Two leaders of election integrity organization True the Vote have been released from jail after an order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Sunday.
Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips were ordered released after the court overruled a judge's order they be held for contempt of court until they revealed their sources in connection to the scandal involving China-linked election firm Konnech.
“Those who thought that imprisoning Gregg and I would weaken our resolve have gravely miscalculated. It is stronger than ever,” Engelbrecht said in a statement. “The right to free and fair elections without interference is more important than our own discomforts and even this detention, now reversed by a higher court.”
“We are profoundly grateful for that. We will continue to protect and defend those who do the vital work of election integrity, and we will make sure that their findings become a matter of public record,” she added.
The imprisonment order by federal Judge Kenneth Hoyt came after Konnech sued True the Vote and its founders for defamation. Engelbrecht and Phillips were jailed on Oct. 31.
Related: Georgia GOP wants Konnech contract terminated; FBI said to have ‘flipped’ investigation, October 10, 2022
Hoyt entered a temporary restraining order against the defendants, ordering them to return all property and data to Konnech and identify people who were involved in accessing the company’s computers.
In their filing for release from detention, Engelbrecht and Phillips said that Hoyt’s confinement order “represents a clear abuse of discretion and a manifest miscarriage of justice.”
“Petitioners pray that this Court enter an Order releasing them from the district court’s draconian order of detention for refusing to identity a federal confidential informant in open court whose identity in any event has no bearing on the merits of this defamation case hinging on competing accounts of alleged historical events,” Engelbrecht and Phillips added.
Engelbrecht and Phillips say they passed on information that was legally obtained from Konnech to the FBI.
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