Daniel Baldwin, OAN Political Correspondent — Washington DC
UPDATED 10:44 AM PT – Tuesday, May 10, 2022
The new film “2000 Mules”, directed by conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, offers a closer examination of the 2020 Election. Buoyed by True the Vote’s research, D’Souza posits that 2000 mules, people who collect and return mail-in ballots, were paid to stuff dropboxes across five primary swing states.
True the Vote, a nonprofit organization based in Texas, offers up evidence based on combining $2 million worth of anonymized cell phone geolocation data with four million minutes of government surveillance video obtained via a public records request. The group drew a virtual boundary around dropboxes and nongovernment organizations in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia. Doing so helped True the Vote identify unique cell phones that repeatedly visited dropbox locations and NGOs ahead of the 2020 Election.
True the Vote founder Catherine Englebrecht and election intelligence investigator Gregg Phillips walk D’Souza through their findings during the film. If a cellphone “pinged” near a dropbox more than 10 times and an NGO more than five times from Oct. 1 to Election Day, True the Vote classified the cellphone owner as a mule.
Based on this classification, the group asserted 380,000 fraudulent votes were cast in the 2020 Election. True the Vote’s data claims illegal ballot trafficking materially swung Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania all for President Joe Biden. Without these votes, True the Vote claims former President Donald Trump would have claimed 279 electoral votes.
However, fact checkers have pointed out that the film only offers evidence of payment from one unidentified whistleblower in Arizona. Critics say “2000 Mules” lacks any substantial evidence for illegal payments occurring in the other four states. Additionally, Politifact argues geospatial data from cell phones does not offer the precision necessary to confirm that a person submitted a ballot to a dropbox. The fact-checking website asserts this data only shows that a person came within a short distance of the dropbox. The Department of Homeland Security has called the 2020 Election “the most secure in American history.”
A person drops off a mail-in ballot at an election ballot return box in Willow Grove, Pa., Oct. 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)