Resist OVERREACH: GiveSendGo declines to submit sensitive donor info to anti-Trump AG

10/20/2023 / By Belle Carter

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel demanded sensitive donor information from the fundraisers for former President Donald Trump electors but the Christian crowdfunding website GiveSendGo refused to comply.

According to the Detroit News, Nessel obtained a search warrant last week, ordering information about donors who had contributed to the legal defense of the pro-Trump patriots. They were the ones charged by the AG with a laundry list of felonies for submitting an alternate slate of electors as election fraud cases were being heard in court in the aftermath of the 2020 election. The former criminal prosecutor requested bank routing numbers, contributions and communications. “The totality of the circumstances indicate that Give Send Go LLC holds information and data of the listed Give Send Go subscriber profiles who assisted in carrying out and executing a plan to replace the 2020 Democratic electors with Republican electors and the intent with which the participants acted,” stated the search warrant, which was signed by Ingham County District Court Judge Cynthia Ward on Aug. 29.

Legal experts immediately saw how the AG seemed to send a “chilling” warning message to the former president’s electors’ donors. Michigan-based veteran criminal defense Attorney Joshua Blanchard commented: “I’ve never had the government demand to know who was paying my bill,” Blanchard said. “One could fairly look at this from the outside and wonder if it’s just trying to harass the folks who are defending the false electors.”

GiveSendGo responded to news of the reports and claimed they would not be complying with the request from the AG’s office. “We are aware of the reports regarding the search warrant. At GiveSendGo, we value the privacy of our givers and users and will protect it. Our founders have made it clear that we have not complied with these illegal search warrants, viewing them as overreaches and invasions of privacy. We are committed to challenging and resisting any such demands that compromise the privacy and trust of our community. We’ll continue to uphold the values our platform is built upon in our mission to share the hope of Jesus through crowdfunding,” the fundraising site said in a statement.

Big League Politics reported on the historic telethon that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to benefit the Trump electors as they fight to save free speech in the court of law. “It’s nobody’s business whom Americans choose to donate money to, especially not some partisan, anti-Trump lesbian Attorney General on a power trip. Let this be another reminder of how important it is to use ‘friendly’ companies like GiveSendGo, who will have our backs when the tyrants come calling,” another independent news outlet, the Revolver, pointed out.

During a virtual event with liberal activists back in September, Nessel alleged that the “fake Republican electors from 2020 were brainwashed to keep Trump in power.” She also assured her audience that the first-of-their-kind criminal charges they filed in July against the GOP members of the electorate will get juries from a “very Democratic-leaning county,” according to a recording obtained by CNN. This only suggested that she was going to win the cases.

“People talk a lot about, oh, why don’t you start flipping some of those people so that they can become witnesses against the remaining defendants, the worst-acting defendants?” Nessel said. “The problem is, these are people who have been brainwashed.” She continued: “How do you flip someone who concedes that they did everything that they’re accused of doing, but what they say is, ‘we believe that we were in the right. We think that Donald Trump is the real winner of the election’ … They really legit believe that. They genuinely believe it. Somebody can’t even plead guilty if they wanted to, because they can’t admit that what they did violated the law because they still think they’re right.”

For the lawyers representing the electors, Nessel crossed a line. Outside legal experts also highlighted that her comments would make it harder for her to win convictions. Shan Wu, a former federal prosecutor who supports charging the fake electors, said it was “inappropriate for Nessel to be “insulting defendants” that her office is prosecuting. “It undermines the validity of her prosecution theory,” Wu explained. “If you think these people are brainwashed, then they didn’t have the right state of mind and couldn’t form the criminal intent to break the law, because they were being brainwashed by others.” (Related: Michigan Republicans decry FBI inaction on alleged 2020 voter registration fraud in their state.)