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Republican Donor Who Gave $2.5 Million to Voter-Fraud Probe Asks for a Full Refund

Fred Eshelman is trying to get a full refund from True the Vote, a Texas-based group that promised to expose voter fraud.

A Republican donor who handed over $2.5 million to a conservative nonprofit to investigate claims of election fraud has come to realize those claims were baseless—and now he wants his money back. The Washington Post reports that donor Fred Eshelman is trying to get a full refund from True the Vote, a Texas-based group that promised to expose voter fraud. Its string of election lawsuits failed to produce results, and, according to the Post, True the Vote ultimately abandoned its efforts to prove fraud. Eshelman then asked for his money back—but the organization offered to return just $1 million, so Eshelman launched two lawsuits. One of them is ongoing in a Texas state court, and it alleges that True the Vote didn’t use his $2 million gift and a subsequent $500,000 donation as it had promised. True the Vote’s lawyer said no conditions were attached to the donations and Eshelman can’t get a refund because he doesn’t like the results of the investigation. Eshelman said he still believes there was “some misbehavior” in the election, but that he’s not sure it changed the result.