Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
‘2000 Mules’: Election Drop Boxes, ‘Geofencing,’ and ‘The Big Lie’
“We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.” Joe Biden
Those were the exact words from a grainy clip of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden that opens a new movie by conservative author, pundit, and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, ‘“2000 Mules.” It was seen as just another gaffe by a candidate with a long history of malapropisms.
Salem Media Group and True the Vote (TTV) produced the movie. D’Souza relies on research from TTV’s President, Catherine Englebrecht, and TTV board member Gregg Phillips, a former state health official in Texas and Mississippi. Phillips also is a data analyst and the founder of several technology-related firms. He claims in the movie to have been “in and around” election integrity and analysis for 40 years.
Phillips is no stranger to controversy. He was the source of claims made by President Trump in 2017, never confirmed, that 3 million illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election. Mainstream media has worked overtime to discredit him and TTV, including a major investor’s claim that he was duped and other unsubstantiated claims. Yet, Phillips and TTV persist.
D’Souza, who launched a podcast in 2021 on the Salem platform, sets the stage with clips from three Republicans – former Attorney General Bill Barr (“Fraud did not play a role in the outcome of the election”), US Sen. Mike Rounds (“the election was fair”), and of course, US Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY). He touches on “J6” at the US Capitol, claiming it “wasn’t an insurrection. It was a primal scream. They wanted their elected leaders to adjudicate the claims of election fraud.”
“We can’t ‘move on’ until we know the truth,” D’Souza continues. “Is it a ‘big lie?’ It is a lie at all?”
D’Souza also relies on a panel of Salem radio talk show and podcast hosts, including Dennis Prager, Eric Metaxas, Larry Elder, Charlie Kirk, and former Trump administration official Dr. Sebastian Gorka. Most express reservations about election fraud claims in the first interviews.
By the end of the movie, they’re aghast. You may be, too. One of the retorts we often hear concerning claims of vote fraud is the phrase “without evidence.” Except that D’Souza, Englebrecht, and Phillips provide actual official footage of crimes committed by “mules” in the form of drop-box stuffing of ballots, often during the dark of night. Most states, including Pennsylvania – a particular focus of illegal election activity in the movie – prohibit voters from casting more than one ballot, their own, at drop boxes.
Drop boxes – many of them privately funded via $400 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg through the left-wing Center for Tech and Civic Life – were a unique feature of the pandemic-scarred 2020 election. Most were placed in Democratic-leaning counties and jurisdictions.
Also check out the discussion here.
Thank you for this much-needed fact-check of the fact-checkers.
I will add this to the list of things I need to look into!
For those who, like me, doubt and who, like me, can sometimes think well or think quickly but rarely both at the same time, why not start with some simpler claims?
For example, did votes illegally cast or illegally counted exceed the Biden margin of victory?
Yes. Yes, they did. In five swing states. You could consider this post as your first step into a larger world.
Sadly I doubt this will be fixed. Our government at the federal level and many states is a wholly Democrat endeavor. The rest of us are a problem to be managed or eliminated.
“Republican candidates are punished for making election fraud a top issue?” By whom? Voters? Primary voters? The GOPe? The media? (But I am beginning to repeat myself.)
By definition, the stolen election cannot be a “Big Lie”:
On the other hand, the claim that this was the “most secure election in history” does indeed fit the definition of a “Big Lie”. It’s ridiculous given all the irregularities and the numbers, and it was disseminated through the media word-for-word.
I’ll being seeing the movie and Dinesh D’Souza speak this Sunday, in Milwaukee.
If the analysis wasn’t able to include Madison and Green Bay, just based on Illegal Harvesting alone, Trump won in Wisconsin.
And people outside GA wonder why there is anger at the GA GOP.
What is the provenance of this data? Have they made it available for 3rd parties to inspect? What is the resolution of the geo data? What, exactly, IS the “signals” data? Do they describe their analytical methodology in detail?
I have no insight into the question of whether the election was stolen. I’m just a data guy. The movie’s credibility, for me, hinges on the provenance, quality, and treatment of the data.
Do they discuss this in detail?
I agree. I hope is thoroughly checked by competent technical professionals. That step is critical if the discussion is to proceed in a productive manner.
Fair questions; they do not discuss it in great detail. I am not aware they have made it available to credible third parties for inspection – they should. I do think they explain the “signals” data, but it may not satisfy you. As an investor last year in a nonprofit that used geofencing and geospatial data to identify and register evangelical voters in Virginia’s gubernatorial election, and having seen how it works, I am more confident in their data than perhaps you are.
I think I’m really just neutral at the present time. My intuition is that things were amiss with the election. But I haven’t seen decisive data yet either way, although there’s a lot of voter fraud smoke.
I don’t want folks on the right to engage in the same kind of narrative skullduggery engaged in by the left. So I’m looking for more detail and not less.
I went to the movie’s web site hoping I might find something there. It was not encouraging. Very slick marketing for sure but zero information that might enable reproducibility of their results. Lots of asking for contact info to build their database, but no breakdown or explanation of their methodology.
FWIW.
That is why I like his books better than his movies. I doubt the movie goes into it. I suspect his books will / does.
I look for the Left to tear the movie apart because of such things. You just can’t put that sort of detail in a movie without it getting too long and dry. I doubt they can tear down his actual body of work as easily. Dinesh D’Souza scholarship tends to be top notch.
Cellphone location is determined in one of two ways: If GPS information is available, it will be used. If not, then the location is triangulated using calculated distance from multiple cell towers. The first is a lot more precise than the second.
I don’t think many cellphones have been sold in the last 10 years without GPS, so this will be used in almost all cases *unless* that source has been explicitly turned off by the phone owner. It would be interesting to know whether the purchased data contains in identifier of source (GPS or triangulation) for each record…I bet it does.
This may be of interest: https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2022/05/09/after-2000-mules-premiere-true-the-vote-promises-to-pull-the-ripcord-and-release-all-the-data-n561949?utm_source=rsmorningbriefing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=fc249c7dca8152c405a67a46a56de1f131ce9ff6c0ad619ab43655e34d61b7c2
https://ricochet.com/822533/keeping-track-of-election-fraud/
Seems to me that it would be reproducible by anyone who purchased the data for the same time periods and processed it using the same algorithm: phone is near 10 or more dropboxes AND 5 or more ‘nonprofits’…IF the criterion for ‘near’ is released and so are the names of the ‘nonprofits’.
So if I turn on my phone’s location feature, is that the same technology as the more reliable way of knowing someone was near/at a ballot dropbox?
Maybe Google Maps isn’t the right comparison, but I find it does not know where I am in enough detail.
Are they doing the Breitbart strategy–release a little, wait for the Left to make its trite and predictable objections, and then release the whole thing, proving those very objections wrong?
Do you mean Google Maps on phone, or on desktop?
According to Google, if there no GPS data available but you are connected to a wifi network, it will determine your location according to what specific wifi you are on and where it is, or where they think it is.
Thank you, Kelly D. Johnston, for taking time to write this.
Quite possibly. It would be brilliant.
Phone.
Beliefs about the 2020 Election tend to be premised on a false dichotomy: You’re either “Stolen Election” or “Big Lie.” I think it’s more of a continuum.
0 – The 2020 election was absolutely clean, the fairest election in history, and exactly as reported.
1 – There were some minor shenanigans at the margins, but they had no effect on the outcome.
2 – There was a moderate level of shenanigans, and they could have changed the outcome of the election, but probably not.
3- There were significant irregularities involving primarily mail-in ballots and these may have changed the outcome of the election.
4 – There was major fraud involving a large but known number of illegitimate votes that most likely swung the election in purple states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.
5- There was a massive collaboration between the Deep State, the Democrat Party, and Activist Organizations funded by Zuckerberg and Soros that generated millions of illegitimate votes to steal the election.
I’m about at a 3. Where are you?
Second question: Suppose the GOP wins the House and the senate in 2024. Do the elections skeptics say, “Oh, I guess we were wrong,” and then drop their guard against more Democrat chicanery in 2024?
From my angle there is too little anger at the GA GOP.
I had been at 2, based upon the extreme antipathy toward Donald Trump from many people I know. It seemed certainly plausible that Trump had the ability to drive record vote totals, both for and against him. Yet that hypothesis was never terribly satisfying. After reading this and several of St. Augustine’s posts, I’ve moved to 3.
Valid point. Although, as this post notes, some states have worked to “sure things up” a bit. Covid presented a golden opportunity for fraudulent ballot stuffing on a scale that many would have thought impossible or (at least) extremely unlikely.
You should check with Mark again. By his count the number of voters that have reconciled their NCOA address to their permanent address now exceeds the Biden margin of victory.
Who is Mark?
As of now, the twitter page for 2000mules is still suspended.
Meanwhile, the FTC is investigating Musk’s planned acquisition of twitter on ‘antitrust’ grounds.
Rumble, which is a venue for the film, says it is under ‘unprecedented’ Denial of Service attacks. (I’m pretty sure that DOS attacks are a *crime* under the computer crime statutes)
The most important issue in America today is the survival of free speech. There should be resolutions introduced in both the House and the Senate calling for investigation of reasons for the FTC holdup on the twitter acquisition AND calling for appointment of special prosecutor to pursue this and other DOS attacks. The resolutions wouldn’t pass, but would get senators and representatives on the record regarding their support for free speech.