Debunking Trump’s Big Lie: Part 3
2000 Mules: A Dilapidated, Termite-Infested House Built by an Admitted Felon on a Foundation of Bullshit
This post is an updated version of a post that I had published on my blog in August 2023.
The Salem Media Group announced that over one million people had watched the movie 2000 Mules shortly after its release in May 2022, making it “the most successful political documentary in a decade.” The MAGA crowd was thirsting for a movie that would PROVE the Democrats had cheated Donald Trump out a win in 2020, and THIS movie delivered. Or so they thought.
2000 Mules was produced by Dinesh D’Souza and revolves around claims by True the Vote leaders Gregg Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht that geolocation data collected from millions of cell phones combined with video evidence proves thousands of people (known as mules) committed massive election fraud by illegally depositing ballots that had been gathered by leftist non-government organizations into multiple ballot boxes. No debunking of the claim that Biden stole the 2020 election from Trump is complete without a thorough debunking of this movie.
Here are eleven reasons to laugh in the face of anyone who thinks 2000 Mules provides evidence of election fraud.
Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, laughed at 2000 Mules and told the January 6th Committee why he was unimpressed by it.
Dinesh D’Souza pled guilty to the felony of campaign finance fraud in 2014. He was sentenced to five years of probation with 8 months to be served in a community confinement center. He was pardoned by Donald Trump in 2018. It is therefore not surprising that he would do a favor for Trump by producing this movie. (I am not claiming anyone on Team Trump asked him to make the movie. But it would not be surprising if he felt gratitude towards Trump and wanted to pay him back by “proving” he was the winner of the 2020 election.)
2000 Mules has already been debunked by the Washington Post here and here and here and here. Reuters debunked it here. NPR also debunked the movie, including its claim that True the Vote’s geolocation data was so accurate that it helped authorities solve a murder case. In reality, the authorities had indicted two suspects two months before anyone from True the Vote had contacted them. (And that is assuming Engelbrecht and Phillips were telling the truth when they claimed they had contacted law enforcement officials about the murder. NPR could not substantiate that claim.)
The Texas Monthly not only debunked the movie, it exposed Phillips’ and Engelbrecht’s long history of conflicts of interest, corruption, incompetence, and profiteering over false claims of voter fraud.
Engelbrecht and Phillips publicly claimed to have given law enforcement officials a hard drive with data backing their claims of illegal ballot harvesting, and they used that claim to raise a considerable amount of money. Arizona’s Attorney General’s office (run by REPUBLICAN Mark Brnovich) tried repeatedly to get the evidence that Engelbrecht and Phillips had promised them. They gave the AG’s office the runaround and the office wrote the IRS suggesting they investigate True the Vote’s status as a nonprofit organization. You can read the letter from the Arizona Attorney General’s office here.
Ann Coulter had been one of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters. In fact, she wrote a book shortly before the 2016 election entitled "In Trump We Trust". She was disillusioned with Trump by 2020 because he was not as far right as she had hoped he would be, but she was dead set against everything the Democrats stood for. And she was less than impressed by the “evidence” presented in 2000 Mules. Coulter wrote:
Which brings me to Dinesh D’Souza’s movie “2,000 Mules.” The movie tells Trump diehards (a dwindling bunch) that their man probably DID win the 2020 election!
Using cellphone tracking data obtained by “True the Vote” (which sounds like a group named by Melania Trump -- “BE BEST!”) D’Souza claims to have proof that 2,000 people delivered multiple ballots to election drop boxes in the five crucial battleground states that Trump lost.
There are two problems with this.
First, the movie doesn’t show what it says it shows.
-- Cellphone tracking isn’t precise enough to distinguish between liberal activists stuffing drop boxes, and store owners, police officers, delivery men and others who have perfectly legitimate reasons to be within a few yards of the same drop box every day.
-- In all five battleground states D’Souza considers, it is perfectly legal for third parties to drop off ballots for others, with varying degrees of lenience. Pennsylvania, for example, allows a caregiver or jailer (among others) to drop off someone else’s ballot.
-- Even if every cellphone dot represented a left-wing organizer illegally dropping off another person’s ballot, that still wouldn’t make the ballot invalid. A legal ballot can be illegally delivered, although the guy who delivered it might be in trouble.
These flaws have already been well aired elsewhere.
Coulter did more than just eviscerate D’Souza’s movie. Her column also provided an explanation for why Trump lost the election. According to Coulter, Trump lost because he threatened to take away people’s guns without due process, he did not deport enough undocumented immigrants, and he only built 47 miles of new wall on the southern border. Her explanation for Trump’s loss is just one of 25 pieces of evidence disproving Trump’s claim that Biden stole the election from him. (column to be published soon.)
A conservative group has told a Georgia judge that it doesn’t have evidence to support its claims of illegal ballot stuffing during the 2020 general election and a runoff two months later.
Texas-based True the Vote filed complaints with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in 2021, including one in which it said it had obtained “a detailed account of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta” during the November 2020 election and a January 2021 runoff.
A Fulton County Superior Court judge in Atlanta signed an order last year requiring True the Vote to provide evidence it had collected, including the names of people who were sources of information, to state elections officials who were frustrated by the group’s refusal to share evidence with investigators.
In their written response, attorneys for True the Vote said the group had no names or other documentary evidence to share.
Regnery Publishing had just published a book by D’Souza that supplemented the movie by adding even more information than had been provided in the movie. However, Regnery unexpectedly recalled the book just as it was hitting store shelves. NPR reporter Tom Dreisbach got his hands on one of the few versions of the book that had escaped the recall and compared it with the version that was released two months later. The original version named specific nonprofit organizations that it had accused of ballot harvesting. The second version softened its accusations and did not name any specific organizations. Apparently, Regnery issued the recall after its lawyers became spooked by the possibility that the book would open the publishers to defamation lawsuits.
Regnery had good reason to fear defamation lawsuits. Mark Andrews was falsely portrayed as a mule after he deposited five ballots for himself and his family in a drop box in Georgia. He sued D’Souza and True the Vote, Phillips, Engelbrecht, and others for defamation. You can read his complaint against them here.
And on May 31, 2024, NPR reported:
The conservative media company behind the book and film “2,000 Mules,” which alleged a widespread conspiracy by Democrats to steal the 2020 election and was embraced by former president Donald Trump, has issued an apology and said it would halt distribution of the film and remove both the film and book from its platforms.
In a statement posted to their website, Salem Media Group, Inc. apologized specifically to Mark Andrews, a voter from Georgia falsely depicted illegally voting in “2,000 Mules.” . . .
According to a court filing in a related case, Salem settled the lawsuit brought by Andrews for an undisclosed “significant” amount. In the statement on its website, Salem wrote, “It was never our intent that the publication of the ‘2000 Mules’ film and book would harm Mr. Andrews. We apologize for the hurt the inclusion of Mr. Andrews’ image in the movie, book, and promotional materials have caused Mr. Andrews and his family.”
Dinesh D'Souza issued a statement that said that 2000 Mules was based on a faulty assumption about linking cell phone geolocation data with videos of supposed mules. In other words, he practically admitted that a central claim of the film was based on bullshit. (That's my characterization of what he said. It is definitely not his.) Brian Tyler Cohen and election lawyer, Marc Elias, discuss the implications of D'Souza's admission in this video.
D’Souza made this admission on December 1, 2024. I posted an update on my blog on July 2, 2025 with the following link to his website where he had posted his admission.
https://dineshdsouza.com/statement-on-2000-mules/
However, if you plug that URL into your browser, you will be redirected to the following URL.
https://thedragonsprophecyfilm.com/statement-on-2000-mules/
This page displays the following message.
If you visit the Dragon’s Prophecy’s home page, you will discover that the site D’Souza had once used to promote 2000 Mules has been replaced with a site pushing a movie he produced that claims we may be living in the end times prophesized in the Bible.
I guess D’Souza enjoys having a website that advertises his new project a lot more than having one that admits his old project was built on a foundation of bullshit. Fortunately, the internet has a long memory, and D’Souza’s retraction was captured by the Internet Archive. (Be patient. It sometimes takes a while for pages from the Internet Archive to load.)
Statement on 2000 Mules
As those who have seen the film or read the book know, “2000 Mules” was based on cell phone geolocation data collected and reviewed by True the Vote. An analysis of this data revealed highly suspicious patterns of certain cell phones, which were recorded in the location of ten or more dropboxes. This data was the premise of the film.
During the production of this film, as a supplement to the geolocation data, True the Vote provided my team with ballot drop box surveillance footage that had been obtained through open records requests. We were assured that the surveillance videos had been linked to geolocation cell phone data, such that each video depicted an individual who had made at least 10 visits to drop boxes. Indeed, it is clear from the interviews within the film itself that True the Vote was correlating the videos to geolocation data.
We recently learned that surveillance videos used in the film may not have actually been correlated with the geolocation data.
I know that the film and my book create the impression that these individuals were mules that had been identified as suspected ballot harvesters based on their geotracked cell phone data. While all of these individuals’ images were blurred and unrecognizable, one of the individuals has since come forward publicly and has initiated a lawsuit over the use of his blurred image in the film and the book. I owe this individual, Mark Andrews, an apology. I now understand that the surveillance videos used in the film were characterized on the basis of inaccurate information provided to me and my team. If I had known then that the videos were not linked to geolocation data, I would have clarified this and produced and edited the film differently.
We operated in good faith and in reliance on True the Vote. We continue to have confidence in their work and also in the basic message of “2000 Mules,” namely, that the 2020 election was not the “most secure election in US history”—far from it!—and that there was systematic election fraud sufficient to call the outcome into question. We also continue to have faith that True the Vote’s underlying geolocation data and analysis uncovered highly suspicious cell phone travel patterns, including a significant number of cell phone IDs that were recorded at more than ten drop box locations. While the video in the film created an incorrect inference as to Mr. Andrews, the underlying premise of the film holds true.
Indeed, the accuracy of the general proposition of ‘2000 Mules” was publicly confirmed recently by the disclosure of a leading Democratic organizer, who admitted to an undercover journalist that the premise of “2000 Mules” is accurate.
Again, I apologize to Mr. Andrews. I make this apology not under the terms of a settlement agreement or other duress, but because it is the right thing to do, given what we have now learned. While I do not believe Mr. Andrews was ever identified by the film or book, I am sorry for any harm he believes he and his family has suffered as a result of “2000 Mules.”
Finally, we must note that we would never have seen retractions from D’Souza or the Salem Media Group had Mark Andrews not filed a defamation lawsuit against them. D’Souza’s retraction included a claim that a Democratic organizer admitted to an undercover journalist that the premise of 2000 Mules was accurate. Curiously, he did not name that organizer, nor did he publish a link to a story backing his claim. I searched and could not find any evidence of a Democratic organizer testifying to the movie’s accuracy. I even posted the following question to Google AI:
Did a Democratic organizer admit the premise of 2000 mules was accurate?
There is no evidence that a Democratic organizer admitted the premise of the film 2,000 Mules was accurate. In fact, the filmmaker and the media group behind the project have recently issued apologies and retracted major portions of the work.
I asked Twitter’s AI program, Grok, the same question, and this was its response. (emphasis added).
No, there is no credible evidence that a Democratic organizer (or operative) admitted the premise of 2000 Mules was accurate. The film 2000 Mules (2022), directed by Dinesh D’Souza and based on claims from the conservative group True the Vote, alleged widespread illegal “ballot harvesting” or “mule” activity—paid individuals collecting and stuffing fraudulent ballots into drop boxes in swing states to steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden. The film’s core premise has been widely debunked by fact-checkers (e.g., AP, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact), election officials, and experts as relying on faulty cellphone geolocation data analysis (not precise enough to confirm drop-box deposits), misinterpretations of legal ballot drop-offs (e.g., family members voting together), anonymous/unverified accounts, and no proof of paid schemes or fraud on a scale that affected outcomes.
Investigations in states like Georgia found no evidence of illegal ballot stuffing highlighted in the film; cases involved legal family ballot deliveries.
True the Vote admitted in court filings (e.g., 2024 Georgia case) it had no evidence to support its ballot-stuffing claims and couldn’t identify key sources.
Salem Media (distributor) pulled the film/book in 2024 and apologized.
Dinesh D’Souza himself issued statements/apologies in late 2024 acknowledging “inaccurate information” in the film, that it created false impressions of identified “mules,” and that parts were based on faulty analysis—while still defending a broader “fraud” narrative.
Claims of a “Democratic organizer” admission appear to stem from a misleading October 2024 post by Dinesh D’Souza on X, sharing an undercover video (promoted on right-wing outlets) purporting to show a “top Democrat operative” admitting ballot harvesting schemes aligned with 2000 Mules. However, this has not been verified as credible or representative:
No mainstream or neutral sources confirm it as an admission validating the film’s specific premise (e.g., widespread paid mules trafficking illegal ballots to swing the election).
The video’s context and the individual’s claims lack independent corroboration and align with ongoing unsubstantiated narratives rather than new evidence.
Fact-checks and reports treat such “admissions” as unverified or exaggerated, consistent with the film’s history of anonymous/unproven allegations.
In summary, the film’s premise remains discredited, with retractions from its own creators/promoters, and no substantiated admission from a Democratic organizer supports it.
It seems that as far as D’Souza is concerned, once a bullshit artist, always a bullshit artist. At least, that’s my Constitutionally protected opinion of him. The only thing D’Souza proved by 2000 Mules is that he is nothing more than a lying jackass.
The person behind the Paola Poot Twitter account is very knowledgeable about 2000 Mules and other election related issues. I recommend reading her tweets about the movie.
The wording of Google AI’s response may change slightly from time to time, and indeed it has changed between the time I started writing this article and the time that I am publishing it. It could change yet again by the time you read this article. But each time, the substance of the AI’s response remains the same.