Pennsylvania nuns fight back against false voter fraud claims

A Pennsylvania order of nuns is threatening legal action over false voter fraud claims from a political operative with a scandalous history in Republican politics. The founder of a “ballot chasing” operation was seemingly unable to identify a very-online monastery of Benedictine sisters.

With two weeks to go until the presidential election, a Republican door-knocking initiative claimed to have uncovered startling fraud in the up-for-grabs swing state: “BREAKING: A member of PA Chase discovered an address in Erie, PA today where 53 voters are registered,” Pennsylvania Chase founder Cliff Maroney wrote on X Tuesday evening.

“Turns out it’s the Benedictine Sisters of Erie and NO ONE lives there. We knocked on the door because a Republican mail-in ballot is unreturned. Our attorney’s [sic] are reviewing this right now. We will not let the Dems count on illegal votes,” Maloney’s post read.

After Maloney’s claims about purported voter fraud went viral on X, the order of nuns at that address issued a statement on Wednesday saying that, yes, they did live there — and they were consulting legal counsel about how to address what they consider public defamation.

The unconventional tiff began with Maloney’s claim that no one lived at an Erie, Pennsylvania, address that was clearly labeled as a Benedectine monastery because of a text from a seemingly confused on-the-ground canvasser.

Maloney offered a screenshot of a text he received from “Jeremy,” who he identified as one of his get-out-the-vote effort’s “group leaders” as evidence that an address he was visiting to follow up on an unreturned Republican mail-in ballot had no full-time residents. 

Jeremy’s text read, “I had a hard time because all I kept seeing was a church but no house,” adding that he went inside to inquire if it was a retirement home. A woman there told him it was a monastery (there is also a large sign on the main road reading Mount Saint Benedict Monastery) but then their conversation appears to have become confusing. 

“I asked if it’s possible these voters live here she then said no that from time to time they have residents that are passing through but none stay longer than a night or two,” Jeremy’s text continued.

Maloney posted a screen recording of some of the registered voters’ names at the address — dozens of female names, many in their seventies and eighties. 

The address that both Jeremy and Maloney referenced is listed on Google as the home of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, a priory and monastery. The church building is a large complex with multiple extended wings.

The sisters maintain an online and easy to find social media presence: They have regularly updated Instagram and Facebook pages and a website with a photo directory of the sisters there, which lists every name shown by Maloney in his X post. 

The social media accounts show the sisters’ daily lives, doing charitable community work, baking and memorializing members who died there after living out their days at the monastery. One Instagram post highlighted a 107-year-old sister who enjoys spending her days scooting around the monastery on her mobility scooter… a woman whose name appeared on Maloney’s screen recording.

Reached by phone on Wednesday, Sister Anne McCarthy laughed when asked if she lived at the monastery. 

“Well, it’s where I woke up this morning,” she told The Spectator, estimating approximately sixty or so women live at the monastery just off Lake Erie. She said the large church complex building is staffed from 8 a.m. until late evening every day, and was unsure who Jeremy had spoken to. 

The nine-acre property also has several small guesthouses in the woods where visitors can spend the night for a modest fee. McCarthy wondered if the canvassers had asked about one of those small structures.

McCarthy explained that the order is very open to the community and civically engaged, with neighbors and guests regularly dropping in for dinner. “Tell them [the canvassers] to stop by for dinner, then they can see how many of us there are,” she joked.

The Pennsylvania Chase website states that it is funded by Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania, a 501c(4) that was founded in 2009 by former state legislator John Kennedy and is reportedly partially funded by billionaire Jeff Yass. Maloney was named as CEO of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania after being tapped by Charlie Kirk to help increase Republican mail-in voting in Pennsylvania, Maloney told the American Spectator in May. Maloney also counts Scott Presler and his Early Vote Action group among its partners, according to a tweet.

Maloney told PennLive in November 2023 that he set a fundraising goal of $2 million for PA Chase to “finance a ‘full deployment team’ to urge GOP voters who have requested mail-in ballots to return them to county election offices.”

Yass is known for funding school choice efforts in Pennsylvania and donating to groups that support primary challengers to its politicians deemed insufficiently conservative. With a net worth of $27 billion, Yass is Pennsylvania’s richest man and a Libertarian who owns part of TikTok’s parent company (he is also a major funder of the effort to prevent TikTok from being banned from US app stores).

Yass has been described as a close ally of Senator Rand Paul, and was a major donor to Paul’s presidential campaign, where Cliff Maloney worked as youth director before becoming president of Young Americans for Liberty, a libertarian student activism group. 

Maloney was removed from the YAL position in 2021 after a dozen accusations of sexual misconduct by people at the organization, a scandal that generated its own hashtag on X, #YALtoo. He denied the claims at the time, writing “Allegations against me are 100% false. Serious accusations and misconduct will always be addressed at YAL,” on X.

The VP of grassroots for YAL, Jason Greiss, was also removed after being named in the slew of accusations. Greiss and Maloney run a Florida company called Mobilize the Message together, and in 2021, the pair formed a 501(c)4 called Citizens Alliance Of America Action Inc, that donates to, and receives funds from, the Pennsylvania Citizens Alliance that is funding the Pennsylvania Chase. Both Maloney and Greiss were paid over $150,000 by the dark money group in 2021, according to 990 filings. According to Instagram posts, Greiss is also in Pennsylvania helping to run the canvassing operation.

Maloney voluntarily surrendered his Pennsylvania teaching credentials after being criminally charged in 2022 with raping a University of Pittsburgh woman when she was a freshman at the University in Pittsburgh and he was a resident assistant. Last year, he was acquitted of four of the six counts against him by a Pennsylvania jury and the remaining two were dismissed by the judge.

Maloney’s accusations against the nuns went viral on X, his post garnering 2.5 million views by Wednesday evening. The Benedictine Sisters of Erie issued an official statement in response: “We want to call Cliff Maloney to account for his blatantly false post that accuses our sisters of fraud. We do live at Mount Saint Benedict Monastery and a simple web search would alert him to our active presence in a number of ministries in Erie. We also want to alert those who subscribe to X and other social media platforms to be vigilant and seek additional information before accepting these posts as truth,” prioress Sister Stephanie Schmidt said.

The statement added that the sisters were pursuing legal counsel in relation to the accusations.

“We want to be on public record as having called out this fraud so that if the outcome of next month’s election is contested in Pennsylvania our integrity will not be called into question.”

Even after the nuns’ statement, Maloney refused to admit any mistake, and continued to cast doubt on the legality of the priory’s voters, posting, “Right now, we’ve got our team continuing to analyze the situation The PA CHASE team will always report any incidents that need explained I appreciate the public reply from the church claiming that their members are legal voters Once we have proof, we will be content,” at 5 p.m. Wednesday. Maloney did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

Far from being retiring, spokesperson for the order Sister Linda Romey told The Spectator that the sisters had a “long history of speaking for peace and justice” and that they were being careful with the heightened scrutiny but that they are not naive.

“In the 1970s our sisters were marching for peace in the street, so it’s not new for us to speak up for truth. Our underlying concern is how common this kind of a practice is now, twisting the truth for ulterior motives,” she said on Thursday morning.

Because Maloney was still repeating the false claims, Romey said, the sisters were currently communicating with legal counsel to determine next steps, but she couldn’t comment further on what legal steps they were considering.

“Hospitality is a core Benedectine virtue, however, and if Cliff were to show up, he’d be welcome here.”

This latest allegation of voter fraud in Pennsylvania comes amid other Republican mega-donors seeding doubts about election integrity in the swing states. Elon Musk has focused on getting out the vote in Pennsylvania with his America PAC and on Monday he debuted “an election integrity” community feed for X users to report potential incidents of voter fraud or irregularities you see while voting in the 2024 election.”

Maloney’s missing nuns claims made it to Musk’s election integrity feed, added dozens of times by users, with an accompanying X Community Note and all.