The Recording Scheme
This is not an allegation. This is what a district court judge found when Chad Christensen's own lawsuit forced the full story into the open.
For all of Chad Christensen's public talk about courage and principled stands, one of the most revealing episodes of his political life began not with a brave act but with a phone call, one recorded without the caller's knowledge, forwarded the next day to a political operative, and turned into a coordinated campaign to destroy a man's career and reputation.
When that story began to surface publicly, Christensen filed a lawsuit. The defamation case against political blogger Gregory Graf, filed in Bonneville County in February 2021, proceeded through discovery, depositions, and ultimately to summary judgment. The account below is drawn from the court's own memorandum decision, signed by Seventh District Judge Dane Watkins Jr.
The court found for Graf and dismissed Christensen's claims. The litigation produced sworn depositions, compelled discovery, and a written court decision — all of it now on the public record.
How It Moved
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In October 2020, East Idaho News published a story about Christensen's race against a political opponent. Both Gregory Graf and EmmaLee Robinson, Christensen's coworker and supervisor at State Farm in Idaho Falls, commented on Facebook. Robinson messaged Graf privately and said she had "red flags" about Christensen.
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Robinson arranged a private phone call with Graf. She told him to call her in ten minutes. Plenty of time to set up the recording scheme.
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Before leaving her office to take the call, Robinson told Christensen about the planned call. She admitted under oath that Christensen helped her download a recording app on her phone. His voice is audible in the first minute of the recording, coaching her on how to use it.
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Robinson recorded the call without Graf's knowledge.
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Robinson forwarded the recording to Christensen.
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The next day, Christensen forwarded the recording to Greg Pruett, founder of the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance and the same man who had recruited Christensen to run for the legislature in 2018.
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Robinson provided a copy of the recording to Graf's employer's associate general counsel.
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Over the following two weeks, Pruett and Hurst worked through the 45-minute recording to assemble deceptively edited excerpts. Robinson remained in active communication with Pruett and Christensen throughout this period. Then Pruett and Hurst published a multi-part article series on Keep Idaho Free, framing the call as Graf attempting to get Christensen fired from his job.
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Discovery text messages produced in litigation show: "They think Graf is fired."
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After Graf's attorney sent a cease and desist, the same C&D Pruett references in his November 1 message above ("I wouldn't worry about this C&D"), Robinson sent Pruett a message stating she had not given him permission to use the recording. She had been in active contact with Pruett throughout the entire process. The denial arrived when the legal pressure did, not before the articles were published.
Memorandum Decision and Order Re: Motions for Summary Judgment, CV10-21-1197, Bonneville County District Court, filed October 31, 2023
One Recording. One Target.
Robinson did not record every call she had about Chad Christensen. She recorded one.
The day after she recorded Graf's call, Robinson called Jennifer Ellis. Robinson confirmed this under oath. Ellis recounted, in Robinson's words, "the stories that Mr. Graf said but not as negative." She talked about her discomfort around Christensen, mentioned militia groups, mentioned the man Christensen had beaten in his first race. The call covered the same ground as the recorded call. It was longer. None of it was recorded.
Q. Did you record your communication with Jennifer?
A. No.
Robinson Deposition, p. 69
Q. Did you hear any of that information from anyone besides Mr. Graf?
A. Jennifer Ellis. No, it was mainly Mr. Graf.
Robinson Deposition, p. 136
Robinson also provided a copy of the recording to Graf's employer's associate general counsel. The text messages produced in discovery show the network tracking Graf's employment status in real time. Robinson recorded Graf's call because the recording was built to be used against Graf. Ellis did not work for the same employer. The call with Ellis went unrecorded because Ellis was not the target.
He Sued to Silence a Critic. He Lost.
The first attempt to harm Graf was the recording. It failed. Graf's employer heard the first minute — Christensen coaching Robinson on how to capture the call — and drew the obvious conclusion. Graf kept his job. The articles ran anyway, built on the same recording, but the primary objective had not been achieved.
Four months later, Christensen filed a defamation lawsuit against Graf — the second instrument deployed against the same man after the first hadn't worked. The complaint listed alleged defamatory statements including the claim that "Christensen is a sexual predator." As a public official, he was required to prove actual malice: that the statements were made with knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. He could not meet that standard.
This is the structure of a SLAPP — a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. A SLAPP is not filed to win. It is filed to impose costs: legal fees, depositions, discovery, years of uncertainty. The goal is to make the act of speaking publicly expensive enough that the target stops, and that others watching decide not to start. It does not require a meritorious claim. It requires only a willing plaintiff and a filing fee.
Christensen's own ally, Greg Pruett — the man who received the recording, helped assemble the articles, and had free legal representation pre-committed before a single story ran — later acknowledged publicly what the court had already found: "Chad's defamation was a long shot at best." Pruett knew the claim had no serious legal footing. Christensen filed it anyway and kept it active for nearly three years. Graf incurred legal fees, lost time, and faced ongoing exposure for a claim his opponent's own ally had already publicly assessed as having no realistic chance of success.
Seventh District Judge Dane Watkins Jr. dismissed Christensen's defamation and defamation-per-se claims at summary judgment.
Decision or Opinion (1).pdf, pp. 5, 16, 24, CV10-21-1197The case placed his conduct on the public record. The depositions Christensen compelled documented the recording scheme, the pre-committed legal defense, and the network's real-time tracking of Graf's employment — in sworn testimony, preserved in a court file.
What the Discovery Revealed
Discovery in CV10-21-1197 produced text messages exchanged between EmmaLee Robinson and Greg Pruett. They document the coordination around Graf's employment during the two weeks Pruett and Hurst spent editing the 45-minute recording into article-ready excerpts — and reveal that the network's in-house legal protection was already in place before the public campaign began.
In a November 1, 2020 message, sent while the articles were being assembled, Pruett wrote:
"Bryan told me he will defend either of us for free and told me two days ago there isn't a chance Graf will do it."
Bryan Smith is a board member and vice chair of the Idaho Freedom Foundation. He later represented Dustin Hurst in Christensen's own defamation case. The same attorney who had already pre-committed to free legal defense for the people running the recording scheme also appeared as counsel for a named defendant in the case the scheme ultimately generated.
Pruett's full message in that November 1, 2020 thread:
"I wouldn't worry about this C&D. Graf has no case and would be a complete idiot to even try. The discovery of his laptop in that case would make it much worse for him. Bryan told me he will defend either of us for free and told me two days ago there isn't a chance Graf will do it. He is likely already been fired or given a severance. Just based on what I am hearing."
Pruett sent that message before a single article had been published. He was wrong on every count. Graf was not fired. He received no severance. He pursued legal action and prevailed at summary judgment in October 2023. There was nothing damaging on any laptop. That line was a bluff.
Articles being assembled. Legal defense pre-committed. The explicit expectation that Graf would lose his job. Christensen's own lawsuit forced all of it into the public record.
Years later, when publicly pressed about whether Chad's lawsuit was justified, Pruett acknowledged what the court had already found:
"Chad's defamation was a long shot at best."
In the same exchange, Pruett framed his "big issue with Graf" as Graf having called "Chad's employer and trashing him for 40 minutes." That is the false narrative the smear campaign was built on: Graf as the aggressor. The recording was secretly made by Robinson with Christensen's assistance. The court's dismissal of his defamation claims reflects what the record actually showed.
Her Own Words
The public campaign framed Greg Graf as a man who had called "Chad's employer" for forty minutes in an attempt to get Christensen fired. Robinson filed a complaint with Graf's employer. The network tracked his employment status in real time via text message. The narrative required Graf to have been the aggressor — the one trying to destroy a man's livelihood.
Robinson's own contemporaneous email tells a different story.
On October 23, 2020 — three days after the recording and squarely within the two-week window during which Robinson was in active contact with Pruett and Christensen as they assembled the articles — Robinson sent an email to Stephanie Mickelsen with copies to four people at the Idaho Farm Bureau and its affiliated insurance company. She documented her account of the conversations with Graf and Ellis. She wrote:
"I had a conversation with Greg Graf and Jennifer Ellis about Chad. They reached out to me about the dangerous employee I hired. They never wanted me to fire him, but just to let me be aware."
Robinson wrote this three days after the recording, without legal pressure, to allies inside the same political network. Graf and Ellis contacted her to flag a concern. They did not ask her to fire him.
The email has one additional line: the conversation had "later turned to giving me strategies to get him out of my office." That is Robinson describing what her own response became, not a request Graf made.
Mickelsen replied on October 26. She wrote that she had "never seen his personnel file and can only imagine what really got him fired," and that her comments were "suppositions on my part."
"Any personal comments I made to a few of my personal friends were suppositions on my part."
Robinson wrote that email on October 23, while in active communication with Pruett as he assembled the articles. Her "no permission" message to Pruett came later, after Graf's attorney issued a cease and desist. She watched the recording be used for two weeks and said nothing. The denial arrived when the legal pressure did. The Mickelsen email and the Pruett denial served the same purpose, came from the same person, and arrived in the same window. The claim that Graf tried to get Christensen fired was the foundation of the smear campaign. Robinson, in her own hand, wrote it out of existence before the first article ran.
What the Depositions Confirmed
The text messages from the week the recording was circulated were explicit about what the network expected. "They think Graf is fired." That was the goal. That was the measure of success.
It did not happen. Graf's employer recognized the recording for what it was. The scheme that was supposed to end his career was undone in its first minute by the voice of the man behind it. Graf kept his job.
Years later, the CEO of Graf's employer was deposed in Christensen's own lawsuit. He had not been asked to be part of this. He had not sought a role in the litigation. He testified under oath about Graf's value to the company, about what the scheme had actually done, and about who bore responsibility for the damage:
Q. [Graf's employer] did not terminate Mr. Graf's employment?
A. We did not.
Deposition of Graf's employer's CEO, p. 72, CV10-21-1197, June 22, 2022
"He's exceptionally good as he does for a search engine optimization stuff. We really wanted to keep him. It was a really important issue not to offend him while we tried to protect our company."
Deposition of Graf's employer's CEO, p. 27, CV10-21-1197, June 22, 2022
"Those accusations affected us, affected his job, were totally untrue."
Deposition of Graf's employer's CEO, p. 49, CV10-21-1197, June 22, 2022
Graf was not fired. But the scheme did not leave him untouched. For years, the same people continued pushing the same false narrative — that he was a dangerous political operative who had tried to destroy a man's career. The pressure on his employment did not end the day he kept his job. It accumulated. It affected his family. Eventually, years after the recording, Graf left the position on his own terms. The deposition record is unambiguous that he had done nothing wrong. The leverage the network held over his livelihood had made staying untenable.
The people who launched the scheme expected Graf to be fired. The CEO they were forced to depose three years later testified unprompted that Graf was exceptional, that the company wanted to keep him, and that the accusations used against him were totally untrue.
Not a Dispute Between Strangers
The man who received Christensen's recording, Greg Pruett, is the same man who called Christensen in February 2018 and recruited him to run for the Idaho Legislature. Pruett's account of that recruitment, as established in sworn deposition testimony:
"Later Greg called me, I think, in February of '18 and said, 'Hey, are you still interested?' Asked me if I was still interested in running."
The man who co-published the smear series, Dustin Hurst, was the former vice president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation. The attorney who offered to defend those involved for free, Bryan Smith, is the IFF vice chair. KTVB's 7 Investigates reported on the network of far-right players connected to the case.
These were not strangers. They were colleagues, donors, co-authors, and legal clients bound by years of shared political work. Christensen helped download the recording app. He forwarded the file. He was at the center of it.