Pro-Trump Turning Point church get-out-the-vote drives likely violate tax law, experts say

A right-wing activist group’s reliance on evangelical churches for Republican get-out-the-vote efforts could land the congregations in hot water with the IRS, legal experts say.

Turning Point Action, founded by conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk, has held GOP vote-chasing events with at least 22 churches in six swing states since March, according to research conducted by the progressive watchdog group Documented and verified by NBC News. It is part of Turning Point’s push to contact people likely to support former President Donald Trump to encourage them to vote.

“What they’re doing almost definitely violates the Johnson Amendment,” said Sam Brunson, a law professor at Loyola University in Chicago, referring to the 1954 law that bars churches and other nonprofit groups from directly supporting political candidates.

There’s a long history of churches — including progressive and historically Black congregations — getting involved in elections, by registering voters, canvassing neighborhoods and providing transportation to polling sites. Those efforts are legal as long as they don’t explicitly target or exclude voters based on party affiliation. Many churches cross the line every year, by either hosting candidates or making endorsements from the pulpit, while rarely drawing sanctions from the IRS.

But what Turning Point is doing — relying on congregations to do explicitly partisan campaign work — “is at a different level than anything I’ve seen before,” said Philip Hackney, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and former IRS official. He and four other nonpartisan legal experts told NBC News that such activities could jeopardize the churches’ tax-exempt status.

Hackney noted Turning Point’s close association with Trump and the Republican National Committee. In a novel strategy made possible by new leniencies in campaign finance rules allowing campaigns to coordinate with super PACs and other groups, the Trump campaign has largely delegated voter-turnout efforts. Turning Point Action is one of several outside groups that have taken over the work of canvassing on behalf of Republicans.

“The Republican Party, in effect,” Hackney said, “is explicitly using churches through this system in order to get out the vote.”

Turning Point Action didn’t respond to messages requesting comment. A Trump campaign official told NBC News it doesn’t control Turning Point or its voter outreach efforts and declined to comment further. An IRS spokesperson said the agency couldn’t comment on specific organizations and referred a reporter to federal guidance that makes it clear churches can’t engage in partisan political activity.

Turning Point’s work with churches has been openly partisan, said Corinne Wolyniec, a researcher for Documented, a nonprofit group that investigates the influence of corporations and wealthy donors in government and politics. She found that the conservative activist group has mobilized evangelical congregations in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin. At those gatherings — what Turning Point calls Super Chase events — Turning Point representatives train church members to use the group’s ballot-chasing app, which relies on voting history data to guide volunteers to call or knock on the doors of likely Republicans while avoiding anyone from the “wrong party” — meaning Democrats.

Turning Point staffers have at times advised pastors that that sort of partisan activism poses no legal risk, according to publicly available videos posted by the group. But some legal experts say otherwise.

“They can’t favor a particular candidate or, by implication, a group of candidates, like Republicans versus Democrats,” said Lloyd Mayer, a professor at Notre Dame Law School. “This effort is obviously favoring getting out voters who will favor the Republican candidates.”

Johnny Buckles, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center, agreed that the churches working with Turning Point are most likely violating tax law as interpreted by the IRS — though he sees the Johnson Amendment itself as a violation of free speech rights under the First Amendment. 

“Even though I’m a critic of an absolute prohibition” on church political activity, Buckles said, “what you are describing to me is problematic under the statute as a potential violation.”

Documented reviewed dozens of social media posts, event pages and online videos to build its list of swing-state churches that hosted Super Chase events. Some churches and pastors promoted Turning Point events during worship services and in social media posts, NBC News found.

On a recent Sunday, a church member at Crossing Community Church in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, invited congregants to stick around after the service to get training from a Turning Point Action representative before they went out in the community to encourage Christians to vote.

At Freedom House Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, a flashy announcement video played during a recent worship service, alerting members that “we are just a short time away from the most pivotal election of our lifetime,” then inviting them to participate in a Turning Point Super Chase event after the service.

“In 2020, 1.3 million Christians did not vote in North Carolina alone,” the narrator intoned. “It’s time to change that.”

NBC News contacted officials at each of the nearly two dozen churches that have hosted Turning Point events, but only two responded. 

Greater Augusta Apostolic Church in Columbia County, Georgia, which hosted a Turning Point Super Chase event in August, denied any direct affiliation with Turning Point in a statement and said it welcomes “people of all faiths, political backgrounds, etc (with no exclusions).”

David Rose, the pastor of Restoration Hope Church in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, acknowledged in an email that Turning Point held a Super Chase event at his church in August, but he said it was “not an event hosted by our church nor was it a church related event.”

“It is common for churches to allow other organizations to use their facilities outside of church related events,” said Rose, who personally promoted the Turning Point event on social media and posed for a photo in the sanctuary alongside volunteers holding signs that read “Commie Kamala” and “Make America Great Again.”

Even if the event wasn’t formally endorsed by the church, allowing Turning Point to use its facilities — along with the pastor’s participation — most likely violated tax law, experts said. Rose didn’t respond to follow-up questions about whether his church required Turning Point to lease space for the event.

Both presidential campaigns have sought to court Christian voters. Vice President Kamala Harris appeared at a Philadelphia church on Sunday, warning its Black congregation that America would become a “country of chaos, fear and hate” if she loses. Trump, meanwhile, has sought to maintain favor among conservative evangelical pastors who openly support him from the pulpit. (One of Trump’s long-standing promises to evangelicals: repealing the Johnson Amendment, which is named for then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, who introduced the measure in Congress.)

Training churches to serve as unofficial Trump campaign surrogates fits into a broader campaign by Turning Point to mobilize evangelicals. Kirk has called on Christians to view conservative political activism as central to Jesus’ calling for their lives while promoting Trump as God’s favored candidate.

Discussing plans to build “the largest ballot-chasing army in the history of Republican GOP politics” at a California megachurch in March, Kirk called on pastors to rally their congregations to the cause.

“You cannot, in my personal opinion,” Kirk said, “be a true born-again Christian and vote Democrat in 2024.”

In the months that followed, churches across the country answered the call.

At Super Chase events, Turning Point trains volunteers to use its cellphone app, which provides users with addresses and names of residents who are likely to support Trump. Users can also upload their contacts to see which of their friends or associates are likely to be Republicans, or they can call or text randomly assigned numbers in swing states. The goal is to drive turnout among “low-propensity voters” — those who Turning Point believes support Trump but haven’t voted consistently in the past.

Turning Point representatives have at times downplayed the tax risks when they recruit churches and pastors to do such work. When a person attending a June Turning Point conference asked whether it was a good idea to run get-out-the-vote programs through churches, Brett Galaszewski, a Turning Point field director, said that’s exactly what pastors should be doing.

“I think we’re long past the point where church and politics are separate,” he said. “We have a country to save.”

At another session, Turning Point representative Schayden Gorai said there was no risk to running partisan political operations through churches.

“There’s never been an instance in history where a church has lost their 501(c)(3), their tax-exemption status, for getting political,” Gorai said. “And so we want to make sure that our churches understand that this is where they’re meant to be.”

Galaszewski didn’t respond to messages, and Gorai declined to comment.

Mayer, the Notre Dame Law School professor, questioned their advice. Although it’s true that the IRS has rarely revoked a church’s tax-exempt status over political activity — there has been one documented case since the 1990s, he said — it can take other actions, he said, including issuing warning letters or opening audits.

“That advice, of course, is ‘it’s all right because you won’t get caught,’” Mayer said.

He said pastors who want to explicitly engage in partisan politics should remember that “if you’re doing this and it violates the statute — and I think what they’re doing here does — you’re violating a law enacted by Congress.”