Pioneer of Election Denial Tapped for Top FEMA Post

Gregg Phillips — the far-right activist behind one of the earliest and most consequential election fraud hoaxes of the century — is set to lead FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery.

Phillips’ appointment in the federal government’s core disaster response agency represents a significant escalation in the integration of election deniers into high-level posts across the government. 

His record of promoting fabricated claims about voter fraud, attacking federal agencies as illegitimate and amplifying racist, right-wing conspiracy theories has made him one of the most influential figures in the rise of President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie.” 

Phillips has no documented experience in emergency management. He has, however, publicly attacked the agency and pledged support for Trump’s push to overhaul or abolish federal disaster authority. 

Now, he is poised to oversee billions in federal relief funds and emergency operations.

The Lie That Launched a Movement

Phillips first gained national prominence immediately following the 2016 election when he published a now-deleted post on X (then-Twitter) asserting, without evidence, that millions of illegal votes had been cast in the presidential election.

“Completed analysis of database of 180 million voter registrations,” Phillips wrote. “Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million. Consulting legal team.”

The allegation, which matched almost exactly Trump’s 2.9 million popular vote deficit to Hillary Clinton, quickly spread through right-wing media. 

Trump repeated the claim and used it to justify launching a so-called voter fraud commission. Phillips never released data, methodology or corroboration for his 3 million figure. The number, nonetheless, became one of the earliest pillars of modern election denial — a precedent for the right to reject official results and sow distrust in the voting process.

Phillips’ foundational role in legitimizing fraud claims helped shape the narrative environment that preceded 2020 election denial. His tactic — asserting mass fraud in the absence of evidence — offered a template for turning any politically unwelcome result into a conspiracy theory. 

In the years leading up to the 2020 election, Phillips continued to promote lies through the anti-voting group True the Vote — founded in 2010 by Catherine Engelbrecht — that cast the system, particularly mail-in voting, as fundamentally corrupted.

Over the past decade, True the Vote has become one of the most prominent vehicles for voter intimidation efforts. The group has promoted aggressive poll-watching operations that critics say function to suppress minority voters. 

According to a 2023 watchdog report, the organization issued lucrative contracts to Phillips and made loans to insiders in possible violation of nonprofit rules, all while repeatedly failing to produce any credible evidence for its sweeping voter fraud claims.

Ironically, reporters uncovered that Phillips was simultaneously registered to vote in three states in 2017 — Mississippi, Alabama and Texas — despite claiming to be an expert on election integrity. 

Rather than acknowledge the contradiction, Phillips dismissed it as evidence that the system itself was “broken,” framing his multiple registrations not as personal oversight but as justification for more extreme voting restrictions for others. 

Extremist Escalation

As the MAGA movement grew, Phillips’ claims also grew more extreme.

In 2022, he advanced an elaborate and xenophonic conspiracy theory involving a small U.S. election software company, Konnech, alleging foreign infiltration. Phillips characterized his hunt for supposed Chinese election interference as a spy thriller.  

“It was like a James Bond movie kind of thing,” Phillips said. “A red Chinese communist op run against the United States.”

The accusation unraveled almost immediately. 

Court filings and watchdog investigations revealed that Phillips and his associates likely fabricated the entire Konnech conspiracy to stoke Sinophobic fears — using the drama to solicit donations.

A federal judge found Phillips in contempt of court after he refused to identify the supposed informant behind the claims. Phillips and Engelbrecht were both briefly jailed. 

Prosecutors later dropped charges against Konnech’s CEO and found no evidence supporting Phillips’ narrative. Still, the episode fueled anti-Asian rhetoric and reinforced the idea that U.S. election infrastructure was under covert foreign attack.

His influence expanded further as Phillips became a key figure behind 2000 Mules, the widely debunked, pseudo-documentary by far-right commentator Dinesh D’Souza, alleging a vast mail-in ballot conspiracy in Georgia.

Phillips allegedly supplied the core “research” for the flawed film, including cellphone GPS data and surveillance footage.

“We have verified ballot harvesting on a massive scale,” Phillips said. “This has grown to a national organization.”

Investigators, data experts, state officials and courts have rejected the film’s premise, citing faulty assumptions and misinterpreted cellphone data. In September, a district court ruled the makers of the film intimated and defamed a Georgia voter by accusing him of committing mass voter fraud. 

Furthermore, a map included in the film to illustrate a supposed route taken by a ballot “mule” was later admitted to have been entirely fabricated for dramatic effect. The film still became one of the most circulated pieces of election denial propaganda regarding the 2020 election.

Deep State Conspiracies

Phillips has operated on the fringes of the MAGA movement, collaborating with and praising QAnon figures as “patriots” uncovering “deep state” plots.

During the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations, Phillips targeted federal agencies directly.

“The most tyrannical result of Obama’s eight years was weaponization of Government against the people,” Phillips stated. “No matter what Obama or anyone else says, the only entity that hacked election systems was Obama’s Department of Homeland Security.”

Such claims — portraying the federal government as a hostile force — have become central to the extremist networks that embraced Phillips’ election fraud narratives.

Phillips’ promotion to FEMA places one of the earliest architects of Trump’s election denial movement at the helm of a federal agency responsible for disaster response during hurricanes, wildfires and other emergencies.

For pro-democracy advocates and election experts, Phillips’ role at FEMA raises concerns beyond basic qualifications. It signals the continued normalization of federal institutions as inherently corrupt unless they serve a specific political agenda.

Phillips built his career on telling Americans not to trust election results, not to trust government agencies and not to trust the systems designed to keep the country functioning. Now he is being tasked with running one of those most vital systems.

Correction: The headline of this story originally said that Phillips had been tapped to lead FEMA. In fact, he has been tapped for a senior role at the agency. We regret the error.