(Reuters) – Two leaders of a Texas nonprofit with a history of spreading false claims about voter fraud were jailed on Monday for not complying with a judge’s order to identify a person behind data at the heart of their claims of a conspiracy involving China.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt ordered Gregg Phillips and Catherine Englebrecht, leaders of True the Vote, detained by U.S. Marshals “for one-day and further until they fully comply with the Court’s Order,” according to a notice from the federal court in Houston.
Hoyt, a Ronald Reagan appointee, had given Phillips and Englebrecht until a Monday morning hearing to identify a man who helped them access data related to their allegations that a Michigan-based election software company had transferred sensitive poll worker information to China.
Phillips and Englebrecht declined to name the man, claiming their hands were tied because he is an FBI informant, according to a person who attended the hearing. They were escorted out of the courtroom by U.S. Marshals, the person said.
Lawyers for Phillips and Englebrecht did not respond to a request for comment.
Hoyt is overseeing a defamation case brought last month by the election software company, Konnech Inc, against True the Vote and its principals over claims they made about Konnech and its founder, Eugene Yu. They alleged the company was holding personal information on some 1.8 million poll workers on a server in China and accused Yu, who immigrated to the United States decades ago, of being a Chinese operative.
Their allegations triggered an investigation by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, which charged Yu with two felonies earlier this month. Those allege Yu violated the company’s contract with Los Angeles County that restricts access to poll worker data to citizens and permanent residents inside the United States.
Konnech and Yu have denied the allegations.
Yu’s arrest has been hailed by some right-wing organizations focused on voter fraud as a vindication of their warnings about the vulnerability of U.S. election systems, including to hacking by overseas adversaries like China.
At the same time, the defamation case in Houston has raised questions about the data backing True the Vote’s claims.
True the Vote’s research was behind the widely discredited “2000 Mules” film that claimed to have discovered widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)