{"id":309664,"date":"2026-10-19T05:48:49","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T05:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/309664\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T05:48:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T05:48:49","slug":"gops-top-gotv-operative-employed-an-organizer-convicted-of-strangulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/309664\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP\u2019s Top GOTV Operative Employed an Organizer Convicted of Strangulation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>(Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman\/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock)<\/p>\n

ONE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY\u2019S most prominent voter-registration activists has paid multiple people with criminal records to run get-out-the-vote operations in Pennsylvania since 2024.<\/p>\n

Scott Presler<\/a>, a key Trump-era GOP operative, hired as contractors a man who pleaded guilty to strangulation and a former nurse practitioner who falsified prescriptions for opioids and ran a million-dollar operation to distribute fraudulent COVID vaccine cards. These personnel, whose backgrounds were uncovered in an investigation by The Bulwark, were engaged through Presler\u2019s super PAC, Early Vote Action.<\/p>\n

Presler has had these people working for him, notably, even as he has spent time in the past month accusing a Democratic congressional candidate of employing a canvasser who was arrested for indecent exposure\u2014an accusation that, upon closer scrutiny, appears untrue.<\/p>\n

Presler and his political operation have already faced criticism this election cycle for their get-out-the-vote operations. That criticism has come even from within the Republican party. Earlier this year, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) called Presler\u2014who backed Ken Paxton in this year\u2019s Texas Republican Senate primary\u2014a \u201cgrifter<\/a>.\u201d But these new revelations further call into question not only Early Vote Action\u2019s hiring practices but also Presler\u2019s own credibility.<\/p>\n

A dive into Presler\u2019s operations shows that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman\/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock) ONE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY\u2019S most prominent voter-registration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-309664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}