Hearing Monday Morning Determines “Jail”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Oct. 31, 2022) – A post published on Locals.com Sunday evening revisits the results of a court hearing Thursday in which U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Hoyt ruled that TruetheVote.org founder Catherine Engelbrecht and Board member Gregg Phillips are to be incarcerated if they failed to reveal the name of an individual who provided information to them regarding Michigan-based Konnech, Inc.

For the past two Mondays, The Post & Email has received notifications from TruetheVote’s Locals.com channel, although it does not have a subscription, which is normally required to access the content every Monday evening at 7:00 PM ET. On October 24, however, we were able to watch Engelbrecht’s livestream presentation via a link from the email notification allowing free access at the time.

Early last month, Konnech sued TruetheVote after Engelbrecht and Phillips claimed at an August event that Konnech had maintained U.S. poll-worker data on servers located in mainland China, a claim Konnech denies and claims is defamatory. The company’s request that Engelbrecht and Phillips be held in contempt of court was upheld Thursday, providing the two until Monday to comply or face jail time.

On October 4, Konnech’s CEO, Eugene Wu, was arrested in Michigan at the order of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon “as part of an investigation into the possible theft of personal identifying information of those [poll] workers.”

“This investigation is concerned solely with the personal identifying information of election workers,” the press release continues. “In this case, the alleged conduct had no impact on the tabulation of votes and did not alter election results. But security in all aspects of any election is essential so that we all have full faith in the integrity of the election process.”

On their respective TruthSocial accounts, neither Engelbrecht nor Phillips has indicated an inclination to provide the name of the informant.

Following the hearing Thursday, Engelbrecht and Phillips filed a response with affidavits, the latter of which are not attached to the initial document in a link posted by writer Brian Cates.

TruetheVote’s latest announcement, which at this time leads to a paywall, reads:

BREAKING: True the Vote

Thanks guys. We also need to promote locals for Monday. One way or another we are going to do Locals. Let’s call it

BREAKING
True the Vote Update

Thursday 10.27 Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips were sentenced to jail for not revealing a confidential source in Konnech v True the Vote lawsuit

Monday 10.31 @ 10 AM ET Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips appear in court for final remarks.

Monday @ 7 PM ET True the Vote will be live on Locals with a report. Please join us.

Update, 12:38 p.m. EDT: Journalist Ivory Hecker has reported that after Monday’s hearing, Engelbrecht and Phillips were taken into federal custody by U.S. marshals.

Update, 1:48 p.m.: Hecker has posted a 41-minute video on her YouTube channel based on her notes from the hearing and including the affidavits filed after Thursday’s hearing.