Court records and interviews conducted by donor Post show Fred Eshelman has been working to get his millions back from True the Vote, a Texas-based group that has promised to expose electoral fraud.
Eshelman, who did not know True the Vote before election day, “thought about the range of possibilities surrounding electoral fraud” when he made his donations, according to the newspaper.
“There was already noise in cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Philadelphia.” He added: “I wanted to determine if this was legitimate. Can we find a real smoking weapon?”
It is true that Vote’s electoral processes were ultimately abandoned, the newspaper reported, prompting Eshelman to demand that his money be returned. After the organization offered to return only $ 1 million, Eshelman filed two lawsuits.
Although his federal lawsuit has already been dropped, the other lawsuit is pending in a Texas state court, the Post said. Both lawsuits claimed that True the Vote did not spend its donations as it claimed it would.
The organization rejected this claim in court documents analyzed by the newspaper, saying that Eshelman’s money was used appropriately. A lawyer for the group, James Bopp, also told the Post that Eshelman did not impose any conditions on his donation.
So far, Eshelman has not received any of his money back, the Post reported, citing court documents.
The trajectory of True the Vote’s efforts mirrors that of the Trump campaign’s legal team, which sought to nullify Biden’s victory through a series of lawsuits that were either totally rejected or withdrawn.
Eshelman told the Post that he still thinks there was “some bad behavior” in the presidential election.
“But do I believe that it may have risen to a point that would change the election result?” he said. “I do not know.”