Gregg Phillips, an election denier who once claimed he teleported to a Waffle House, says he is still working in the Trump administration, after he was reportedly removed from his influential role overseeing the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s emergency response efforts in June.
While it remains unclear what Phillips has been working on in the administration since stepping away as head of the Office of Response and Recovery, on Sunday he wrote on Truth Social, “I have been in the admin since last year. I’ll be leaving soon to rejoin the fight.”
One day later, he was pictured at a Department of Justice building alongside Ed Martin, the former US pardon attorney who President Donald Trump last week announced would be departing the administration to “fight legal battles for the upcoming midterm election.”
“Enjoyed the visit with our friend Ed Martin today in DC,” Phillips wrote on Truth Social. “Haters are gonna hate this.”
Martin and the Department of Justice did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment about Phillips’ role in the administration. Phillips declined to comment.
A FEMA spokesperson directed WIRED to a statement it issued in June saying Phillips was “taking leave for personal reasons.” When asked if Phillips was still employed by the agency and still on leave, the agency didn’t respond.
Phillips is on administrative leave, according to the White House, which also confirmed that Martin is still working in the administration until September 4. Federal employees on administrative leave are entitled to full pay and benefits.
Phillips has long promoted baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud, claiming in 2016 that more than 3 million noncitizens voted in the presidential election, robbing Trump of winning the popular vote. Days after taking office in 2017, Trump promoted Phillips’ false claims. In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, Phillips gained further notoriety when the group he was involved with, True the Vote, provided the data that underpinned the debunked film 2000 Mules, which falsely alleged that a network of individuals was paid to illegally collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes.
A 2022 investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting found that True the Vote has raised millions of dollars from donors by repeatedly promising to uncover evidence of election fraud but has failed to do so. Much of that money, CIR reported, went to companies controlled by Phillips and in loans to True the Vote’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht.
Phillips was appointed last December to head up FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery despite having no past experience working in emergency response. In June, following his departure, the agency thanked Phillips for his “service, dedication, and leadership,” adding that “he has played a pivotal role in stabilizing the Office of Response and Recovery and advancing key reforms to strengthen our mission delivery.”
Three sources at FEMA, who were granted anonymity due to fears of recrimination by the administration, tell WIRED that Phillips has not been seen at FEMA’s headquarters since June.
When Phillips posted on Truth Social this week about his decision to “rejoin the fight” he was once again discussing “illegals on the voter rolls” and the work he and Engelbrecht had done almost a decade ago to address the perceived issue—which is so rare that even a third-party analysis of a database maintained by the right-wing Heritage Foundation shows it contains fewer than 100 examples. When asked if Phillips’ comment meant he would be working with True the Vote again, Engelbrecht said, “I’m sure Gregg will be involved in a number of projects in the future, and we at TTV think very highly of him, but in an effort to set the record straight, he is not part of the True the Vote team. He previously assisted TTV as a contractor on research projects from 2020–2023.”
When asked about Phillips’ role as a board member of True the Vote, as revealed by the CIR report, Engelbrecht did not respond.
WIRED recently revealed that ahead of the midterms, True the Vote will release another documentary, entitled Trapped, which again makes allegations about widespread and systemic voter fraud.
