Evidence Gaps in ‘2000 Mules’
A conservative film now playing in select theaters around the country isn’t “determinative, definitive” proof of widespread voter fraud, as former President Donald Trump has claimed.
“It’s called ‘2000 Mules,'” Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania on May 7, “and basically [Joe] Biden didn’t get the votes, but he did get the ballots, okay, in a sense. But it’s an incredible, it’s an incredible documentary. … This exposes the fraud like nothing else.”
But the supposed evidence is speculative and does not provide the “definitive” proof that Trump and the filmmakers claim.
The film, which the makers say has been viewed by millions, comes at the issue of voter fraud from a unique angle. The conservative group True the Vote paid $2 million for geotracking data of cell phones used in targeted areas of five swing states in the weeks leading up to the presidential election. The group says it identified some 2,000 cell phone users who were geolocated in the immediate vicinity of 10 or more ballot drop boxes and five or more liberal nonprofits.
The film argues there can be no other reasonable explanation for that other than that the cell phone users were acting as “mules” in a massive, nationwide scheme in which they were paid to illegally “traffic” fraudulent ballots. And the producer of the film, conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza, says if the group’s calculations are correct, it was done in large enough numbers to have swung the election in Biden’s favor.
Some experts in geotracking data analysis told us the technology is only precise enough to place a cell phone user in the vicinity of a drop box, not necessarily at it, and there may be many good reasons why people might have been “pinged” in the area of multiple drop boxes.
True the Vote attempted to corroborate its premise with surveillance video of drop boxes obtained from public sources, which the group contends provides visual proof of the conspiracy. But notably, none of the video footage used in the movie shows any individual depositing ballots at multiple drop boxes — a shortcoming D’Souza attributes to the fact that many jurisdictions did not capture surveillance video of drop boxes as required by law, or that in many cases the video was too grainy to definitively identify people.
We are, however, shown numerous surveillance videos of people placing multiple ballots into a drop box — which the film claims is direct evidence of crime. But in at least three cases so far, Georgia investigators say the video actually shows people legally dropping off ballots for eligible voters who are immediate family members living in their home.
In Georgia, it is for people other than relatives or caregivers to collect and mail completed absentee ballots on behalf of other voters —
