The law firm of Democratic fixer and election denier Marc Elias is linked to a network of super PACs whose deceptive text messages infuriated and baffled voters across the country, a Washington Free Beacon review has found.
Evidence for Impact, a dark money group that Elias’s law firm formed earlier this year, contributed $2 million in September to a super PAC called Voters of These 50 States of America. The super PAC, which was formed in August, is the lone funder of the super PACs AllVote, MaxVote, VoteWin, and Coconut Brat PAC, according to campaign finance records.
Those groups came under scrutiny before the election for sending messages with inaccurate polling place information and voter registration data, prompting warnings from some state election agencies about the deceptive messages. The Illinois Statewide Terrorism & Intelligence Center warned in October that AllVote was behind "confusing text messages," and a New Mexico election official said the texts were "something that the feds really need to look at and crack down on."
Coconut Brat PAC is a pro-Kamala Harris group that sent texts with an AI-generated photo of a woman with the caption, "Me and my friends only date guys that vote." One recipient of the text message said it was either a "scam text" or the "worst voter outreach tactic ever devised."
Voters of These 50 States of America accounted for all of the $616,000 contributed to the groups, according to campaign finance records released this month.
It’s the latest campaign gambit tied to Elias and Evidence for Impact. As a lawyer for Hillary Clinton in 2016, Elias commissioned the infamous Steele dossier, which falsely accused Donald Trump of colluding with Russia. Evidence for Impact, which Elias Law Group partner Ezra Reese registered in February, contributed $4.3 million to Civic Truth Action, a super PAC that ran ads in support of anti-abortion candidate Randall Terry as part of a ploy to pull conservative votes from Donald Trump, the Free Beacon previously reported.
Voters of These 50 States of America raised the rest of its $10 million war chest from the progressive group Rapid Resist Action and a daisy chain of affiliated super PACs. Democratic mega-donor Reid Hoffman contributed $934,828 through last year to Rapid Resist Action, according to tax filings.
It is unclear whether Hoffman contributed to Rapid Resist Action this year. It is also unclear whether Hoffman and Elias were aware that Voters of These 50 States of America funded the deceptive text message operation.
The text messages were sent to tens of thousands of voters by Movement Labs, a California-based tech firm that says it uses "technology and experimentation to stop fascism and build progressive power." Rapid Resist Action is the nonprofit political arm of Movement Labs.
According to campaign records, AllVote and its sister PACs paid out all of the money they received from Voters of These 50 States of America to Movement Labs.
Yoni Landau, the company’s founder, has used deceptive text message techniques in the past. In 2022, election officials in New Jersey warned that Landau’s group Voting Futures Trust sent inaccurate polling information to voters. In 2020, a Landau operation called Vote from Home 2020 apologized for sending inaccurate mail-in ballot data to voters in Arizona.
Elias Law Group and Movement Labs did not respond to requests for comment.