True the Vote, Sheriffs and the Big Grift
In late July, Lance Wallnau, a leading figure in the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), interviewed Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, the right-wing election conspiracy organization. Engelbrecht told the Christian nationalist that she had a plan for sheriffs.
“What we are doing…is taking it an extra step and working with sheriffs to identify areas that sheriffs would be willing to allow us to grant them camera equipment that then they can monitor and we can livestream,” she told Wallnau, who expressed particular concern about the swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin.
“There will be cheating,” Wallnau said before telling his listeners to donate money to True the Vote for camera equipment that would livestream video of drop boxes. (Engelbrecht also emphasized that some election-watching roles were paid positions, as a financial incentive for would-be participants. “You can be a paid participant!” Wallnau exclaimed.)
As for Wisconsin, Engelbrecht reassured the “apostle,” “We have three very influential sheriffs, and we look forward to more.” A few days later, she reiterated these same claims in a True the Vote video, saying that “working with sheriffs ensures that everything is done to a lawful standard.” (Engelbrecht did not elaborate on which sheriffs she meant, but I have written before about at least one Wisconsin sheriff who conducted a sham “voter fraud” investigation in late 2021.)
In 2020, voting rights organization Fair Fight sued True The Vote for challenging the eligibility of over 360,000 Georgia voters.
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Wallnau is one of many right-wing religious leaders who are now engaged in the GOP project of voter suppression by grossly exaggerating conspiracies about widespread voter fraud and fear-mongering about an influx of Democrat voters, a version of the Great Replacement Theory. Earlier this year, Wallnau, alongside other right-wing Christian leaders, announced a partnership with Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA to promote a “50 state prayer tour.” Wallnau has called his advocacy “the battle for the mountain of government,” a part of what the NAR calls the “7 Mountain Mandate,” a plan to Christianize all American institutions.
We’ve seen this before. Far-right, voter suppression organizations like True the Vote claimed in 2022 that they were recruiting sheriffs to help oversee ballot drop boxes, especially in swing states. At the time, Engelbrecht said, “[I]t’s the sheriffs, that’s who can do these investigations, that’s who we can trust.”
Most of those sheriffs were affiliated with the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers’ Association (CSPOA), the most prominent “constitutional sheriff” organization. In addition to wasting resources on incompetent and fruitless investigations into “voter fraud” — which is incredibly uncommon — these same sheriffs have threatened immigrants and Black Lives Matter protestors in addition to refusing to enforce laws that restrict firearms ownership and use. Many of them, including Barry County, Michigan, Sheriff Dar Leaf believe in a variety of conspiracy theories, including beliefs that globalists threaten the American way of life.
In the runup to the 2022 midterms, Engelbrecht held a “secret” meeting in Arizona with Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who recently lost his GOP Senate primary to Kari Lake, and claimed that sheriffs would be monitoring drop boxes, possibly by video surveillance. “We are going to make sure people did not come in and put more ballots in the boxes than they should,” Lamb said, dressed in his fully-loaded flak vest and traditional Stetson hat. “I think that’s a simple thing the sheriff can oversee.”
The right-wing efforts to recruit sheriffs is a ploy by multiple groups to intimidate people based on a foundation of self-interest and grift.
No monitoring occurred, and, in fact, Pinal County leaders told me that they had no direct knowledge of Lamb’s wild claims. Lamb also appeared in a promotional video for a now-defunct website that promised to help people alert their local sheriff to election issues. My reporting revealed that the website simply prompted True the Vote to send sheriffs a two-page form letter, but nothing else.
Like Lamb, Engelbrecht is a peddler of grift and lies. An investigation into True the Vote revealed that the organization raised millions and then misused these donations, largely for the personal benefit of the founders. Engelbrecht and her co-founder Greg Phillips were jailed for contempt of court in 2022, an incident in a series of legal sagas with the organization. (Even Engelbrecht’s former attorney Cleta Mitchell, another proponent of false claims of voter fraud, told the New York Times that she no longer trusted her former client.)
This election, the stakes are higher, with Democrats and Republicans lining up lawyers, prepared for fights in courtrooms across the country.
And the grift is greater. Multiple far-right organizations are organizing sheriffs to bring the fight to the streets, encouraging civilians to form militia-like groups and lobby their sheriffs for support.
At a low-attendance event in Las Vegas, the founder of the CSPOA ex-sheriff Richard Mack appeared alongside a parade of disgraced politicians including QAnon proponent and former national security advisor Michael Flynn and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. (Steven Bannon, evidently fearing the gathering was too fringe for him, did not show up.)
Another Vegas speaker was Ivan Raiklin, a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency employee, who calls himself the “future secretary of retribution.” Raiklin has promised to recruit sheriffs to join militias of thousands of military veterans to conduct what he calls “live-streamed swatting raids.” At this year’s conference for the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas in Fort Worth, Raiklin was there, attempting to recruit sheriffs to his cause. (Mack has said he does not support Raiklin’s plan.)
It is well-established that sheriffs do not play a role in elections, and, in particular, there is no justification for sheriffs to organize with far-right groups who threaten public safety. The right-wing efforts to recruit sheriffs is a ploy by multiple groups to intimidate people based on a foundation of self-interest and grift.
Not only is there no cause for law enforcement to involve themselves in election administration, but these sitting sheriffs are aligning themselves with people who spread lies and steal money for a fake cause. It reveals the lie behind the entire enterprise: These sheriffs are not looking to preserve public safety. They are only looking out for themselves.
Jessica Pishko is an independent journalist and lawyer who focuses on how the criminal justice system and law enforcement intersects with political power. As a contributor to Democracy Docket, Pishko writes about the criminalization of elections and how sheriffs in particular have become a growing threat to democracy.