaigning on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and promising to change the way elections are run in the future. Listen.
Behind the Tweet That Became the Rallying Cry for the Insurrection. “I underestimated how crazy certain people could get.” Read.
Viral Lies. From wild anti-vaccine conspiracy theories to “Stop the Steal” and QAnon, we examine how misinformation swiftly spreads online – and the lives it disrupts. Listen.
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THIS WEEK’S PODCAST
Inside the Global Fight for White Power
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From Russia to Sweden and the United States, there’s a growing network of White nationalist groups that stretches around the world. This week on Reveal, the reporting team at Verified: The Next Threat investigates how these militant groups are helping each other create propaganda, recruit new members and share paramilitary skills.
You’ll hear:
- How a group called the Russian Imperial Movement, or RIM, and its members are taking up arms in Russia’s war against Ukraine, which they say is a battle in a much larger “holy war” for White power.
- How a neo-Nazi named Matt Heimbach, who was a major promoter of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, invited members of RIM to the U.S. and connected them to his network of American White power extremists.
- Top counterterrorism officials who track the growing international network of White supremacists say those groups have started forming political parties. This makes it difficult for the U.S. Department of State to use its most powerful counterterrorism tool: designating them as terrorists.
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🎧 Other places to listen: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
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📸 Weapons training at the Russian Imperial Movement’s Partizan paramilitary camp. Credit: Screenshot from vk.com/partisan_kurs / ruspartizan.com via Verified: The Next Threat podcast trailer
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At Reveal, we pour the necessary time and resources into unearthing original stories that hold people and institutions accountable for the problems they’ve caused or benefited from. This work is possible because of the contributions from readers and listeners like you. Donate to keep us going.
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🗃️ Sharing our records. In December, we published an investigation into how high-ranking officers in D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, including the current police chief, kept troubled officers on the force, even after the department’s own internal affairs investigators had determined they committed crimes.
Reveal’s Dhruv Mehrotra uncovered this information by creating a unique searchable database of the 250 gigabytes of police data that came out as a result of a ransomware attack and hack by a group called Babuk. And now, through a partnership with local news outlet Washington City Paper, Dhruv has shared his records with its journalists so that the reporting can continue.
The first story based on these records is out now: Lt. Shane Lamond Previously Disciplined for ‘Erroneous’ Belief That MPD Would Pay Him for Off-Duty Work.
⚾ A win for minor league baseball players. In March 2021, we released a show on how minor league baseball players can earn less than the equivalent of minimum wage and don’t get paid overtime – and it’s legal because Major League Baseball has exploited loopholes in federal law. One former minor league player-turned-attorney filed a class-action lawsuit against the MLB and its teams. The league responded by lobbying Congress to explicitly rewrite federal law to say baseball doesn’t have to follow the same pay standards as other industries.
Earlier this month, the suit was settled. Pending a judge’s approval, the MLB will pay $185 million. “Thousands of other players will be eligible to receive part of the $120,197,300 due to players, with the rest going to attorney's fees and other costs,” ESPN writes. Teams, for the first time, will also be allowed to pay minor league players during spring training.
Listen to the show here.
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This issue of The Weekly Reveal was written by Kassie Navarro, edited by Andrew Donohue and copy edited by Nikki Frick. If you enjoyed this issue, forward it to a friend. Have some thoughts? Drop us a line with feedback or ideas!
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