Dear Mr. Colbert, your take-down of Trump’s #2 at FEMA, Gregg Phillips, who claims he was tele-transported to a Waffle House was so hilarious I spit my milk out through my nose.
But I’m not laughing anymore. Mr. Colbert, Phillips may choose our next president, he’s that powerful. In fact, he chose our current one.
The Palast Investigations Team has been onto Phillips, who’s way more influential than Colbert — and way, way more dangerous. Phillips was first exposed in our film Vigilantes Inc, because he’s the brains, if you can call it that, behind the group True the Vote whose film, 2000 Mules, launched at Mar-a-Lago by Trump, makes the ugly, bonkers claim that Jewish billionaires paid Black men to stuff ballot boxes in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit — and that’s why, says Phillips, Trump lost in 2020.
Here’s a clip from our film which quotes Phillips, who claims he has video of thousands of Black men who, for $10 each, allegedly commit the felony crime of stuffing fake votes into ballot drop-boxes. We busted that claim. The only Black man who he actually filmed “stuffing” a ballot box is a Verizon executive casting his vote and his wife’s.
Phillips says that the men he accused of stuffing drop-boxes are, “Not grandma walking her dog.” He goes on to claim they have, “Bad backgrounds, bad reputations….They are interested in one thing, that’s money.”
We asked him and his True the Vote conspiracy nutjobs to produce the evidence, and they can’t — any more than he can prove that space aliens have been buying him fast food. Another out-of-this-world claim by Phillips was that, after collapsing in a Lowes hardware store, as CNN reports, “he came to in a McDonald’s parking lot across the street with 15,000 steps logged on his health app, a Big Mac in his lap, and little understanding of what had just happened.” Apparently, aliens are like Uber Eats except the aliens transport the hungry to the food, rather than the other way around.
Phillips’ brand of crazy wouldn’t matter except that Trump and the GOP have used Phillips’ whack-job claims about the Jewish-Black scheme as a pretext for all but eliminating drop-boxes in swing states such as Georgia and Arizona. This is not small stuff: about 70% of Black Americans vote early, relying heavily on drop-boxes for their mail-in ballots because they don’t trust the Post Office, and rightly so.
After the Phillips accusation, Georgia cut the number of ballot drop-boxes in Black-majority counties by 75%, while increasing the number of drop-boxes in majority White counties. This was a major component of Trump’s purloined “win” in 2024.
To track the paths of these Black vote “mules”, Phillips pretends to use an ultra-scientific method called “geo-location” — that is, data you can buy on the web that tracks phone numbers. He claims, dramatically, that some of the alleged multiple voters stop at the drop-boxes several times a day over several days.
The problem with “geo-location” based on cell phone tracking is it’s only accurate to within 90 feet. So, anyone commuting to work that drives by a drop-box is a “mule”, according to Phillips. Hey, instead of 2000 Mules, he should have called his film “2000 Mailmen.”
As LaTosha Brown of Black Voters Matter says after seeing a clip of 2000 Mules, “To call a human being a mule… A man who is literally getting out of his car, doing his democratic duty to go vote, and to refer to him as a mule, I mean, full stop — where do we go from there?”
Phillips’ group, True the Vote, challenged over 300,000 voters in 2024, crucial to Trump’s victory. How can they do that? True the Vote is using old Jim Crow laws that allow any voter to challenge another voter’s ballot. Phillips’ group targeted, for example, Major Gamaliel Turner, a career Pentagon advisor who was assigned by the military to California. Phillips’ challenge barred the Major, an African-American, from getting his absentee ballot.
We’ve asked to interview Phillips and crew, but they’ve hidden. True the Vote doesn’t even have an address — though Phillips can now be reached at his swish Trump Administration office. As to giving us the name of even a single illegal voter, they have not provided one. The Georgia Secretary of State, a rock solid Republican, officially demanded a list of these ballot stuffers. Phillips & Co. produced not one.
Phillips’ challenge system is based on a 1946 campaign conducted by the Ku Klux Klan. FBI files, that we unearthed, revealed the KKK had challenged the ballot of every Black voter in Georgia. The Klan worked under the alias “Vigilantes Inc.” — hence the title of our film about Phillips and the new ballot bandits.
And now, ahead of the next election, Phillips is training literally 40,000 MAGA vote challengers who’ve exchanged white sheets for spreadsheets.
But we must be truly grateful that Phillips is now our national lifeguard. His official title is Associate Administrator, Office of Response and Recovery at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). If he’d only been in charge during the July 4th Kerr County flood and drowning of 135 campers, in which FEMA stood by with its hands folded, Phillips could have used his influence with space aliens to transport the drowning children to dry land, maybe even Mar-a-Lago.
I’m asking you to watch Vigilantes Inc., America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen. If you’ve seen it already, pass on the link.
And then I’m asking for your help. Our investigations team is creating six videos, one exposing Mr. Phillips, to warn voters about the latest in vote suppression trickery and how you can fight it (and save your own ballot).
We are looking for six volunteers to donate $1000 each to produce a segment (and you’ll get a screen credit). If you can’t swing a grand, we have other premiums for more affordable donations.
Our films will include the voices of Rosario Dawson, LaTosha Brown, Santita Jackson (daughter of my friend the late Rev. Jackson) and others who want to save our democracy from the racist freak show that is the MAGA-verse attack on voting rights.
The Palast Investigative Fund is non-partisan and not-for-profit. Our goal is to promote free and fair elections by making sure every vote counts. Your donations are tax deductible. This is your moment to step up.
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Absolutely Brilliant article,Greg. I will definitely pass your piece today, with your Link. I also watched Steven Colbert's show and laughed out loud. CBS is really shooting itself in the foot by cancelling Colberts excellent program. Thanks again for posting today, you are America's Detective 🔍 and will reStack ASAP 💯👍