Leaders of right-wing election conspiracy group jailed after being found in contempt of court

2 leaders of Real the Vote, a popular conservative group that promotes unmasked citizen scams conspiracies, were imprisoned today after a federal judge in Texas discovered them in contempt of court.

The group’s president Catherine Engelbrecht and one-time board member Gregg Phillips were apprehended Monday after defying a court order to expose more information in a civil case about among their questionable efforts to discover supposed scams in the 2020 governmental election.

Court records show that Engelbrecht and Phillips are presently being held at the Joe Corley Detention Center in Conroe, Texas. The 2 activists will stay in custody at the federal detention center till they comply with the court’s order, according to court filings. Lawyers for Real the Vote are “speeding up an appeal” for their release, their group stated in a declaration to CNN.

The existing conflict originates from a suit brought by Konnech, an election logistics software application business that took legal action against Real the Vote and the 2 leaders for libel, libel and slander. In current months, Real the Vote has actually pressed conspiracy theories about Konnech and the 2020 election, wrongly declaring Konnech assisted Joe Biden take the election.

Real the Vote is among the most popular conservative groups that pitch unwarranted claims of huge citizen scams and has actually promoted so-called “election stability” efforts for many years. Their work sustained the unmasked movie “2,000 Mules,” which wrongly declares Biden’s triumph in 2020 was illegitimately attained through organized citizen scams.

Engelbrecht and Phillips have actually formerly declared that they and their experts hacked a server and got to Konnech’s information which the details on the server proved their unverified claims of election scams. Real the Vote has actually not provided any proof that they effectively hacked Konnech, or that Konnech was associated with any election scams.

The court order, in part, needed Real the Vote’s leaders to turn over the apparently hacked files, determine individuals associated with the supposed hack, and in complete confidence inform Konnech how they hacked their system. Englebrecht and Phillips were imprisoned after they stopped working to abide by those parts, by the judge’s Monday early morning due date.

A lawyer for Real the Vote, Engelbrecht and Phillips referred CNN to the group’s declaration. In the declaration, Engelbrecht went on to declare that she and Phillips would be kept in prison, “till we consent to quit the name of an individual our company believe was not covered under the terms” of the judge’s order.