On a Tuesday night in June, about 150 people gathered online to hear from a special guest.
The group, called PA Fair Elections, has held meetings nearly every Tuesday this year. Attendees log on from all over Pennsylvania, united in the belief that recent elections were tarnished by fraud and the upcoming election is at risk.
On this night, the special guest was attorney John Eastman. He delivered a dire warning.
“We have ceased to be citizens in a free republic, and we are becoming increasingly subjects of an increasingly tyrannical government,” Eastman said.
Eastman was a major player in President Donald Trump’s 2020 effort to claim victory despite losing that year’s election. In Pennsylvania, Eastman filed a lawsuit attempting to keep election results from being certified. He was on the phone call where Trump pressured the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” votes. At Trump’s rally in D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, he told the frenzied crowd that he knew of a “secret folder” in voting machines, proof of vote rigging.
Eastman now faces disbarment in California and felony criminal charges — fraud, conspiracy and racketeering — in Arizona and Georgia for his efforts.
But at the PA Fair Elections meeting, his perspective on the legitimacy of elections was welcomed. He told the group there is a war going on.
“It’s not a shooting war, at least not yet, and one hopes it never becomes one,” Eastman said. “But it is clearly a war, and I’ve got the ammunition to be able to engage in that war and push back.”
After a nearly hour-long presentation followed by questions, he left the meeting, and the organizer reminded people to donate to Eastman’s legal defense fund. His fundraising website shows that several meeting attendees did so, adding to more than $800,000 raised.
Dean Dreibelbis of Delaware County gave Eastman $50. Contacted by email, Dreibelbis said Eastman’s only “crime” was representing former President Trump.
“All of these lawyers have been threatened with endless litigation and financial ruin unless they plead guilty to a minor charge (which they are not guilty of),” he wrote in an email.
Dreibelbis is a plaintiff in a civil suit against the state of Pennsylvania claiming that flaws in Pennsylvania’s voting system pose a risk to voters this November, a claim the state says is based on conspiracy theories.
Dreibelbis said he is convinced there was fraud in 2020. He is concerned about ballots being accurately counted this fall.
He said officials have resisted the measures that he believes would secure the vote, such as “hand-counts in precinct on Election Day of a random 2% of the precincts.” He says that hasn’t happened in all counties, and “verification of the tabulators” was blocked.
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Dreibelbis said.
A coordinated effort
Experts who monitor threats to elections say the purpose of the weekly meetings is to build popular support to reject the 2024 election result if President Joe Biden or another Democrat wins Pennsylvania in a close race. The effort comes at the same time that the Republican Party has begun filing legal challenges that would help them do so, according to a recent New York Times report.
“This is a coordinated effort and we’re seeing it nationwide,” said Ben Berwick, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group opposed to authoritarianism.
PA Fair Elections’ meetings are run by Heather Honey, a conservative activist who was a featured speaker at this year’s Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, a gathering of influential conservative politicians and activists. A February report by VoteBeat found that Honey is a frequent source of false information about elections.
The group’s online meetings are open to anyone who registers and promoted with weekly emails, where attendees are encouraged to share the meeting link with family and friends. An LNP | LancasterOnline reporter attended four meetings in June.
Regular attendees include people from Lancaster County and neighboring counties. At least fifteen attendees have names matching those of Republican committee members from across the state, including three from Lancaster County.
The group’s leaders claim to have established a system of “county coordinators” to communicate with elected officials and plan for different scenarios. In their conversations, the group members sometimes repeat false claims that Democrats rigged previous elections — and are planning to do it again.
In an interview, Honey says people simply want a fair election. She wants to see all counties completing their required statistical recounts by hand, and she criticized Congressional Democrats’ opposition of the recent GOP bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote.
“This is not conspiracy theory. This is not ‘unproven allegations of fraud,’” Honey said. “Don’t put people in one general bucket.”
Berwick said groups like PA Fair Elections operating in swing states such as Pennsylvania are preparing to file lawsuits, pressure lawmakers and organize voters.
“They need to soften the ground and create enough doubt about the results of the election that a substantial part of the electorate will believe them,” Berwick said. “That is pretty clearly what we’re seeing now.”
'Sound the alarm'
A week after they heard from Eastman, PA Fair Elections meeting attendees logged on to hear from Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who, like Eastman, was on Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State.
A Georgia grand jury recommended indicting Mitchell, alongside Trump, Eastman and others, but she was not charged. She has since risen as a leader in what some call the “election denial” movement. Mitchell runs the Election Integrity Network and serves as senior legal fellow and secretary at the Conservative Partnership Institute.
The D.C.-based group, founded in 2017, has become a prominent force in Republican politics. The group played a key role in the plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election and initiate the January 6 protests, according to The New Yorker. A recent ProPublica report finds that Conservative Partnership Institute gets some of its funding from Ziklag, a group of Christian billionaires looking to tilt the election in Trump’s favor.
At the institute, Mitchell works alongside former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and a number of people who worked at The Heritage Foundation, including its former president, Jim DeMint. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has garnered recent attention for its Project 2025 plan to reshape the country under a second Trump term.
In the Zoom meeting, Mitchell had a dark message for Pennsylvanians: Democrats are scheming to get undocumented immigrants to register to vote by mail.
“We have to sound the alarm, because we have to try to make people aware,” Mitchell said. “If these illegals, non-citizens, register and vote in our elections, they could turn the tide. And I absolutely believe that is what the left intends to do this year.”
In the meeting, one attendee asked: Why would undocumented immigrants, who generally want to avoid attention so they don’t get deported, want to vote in the U.S. election?
Mitchell had an answer.
“I don’t think these people will go to the polls,” she said. “I don’t think that’s how they’ll vote. They’ll vote by mail. And they may not actually vote. They may not be the ones voting. They’re being shepherded by these leftist (non-governmental organizations), and once they get on the rolls… I don’t think you’ll see them coming to the polls to vote.”
Mitchell’s claim — she offered no evidence for it — led to panic, outrage and calls for action in the meeting group chat and among the attendees who spoke up.
Sor Angel Fontanez-Resto of Berks County was among those who voiced her concerns. Later, contacted by a reporter, Fontanez-Resto said she couldn’t point to anywhere in particular she’d seen Democrats registering immigrants to vote. The fluent Spanish-speaker said it’s “not that bad” where she lives, but she’s heard it’s rampant in Philadelphia, New York City and Texas.
“It’s happening all over,” said Fontanez-Resto. “These people come in through the Southern border. But they are going to every single state. They are bringing them on planes. Dropping them off on buses. They are all over the nation right now.”
'Rocket fuel'
It’s unclear how close the connection is between PA Fair Elections and the Conservative Partnership Institute where Mitchell serves. Honey wouldn’t provide details on the source of funding for the Election Research Institute, where she is executive director. Honey said she and Mitchell have shared values, so it makes sense they work together.
Asked whether Americans can trust the upcoming election, Honey said, “Well, are they going to be lawful and transparent elections?” She added, “I would very much like to have a lawful election, and I don’t think that is a lot to ask.”
The Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections, declined to say whether it is monitoring PA Fair Elections or similar groups.
In an email, the department pointed to its education campaigns and its fact-checking website, which “is designed in part to help Pennsylvanians identify unintentional false claims and intentional lies, known as mis- and disinformation, when they see it.”
A statement provided by spokeswoman Amy Gulli urged people to verify the source and accuracy of election-related claims before they share it. Gulli said people should rely on the state’s vote.pa.gov website, county elections websites and other government sources.
“It is a travesty that hyper-partisan, bad-faith actors continue to confuse the public and try to cause chaos in the nonpartisan administration of Pennsylvania’s elections,” Gulli said.
For Berwick, the lawyer at Protect Democracy, the biggest risk is that delays in certification could disrupt the process of declaring who won the presidency.
“It can be like rocket fuel for conspiracy theories,” Berwick said.
The worst case scenario, which he said is unlikely, is that a delay in certification could lead “bad actors” in Congress to claim that the state’s electoral votes shouldn’t be counted.
He pointed to the months between the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as an example of the chaos that false claims of election fraud can cause.
“But what’s really different and dangerous now,” he said, “is that these claims are being used to lay the groundwork to throw out election results entirely, and to throw out the ability of voters to vote.”
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