Dinesh D'Souza /2000 Mules/: Pre-bunk potential?

FatPhil said:
With the quotes and title caps, it did look accusatory.
Click to expand...
oh. i almost always add a sarcasm label when i'm being sarcastic, because you guys misinterpret what i'm saying so often (even when i use simple language in a short sentence) that i know there is no chance many of you will understand my sarcasm.
 
even Newsmax won't cover it

Article:
Former President Donald Trump criticized Fox News on Saturday, complaining the outlet will not "show or discuss" Dinesh D'Souza's documentary 2000 Mules concerning allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

"Fox News is no longer Fox News," Trump posted on his TruthSocial account. "They won't even show or discuss the greatest & most impactful documentary of our time, "2000 Mules." The Radical Left Democrats are thrilled - They don't want the TRUTH to get out."

Trump's gripes echoed those of author and conservative political commentator D'Souza, who on Monday accused Fox and Newsmax for not providing coverage of his film.
 
Probably the strongest indication that this is junk (also mentioned in the reviews I quoted previously):
Article:
The biggest issue, as Garrett Archer, data analyst at ABC15 in Phoenix and former senior elections analyst at the Arizona secretary of state's office points out, is that we don't see any surveillance footage of the "mules" going to drop boxes more than once.

An example: D'Souza and True the Vote focus on one particular "mule" from North Carolina who allegedly went to the ballot box multiple times and had been identified in a number of locations. But we only see surveillance footage of her at one location for the entirety of the movie.

With 2000 "mules" and all of this footage, they couldn't catch a single person doing it twice? Yeah, right.
 
Ann K said:
"Propaganda" and "documentary" are two entirely different things.
Click to expand...
One reason to doubt that "2000 mules" is a documentary is that much of what looks like it's real actually isn't.

Article:
In an email to The Post, Phillips said that "the movie graphics are not literal interpretations of our data."

I haven't checked myself if the first frame is an actual movie still, but if it is, that's a pretty good illustration (and I remember that image flipping technique from the trailer):
imrs-webp.51538

imrs-1-webp.51539


Another WaPo article is a transcript of an hour-long conversation with D'Souza being pressed on what the actual evidence is, and D'Souza's discussion strategies felt familiar to me (and probably do to regular readers of Metabunk).
Article:
D'Souza admits his movie does not show evidence to prove his claims about ballots being collected and submitted.

"The movie is driven in part by decisions about what makes the movie work well."

"2000 Mules" is not a documentary, because it doesn't reliably document what it is claiming: you never know if what you're shown is real or a mock-up, and it omits what would be crucial evidence for the claims being made. "2000 Mules" isn't about presenting facts, it's about presenting a conclusion, and that makes it propaganda and not a documentary.
 

Attachments

Thinking this turd of a film was dead & buried over 4 months ago, I was a little
surprised to see a detailed piece about it yesterday on Huffington Post.
Obviously that site has a considerable slant, and I wouldn't normally link to it,
except that there's a lot concerning direct quotes in there, that I wasn't seeing elsewhere,
including a really creepy quote (and a link to it, so you can see her say it, yourself) to
Arizona State Senator Kelly Townsend talking about how to intimidate people at drop off boxes:
"I have been so pleased to hear about all you vigilantes out there that want to camp out at these drop boxes...we're going to have hidden trail cameras, we are going to have people parked out there watching you and they are going to follow you to your car and get your license plate, so don't try it."

https://www.azmirror.com/2022/05/31...ollow-voters-to-combat-unproven-ballot-mules/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/2000...-midterm-elections_n_63444e4ae4b0b7f89f4e8934
 
NoParty said:
a detailed piece about it yesterday on Huffington Post.
Click to expand...
hindsight
Article:
Engelbrecht told Tucker Carlson that the average ballot mule made 38 drop box visits — "and it's on tape!" she added on Twitter. But five months later, no evidence, videotaped or otherwise, supports anything close to that claim.

[...]

Asked during a Wisconsin state legislative hearing in March if he could list the names of nongovernmental organizations visited by the supposed ballot mules, Phillips refused. "Not at this time," he said. "We've got several things ongoing, some legal strategies and some other matters." True the Vote still hasn't named names.

Pressed in a May Washington Post interview for any reason to actually trust the information presented in his film, D'Souza deflected, saying evidence had been "shared with multiple authorities in Wisconsin, in Arizona and in Georgia."

But emails obtained by Axios show True the Vote stubbornly refusing to provide that information to the Arizona attorney general's office despite repeated requests. "We have continually asked for information that has not been provided," a spokesperson for the office told the outlet.

[..]

A few months later, [Georgia]'s Elections Board even issued subpoenas to True the Vote for its purported evidence, to little effect.

"The status of the subpoenas hasn't changed ― they were issued, and TTV hasn't complied," a spokesperson for the Georgia Secretary of State's office told HuffPost.

Same procedure as with many other election fraud claimants: they talk big about "evidence", but somehow that evidence never makes it to court.
 
JMartJr said:
I wonder if the purpose of the tiled images will eventually be to make something like this:
View attachment 51124
but with the big reveal being a Mule, or Joe Biden, or something, instead of an NBA star. In which case the repeating tiles are not so much an example of lying about how many pictures you have, as a case of using some number of pictures to make up the mosaic? We'll see if they go there, I guess.
Click to expand...
I hope so, cause thats a total disaster, haha :D
The idea is to have multiple smaller images that when viewed as one form a picture
not take multiple smaller images and then super impose a picture over them

NSFW
this came up from googling I thought it was funny, I can image the man (99.9% chance it was a man) thought, aha finally I can use my extensive porn collection to use
FMeDsPwXwAQ-8mK.jpeg
 
Last edited:
NoParty said:
News station abc15 in Phoenix, reported yesterday what appears to be predictable D'Souza-inspired harassment/intimidation of a voter (and his wife) in Mesa, AZ:
Click to expand...
Election deniers are still recruiting:
External Quote:
A conservative group led by former Trump national security adviser and election denier Michael Flynn is trying to recruit thousands of police officers to work as poll monitors on Election Day—and reaching out to QAnon conspiracy theorists to aid in its recruitment effort.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/micha...more-mission-to-watch-election-sites?ref=home
 
NoParty said:
Let the dishonest "mule" inspired voter intimidation begin!

News station abc15 in Phoenix, reported yesterday what appears to be predictable D'Souza-inspired harassment/intimidation of a voter (and his wife) in Mesa, AZ:
(of course, that could later turn out to be misleading, but it's where we are now)
Click to expand...
I'm not sure I'd blame D'Souza too directly for this, Kari Lake seems to have been doing some fairly noisy stirring recently,
External Quote:
PHOENIX — The Republican candidates for Arizona governor and secretary of state on Wednesday appealed a federal judge's ruling that threw out a lawsuit they filed seeking to require the hand-counting of ballots in November's election.

Lawyers representing governor candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state hopeful Mark Finchem filed a notice saying they would ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to revive their lawsuit.
-- https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news...ppeal-ruling-against-hand-counts/10387075002/

In particular as right now she's buoyed by the Gabbard endorsement:
External Quote:
Tulsi Gabbard campaigns for election denier Kari Lake in Arizona

Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who ran for president in 2020 as a Democrat and endorsed Joe Biden after her exit from the race, on Tuesday campaigned in Arizona for the state's Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, a fervent election denier Trump loyalist.
-- https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dem...igns-trump-backed-kari-lake/story?id=91738996
 
FatPhil said:
I'm not sure I'd blame D'Souza too directly for this, Kari Lake seems to have been doing some fairly noisy stirring recently,
External Quote:
PHOENIX — The Republican candidates for Arizona governor and secretary of state on Wednesday appealed a federal judge's ruling that threw out a lawsuit they filed seeking to require the hand-counting of ballots in November's election.

Lawyers representing governor candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state hopeful Mark Finchem filed a notice saying they would ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to revive their lawsuit.
-- https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news...ppeal-ruling-against-hand-counts/10387075002/

In particular as right now she's buoyed by the Gabbard endorsement:
External Quote:
Tulsi Gabbard campaigns for election denier Kari Lake in Arizona

Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who ran for president in 2020 as a Democrat and endorsed Joe Biden after her exit from the race, on Tuesday campaigned in Arizona for the state's Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, a fervent election denier Trump loyalist.
-- https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dem...igns-trump-backed-kari-lake/story?id=91738996
Click to expand...
Well, I hadn't heard the (dishonest) term "mule" used in this context
before D'Souza's propaganda piece...so when the voter was allegedly
accused of being a "mule"...it seemed like a pretty straight line...
 
So thousands of low level ballot stuffing flacks all flawlessly kept the secret of participating in the largest election fraud operation in history, without a single one of them cashing out to blow the lid off of this or gathering any covert recordings to the operation? No leaked texts? Emails? The video evidence doesn't back up the initial claims of them having someone on camera visiting a bunch of different places and they've dodged actually giving formal evidence even to sympathetic chunks of the legal system?
Yeesh. How could anyone ever take d'Souza seriously about anything after this?
 
SuppaCoup said:
How could anyone ever take d'Souza seriously about anything after this?
Click to expand...
I will confess that I was already in the mode of "if d'Souza says it, it's probably false" when I started the thread. His credibility evaporated way before this. The fact that the street maps he used happened to be those of Russian towns kinda proves me right in my cynicism. However, each argument should be evaluated on its own merits. But he will always be on the "false until proved true" slate for me.
 
Article:
In a recent court filing, 2000 Mules gangsters, True the Vote, admitted that they didn't have any back up whatsoever for their claims that Black people got $10 per ballot to vote several times and stuffed them in dropboxes.
In response to a subpoena issued by the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia, on behalf of the State Election Board, who had made a request for information, True the Vote admitted that they don't know the name of their "anonymous" source, and they have no confidentiality agreement, which they had previously claimed existed. Indeed the right-wing group now say they have no physical evidence whatsoever in their "possession, custody, or control".
[...]
Thanks, in part, to the anti-dropbox hysteria whipped up by True the Vote and 2000 Mules, dropboxes have been outright banned in Arkansas and South Dakota, and courts in Wisconsin have ruled them illegal. Last year, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Virginia all tried to enact laws to ban them, thankfully without success. Many other states have moved to restrict them, as in Georgia where they not only limited locations, but moved the dropboxes inside government buildings, meaning they are only accessible during business hours, which defeats much of their purpose — which is precisely the point.
 
True the Vote (after having promulgated the lie for years) did not admit this voluntarily, but did so only in response to a subpoena.
External Quote:

But in responding to a subpoena for any evidence supporting those claims, the group came up empty-handed.

In a court filing in Georgia, True the Vote said it did not have any records of the supposed network of non-governmental organizations it alleged facilitated the massive ballot trafficking scheme. True the Vote also said it had no contact information for sources who had ostensibly provided the group with a detailed account of the alleged ballot scheme, nor for any of the unnamed researchers or investigators it relied on for its allegations.

The subpoena also specifically asked for the identity, contact information, and any records evidencing the claims of "John Doe," an unidentified person who True the Vote claimed had admitted to personally participating in the ballot trafficking.

"TTV does not have in its possession, custody, or control, identity and contact information for John Doe or any such items concerning him," the group said in the filing.
https://news.yahoo.com/true-vote-tells-judge-doesn-221224320.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
 
The legal ping-pong has become a little confusing, here's a refresher of how things were back in July:

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/ge...ote-produce-evidence-mules-documentary-claims
External Quote:
The Texas-based True the Vote group filed complaints with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in November 2021, including one saying it had received "a detailed account of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta" during the 2020 general election and in a runoff election in January 2021.

"After multiple good faith efforts by the SEB (State Election Board) and its counsel to obtain the requested information and documents, True the Vote continues to indifferently vacillate between statements of assured compliance and blanket refusals," leaving the election board with no choice but to turn to the courts, the filing says.

After receiving the group's complaints two months later, Raffensperger's office opened an investigation. Investigators in April 2022 issued subpoenas to True the Vote for relevant documents and information, including the identity and contact information for people who True the Vote said provided details about the alleged ballot trafficking.

A lawyer for True the Vote in May 2023 wrote a letter to a state attorney saying that a complete response to the subpoenas would require the organization to identify people to whom it had promised confidentiality and that it could not do that. The lawyer wrote that True the Vote was withdrawing its complaints.

State Election Board Chair William Duffey responded in a letter two weeks later, saying that the board's investigation into True the Vote's "serious allegations" was ongoing. Therefore, he wrote, he would not allow the complaints to be withdrawn and asked the state attorney general's office to seek enforcement of the subpoenas.

A lawyer for True the Vote in June wrote in a letter that True the Vote had already provided some of the information requested to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation but declined to provide the identities and contact information for people described in its complaints "because doing so may put those persons in physical or personal jeopardy."
It seems as if this latest revelation slots in as the enforcement of the mentioned subpoenas.

Also mentioned in that article is this case:
External Quote:
One man falsely accused in the film of committing ballot fraud has filed a still-pending federal lawsuit against True the Vote, D'Souza and others. Surveillance video in the film shows Mark Andrews, his face blurred, depositing five ballots in a drop box in downtown Lawrenceville, a suburb northeast of Atlanta, ahead of the 2020 election. A voiceover by conservative pundit and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza says: "What you are seeing is a crime. These are fraudulent votes."
The lawsuit link in that para points here: https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/georgia-false-ballot-fraud-dinesh-dsouza-film-2000-mules-lawsuit
External Quote:
ATLANTA - A Georgia man and his family "have faced threats of violence and live in fear" since the movie "2000 Mules" falsely accused him of ballot fraud during the 2020 election, according to a federal lawsuit.
...
The lawsuit names D'Souza and True the Vote, as well as the organization's executive director Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, who has served on its board. Both Engelbrecht and Phillips appear throughout the film and served as executive producers and producers, the lawsuit says.
...
"At all times, Defendants knew that their portrayals of Mr. Andrews were lies, as was the entire narrative of 2000 Mules," the lawsuit says. "But they have continued to peddle these lies in order to enrich themselves."
And the lawsuit link in the above links to https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.308676/gov.uscourts.gand.308676.1.0.pdf
External Quote:
Plaintiff Mark Andrews ("Plaintiff"), through his attorneys, brings this
complaint against Defendants Dinesh D'Souza, D'Souza Media LLC, True the
Vote, Inc., Catherine Engelbrecht, Gregg Phillips, Salem Media Group, Inc., and
John Does (collectively "Defendants")
It seems things move slowly, there are no updates since:
External Quote:
Recent Updates
Judge Rules Against the Makers of Election-Lie-Hyping Film '2,000 Mules' — Allows Case to Proceed to Discovery
Oct. 2, 2023
https://protectdemocracy.org/work/mark-andrews-v-dinesh-dsouza/

Superficially, the case seems similar in impact to the Giuliani one, damages will be decided at the eventual trial, we can only speculate if they'll be comparable to Rudi's. However, from a debunking perspective, this one's dead, I don't think we need a court's stamp of approval to conclude that.
 
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