I saw the film “2000 Mules” soon after its release last spring, having been goaded into doing so by its director, Dinesh D’Souza.
D’Souza challenged me to watch the movie, which I was eager to do. And, sure enough: There was nothing in the film that actually supported D’Souza’s arguments about “mules” bulk-submitting ballots in multiple states — which is to say that True the Vote didn’t actually make the case D’Souza insisted that it did. Not only was there no example shown of anyone submitting ballots in multiple drop boxes, the only map purporting to show someone driving around dumping ballots was fake — by the admission of True the Vote’s Gregg Phillips.
I interviewed D’Souza at length about the film. And while he admitted that he was reliant on the data from True the Vote, he insisted it had outside validators. For example, he noted with approval that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation didn’t say the geolocation data was fake, though they publicly rejected the idea that an investigation into True the Vote’s claims were warranted. (True the Vote also declined to identify a purported whistleblower who made claims about buying ballots.)
“Phillips’s data has been shared with multiple authorities in Wisconsin, in Arizona and in Georgia,” D’Souza insisted to me. He added later that “the sheriff in Yuma [County, Ariz.] has just opened up an investigation based upon the exact evidence provided by True the Vote and unfurled in the movie.”
Just as that interview published, NPR reported that a key point in the film — that True the Vote had helped solve a “cold case” murder in Georgia — was false. The day after, an election board in Georgia rejected claims made in the film, including clearing a man who was one of the few depicted in the movie dropping off multiple ballots. (He was doing so on behalf of his family, perfectly legally.) And that Yuma County investigation cited by D’Souza also didn’t exist: The sheriff had, instead, put out a statement touting his work combating fraud.
On Friday, a new development: The office of Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) sent a letter to the FBI and IRS recommending an investigation into True the Vote. An ostensible nonprofit, the group has raised millions of dollars purportedly centered on proving election fraud. But in its interactions with True the Vote (TTV), Brnovich’s office found a repeated pattern of misinformation and falsehood.
“TTV alleges it has in its possession geolocation data from a number of mobile devices showing those mobile devices making several trips in which it is said people are walking to, from, or past ballot drop boxes,” the letter reads at one point. “Information has not been provided as to the specific location, whether or not there is in fact a drop box at that location, nor is there any information on the person(s) who may be in possession of the mobile device.”
State investigators met with Phillips and True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht on three occasions, the letter asserts.
“Prior to each meeting with TTV, Ms. Engelbrecht and Mr. Phillips stated they would provide us with the information to support their allegations,” it states. “Despite repeated requests, TTV never did provide the information it purported to have in its possession.” The letter documents other falsehoods, including that the pair claimed to be FBI informants when they weren’t. (This was one excuse offered for not turning over the data.) The letter also pointed to the false claims about the Georgia murder and a probe in Yuma County.
“Given TTV’s status as a nonprofit organization,” the letter to the federal government concludes, “it would appear that further review of its financials may be warranted.”
Remember, that Arizona had the data and was investigating was a central validator D’Souza offered in defense of the film. But neither was the case.
This was not the only recent embarrassment for True the Vote. Over the summer, the group held a summit at which it promised to — at last — reveal data central to its fraud claims. As part of the meeting, True the Vote made several claims about a Michigan-based software company, triggering a defamation lawsuit in response. At a hearing related to the suit, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt warned the group’s attorneys that they might be getting “played” by their clients.
“The judge said he didn’t ‘have any confidence’ in True the Vote’s version of events,” the Texas Tribune reported, “in part because he said the group’s leaders haven’t submitted sworn affidavits under penalty of perjury to support them.”
At the event this summer, incidentally, Phillips and Engelbrecht did their best to turn the page on the “2000 Mules” claims. For months, they’d assured fans they were soon to “pull the rip cord” and release scads of data about the 2020 election. Instead they announced a website that would purportedly be a clearinghouse for election data, which Phillips insisted was the rip cord-pulling. Then Engelbrecht timidly announced the site was “the end of ‘mules.’ End scene. We’re done!”
In other words, there is no public evidence to support True the Vote’s claims and, in fact, the available evidence (including vague maps provided to Wisconsin earlier this year and the faked maps in the movie) explicitly don’t bolster their claims. True the Vote is trying to move on, but their past claims are proving to be an anchor with the authorities.
D’Souza, meanwhile, increasingly looks like he was left holding the bag, albeit one full of cash vacuumed up from an audience desperate to believe that the 2020 election was stolen. He wrote a companion book to the film that was supposed to have already been published. But suddenly, at the end of August, the publisher pulled books that had been sent to stores and pushed out the publication day.
NPR got a copy of the original version. One of the claims made in the movie is that liberal nonprofits served as clearinghouses — “stash houses,” in the insinuation-heavy vernacular of the film — for ballots that were then deposited. The purported nonprofits aren’t identified in the movie, but they were in the book. Organizations identified by D’Souza (and contacted by NPR) vehemently denied any involvement in collecting ballots. And, of course, there’s no evidence beyond True the Vote’s dubious data and that one unidentified whistleblower in Georgia that they had been.
In a statement to NPR, True the Vote put all of it on D’Souza.
“True the Vote had no participation in this book, and has no knowledge of its contents,” a representative said. “This includes any allegations of activities of any specific organizations made in the book. We made no such allegations.”
I contacted D’Souza a month ago to ask if True the Vote had provided him the names of those organizations. After all, in our interview in May, he’d insisted that everything he had came from the group.
It was the first time I contacted him that he didn’t respond.
