Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Look forward to seeing final results of VoteStand. Gregg Phillips and crew say at least 3,000,000 votes were illegal. We must do better!
8:12 AM - 27 Jan 2017
Phillips is a former deputy commissioner at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. He has a checkered past, including accusations of ethics breaches in his work for two state governments. He
owes more than $100,000 in unpaid federal taxes, according to an IRS lien, The Guardian reports.
He is also the creator of VoteStand, which he describes as an “anti-vote-fraud app.” After the presidential election in November, he declared there’d been widespread voter fraud.
But Phillips has been roundly denounced as a conspiracy theorist by academics and others who study voting. Phillips has claimed that former President Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security hacked the election. He has also said that “
Israelis impersonated Russians” and interfered with the election, The New York Times reports.
Phillips offered a
weak defense of himself in an interview Friday with ABC News. “I may be a wacko, I may be a nut, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t really care what they say about me.” When asked what facts he has to support his claim that millions of people voted illegally, Phillips said he is “building that case right now.” Earlier on Friday, before Trump’s tweet, Phillips claimed to CNN that he has the names of 3 million people who voted illegally — but that
he needs more time to prepare a report.
He told ABC he was taken aback that he’d appeared in a Trump tweet. “That was a little unexpected,” he said. “I mean, I’m just a regular guy and all of a sudden the president tweets my name and my whole world lit up for a little while today.”
Trump should have examined a bit more of Phillips’ past. Besides the IRS lien — he insists he actually
owes less than $50,000, despite what court records say ― he has also been in trouble with state authorities. He has been accused of financially rewarding associates while serving in state government positions in both Mississippi and Texas.
A 1995 document by the Mississippi Legislature’s Joint Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review accuses Phillips of
ethics violations and says his actions “facilitated an erosion of the public trust.” In 2005, the Houston Chronicle reported that Phillips had “played a role in a major state contract”
being awarded to a former employer. A spokesman for the Texas comptroller said that Phillips is
no longer allowed to do business in the state.