WorldNetDaily went all in to promote the dubious election-fraud film "2000 Mules" -- then tried to ignore how the film was repeatedly being discredited.
By Terry Krepel Posted 7/25/2022
Because WorldNetDaily can't pass up a good conspiracy theory, no matter how thoroughly it's been debunked, it was quick to attach itself to the idea that thousands of "mules" stuffed absentee ballot boxes with fraudulent. In January, for example, an article touted a claim from right-wing group True the Vote that it had a video of this allegedly happening, which was a teaser for an article (like the first, unbylined) announcing that right-wing activist Dinesh D'Souza was making a film based on True the Vote's "explosive footage," called "2000 Mules," and that he had released a teaser video. No mention, of course, that the trailer didn't actually prove anything and that D'Souza is a convicted criminal with a poor factual track record.
As the movie's release date approached, WND got very excited. An April 15 article by Art Moore forwarded the film's claims in an attempt to build credibility for them:
Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips have been engaged in the battle for election integrity for more than a decade, and the day after the contested November 2020 vote, they made a pact.
"Catherine looked at me and said, 'What are we going to do?'" Phillips recounted in an in-depth video interview with Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
"I said, Let’s go," Phillips recalled. "She said, Let's go all in."
They eventually hired a dozen people who have put in 16-hour days for 15 months, combing tediously through cellphone geolocation data, surveillance videos and documents to see if the evidence supports their hypothesis.
Their hypothesis is that amid the many "dirty," out-of-date voter rolls and the unprecedented distribution of mail-in ballots, a highly coordinated operation in the key battleground states collected ballots and paid "mules" to literally stuff them in the unattended drop boxes that became a center of controversy.
An April 25 article by Moore touted a right-wing reporter promoting "the hard data gathering by longtime election-integrity investigators Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, and data analyst Gregg Phillips that is featured in the upcoming documentary by Dinesh D'Souza '2000 Mules'." That was followed the next day with an article by Bob Unruh promoting how True the Vote video led to "organizations that handed out cash for ballot-harvesting operations" in Georgia. (Those claims were dismissed a few weeks later, which WND never reported to its readers.)
On the day D'Souza's film release date was announced, WND published a Western Journal article detailing where the "highly anticipated documentary film? could be viewed. This was followed by an April 28 article by Moore detailed his softball interview with Engelbrecht in which she declared that "The facts are the facts, and you cannot look away." Moore also interviewed D'Souza, and that bundle of softballs was featured in a May 3 article:
Feeling a bit like Charlie Brown and the elusive football, many who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 have grown weary of claims of evidence that the 2020 election was stolen.
Filmmaker and author Dinesh D'Souza understands that reaction, but he's willing to bet that even the most cynical among us will be convinced after seeing the hard evidence presented in "2000 Mules," which is debuting this week.
"This idea that this was the most secure election – I predict that this movie will blow that out of the water," he told WND in a video interview (embedded below).
"No one who sees this movie will be able to listen to that with a straight face."
D'Souza emphasized "this is evidence of a completely different caliber than anything we've seen before."
But like many things involving D'Souza, "2000 Mules" began to fall apart factually as soon as people outside WND's right-wing media bubble saw it. That means Moore went into defense mode for a May 10 article trying to fight back against an Associated Press fact-check:
The AP's primary claim was that the cellphone location data is not precise enough to determine whether or not an individual actually visited a particular drop box. Innocent people, the news wire contended, may have been caught up in their data.
However, as Wendi Strauch Mahoney of UncoverDC reports, Engelbrecht and Phillips took that issue and many others brought up by the AP into account when they designed their investigation.
In a 2018 opinion in the Supreme Court case Carpenter v. United States, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that when the government "tracks the location of a cell phone," it "achieves near perfect surveillance as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone’s user."
And Engelbrecht points out in the movie that the data in Georgia was used by law enforcement as a test case to help law enforcement solve a cold murder case of a young girl.
That's not actually true, but since Moore is promoting the film instead of acting like a real reporter, he's not about to question anything Engelbrecht says. He also made no effort to fact-check this:
The AP also challenged the claim that the data show violent Antifa rioters were among the mules.
"There were several different violent BLM Antifa riots in Atlanta, and in one of them, we had three dozen of our mules participate in these violent riots," Phillips said. "There's an organization that tracks the device IDs. Across all violent protests around the world, we took a look at our 242 mules in Atlanta, and sure enough, dozens and dozens and dozens of our mules show up on the ACLED databases."
The reference is to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a non-profit that "collects the dates, actors, locations, fatalities, and types of all reported political violence and protest events around the world."
WND cranked up promotion of the film to try and drown out the criticism. An unbylined May 13 article claimed that "An Arizona county sheriff's office featured in Dinesh D'Souza's "2000 Mules" documentary on alleged ballot trafficking in the 2020 presidential election is working with the county recorder to investigate vote fraud" -- but the sheriff himself said there's no link between his investigation and the film. An article the same day by Moore uncritically promoted Phillips' claim that "he and his witnesses have become the target of Georgia state officials instead of the people he believes delivered fraudulent votes to help Joe Biden win the White House.
As "2000 Mules" continued to be discredited on little things (the film's geolocation data map is of Moscow, not anywhere in the U.S.) and big (D'Souza himself was forced to concede that the film "does not show evidence to prove his claims about ballots being collected and submitted") -- so bad that even right-wing grifter extraordinaire Ann Coulter dismissed the "stupid movie" as a grift -- WND remained firmly in its role as PR agent for the film. Moore devoted a May 26 article to attempting to debunk a fact-check that the film's depiction of geolocation doesn't match reality by citing a "wireless expert":
The CEO of a wireless company says fact checkers for PolitiFact and the Associated Press who question the accuracy of cellphone geolocation data presented by True the Vote as evidence of an alleged vote-fraud scheme in the battleground states in 2020 don't know what they're talking about.
An AP fact check said "experts say cellphone location data, even at its most advanced, can only reliably track a smartphone within a few meters — not close enough to know whether someone actually dropped off a ballot or just walked or drove nearby."
However, Volta Wireless founder David Sinclair told the Gateway Pundit the fact-checkers "don't have the technical foundation for the comments that they are making."
[...]
Sinclair said he's seen "2000 Mules," read the rebuttals and spoken with Phillips "to better understand the details of the data and the methodology they used."
He explained that location technology has "dramatically improved" and GPS and tower "triangulation" can pinpoint a person's location within a few feet.
In fact, Sinclair's LinkedIn profile suggests his expertise is in sales and management, not the technical end of cell phone communications, so he can't be much of an "expert" on geolocation. By contrast, actual experts at the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out that cell-phone geolocation data is only accurate to about 15 feet, adding that "Relying on commercial location data alone to allege ballot box stuffing is folly." (Also, the fact that Sinclair did an interview with Gateway Pundit, who's currently being sued for defamation for spreading lies about Georgia election workers, shows he has poor judgment.)
Desperate for anything to cling to to deny the film's lack of accuracy, Moore wrote a June 2 article touting the arrest of an Arizona woman "in an alleged ballot-trafficking scheme in the 2020 election that was featured in the film '2000 Mules.'" Moore didn't report that the sheriff in Yuma County, Ariz., where this took place, denied that any election investigation was launched as a result of the movie.
A June 5 article by Joe Kovacs touted a biased Rasmussen poll claiming that "77% of likely U.S. voters who have viewed the documentary by Dinesh D'Souza say the film strengthened their conviction of systematic and widespread election fraud in the 2020 election, possibly leading to a 'stolen election,' as former President Donald Trump has maintained." Kovacs does not mention whether the poll respondents were presented with the mountain of evidence discrediting the film; instead he whined that "The movie has received little, if any, mention on major broadcast networks including the Fox News Channel, which appears to be going out of its way to avoid any on-air mention."
Moore helped D'Souza have a little temper tantrum in a June 14 article:
After watching Bill Barr laugh about the vote-fraud probe featured in "2000 Mules," the film's producer, Dinesh D'Souza, has challenged the former attorney general to a debate.
Barr's reaction came in a video deposition featured in a hearing Monday by the House Select Committee on Jan. 6.
"My opinion then, and my opinion now, is that the election was not stolen by fraud," Barr said.
"And I haven't seen anything since the election that changes my mind, including the '2000 Mules' movie," he added before laughing.
D'Souza reacted on Twitter: "I'd like to invite Bill Barr to a public debate on election fraud. Given his blithe chuckling dismissal of #2000Mules this should be easy for him. What do you say, Barr? Do you dare to back up your belly laughs with arguments that can withstand rebuttal and cross-examination?"
Moore didn't mention that D'Souza himself conceded that the film doesn't present actual evidence of election fraud.
Trying to keep the flagging, bogus film alive, Moore spent a June 27 article claiming that "Allegations arising from the True the Vote investigation featured in the documentary '2000 Mules' have prompted a call by Michigan Republican lawmakers for a new investigation into the 2020 election." Moore censored all evidence that the film has been discredited.
Farah, Cashill hype a bogus film
But even as WND's "news" side got tired of defending D'Souza's film, the opinion side was full of conspiracy theories designed to promote a conspiracy-laden film, with WND editor Joseph Farah in particular serving as a huge cheerleader. Farah -- already a rabid election fraud truther -- spent his April 19 column rehashing his favorite election conspiracies, then rehashing Moore's puffery in touting how this was all going to be proven in the film:
An 18-month, data-driven probe now concludes the 2020 election was stolen.
Smartphone pings and video reveal at least 4.8 million fraudulent votes – far more than what Trump needed to win a clear electoral victory.
It's all detailed in a film coming out now that may just save the day.
Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote and Gregg Phillips of a health-care data company have teamed up with a dozen people who have put in 16-hour days for 15 months, combing tediously through cellphone geolocation data, surveillance videos and documents to see if the evidence supports their hypothesis.
What is that hypothesis? That amid the many "dirty," out-of-date voter rolls and the unprecedented distribution of mail-in ballots, a highly coordinated operation in the key battleground states collected ballots and paid "mules" to literally stuff them in the unattended drop boxes. The researchers found the smoking gun.
They say they have the hard evidence to back their finding that there were enough fraudulent votes in the states they targeted – including Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia – to overturn the election.
After the film was released, Farah hyped it again in his May 6 column:
With the release of the film "2000 Mules," the overwhelmingly evidence, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the 2000 election was stolen, rigged and covered up becomes clear for all to see.
There were countless acts of "insurrection" involved. Democrats were successful at committing treason. It was a coup d'état. It was an outright act of rebellion, a successful revolution, an overthrow not just of a democratic election but a coordinated effort to defraud even the Founding Fathers of this great country.
What a betrayal of those Democrats' oaths of office – and the pledge of allegiance, the Constitution! What chutzpa!
But still they lie, they cheat, they defame – they'll never come clean! They will never stop.
There's a scene in the movie that suggests, "If you believe you are fighting Hitler, do you shy away from doing anything to challenge an election?"
That explains their motivation. They believed that. How many of them have said it openly? How many of the them said it under their breath?
It's time to come to our senses. Real Americans do not share anything in common with the people who committed this outrage – and covered it up! Not only did they do that, but they ACCUSED US OF WHAT THEY HAD DONE!
They claimed we were "insurrectionists"! Or maybe you don't know for sure that fraud was committed – you only suspect it. If you see this movie, you will KNOW. And God help you then. I almost wish I didn't know. I almost wish I had kept my innocence.
Farah then forwarded an evidence-free conspiracy theory that a draft opinion from the Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked in an effort to suppress the film.
Farah started to get worried that D'Souza's film was getting ignored (even as his WND was downplaying the factual errors), so his May 12 column touting the film sounded a little desperate:
Have you seen "2000 Mules"?
I'm curious, because I'm disappointed that it's not making the kind of waves I expected.
Did we wait too long to definitively know the election of 2020 was actually fraudulent?
Are people just so stunned by the documentary's conclusions?
Is there just too much else going on?
Is Big Tech doing a job on it?
Do Americans even know there is a movie out that makes the case that we were robbed in 2020?
Or was it that the draft Supreme Court decision regarding Roe v. Wade was leaked at the same time as the film's release?
That's a lot of questions for you.
Then there's the virtual blackout by Fox News, the lack of commercials for it, not to mention no media coverage.
Am I mistaken, or is this film, as convincing as it is that Donald Trump was right about everything, not getting credit for the biggest story ever told – bigger than Watergate, bigger than the Hunter Biden tape from hell, bigger than all that has happened to us because of the Democrats' massive cheating scandal?
Or is it that we are more subject than most of us realize to manipulation? Or are just too stunned by its revelations? I really don't know. I'm anxious to find out.
The only person we see who has been subject to manipulation is Farah. He is still clinging to Trump's Big Lie, which should raise a huge red flag for anyone who might be thinking about considering WND to be a legitimate news organization that cares about facts.
As it so happened, Farah spent his May 15 column announcing his continued fealty to the Big Lie, whining that other right-wing outlets aren't touching the film (bolding in original):
But are ready for the shocker?
How about Fox News? Not even a mention!
How about Newsmax? Not even a mention!
Only the truly independent press is telling the truth about this movie – WND, Steve Bannon's "War Room" show and the Real America Network. You've diligently got to search for outlets that carry news about this movie.
Do you believe it?
Believe it!
Nothing from Fox News. Nothing from Newsmax. They haven't even uttered that name of the movie!
You might recall that Fox was the first network to call the race for Joe Biden in Arizona early on election night against President Donald Trump. That is one of five battlefield states that "2000 Mules" figures were won easily through blatant voter fraud against Trump. They didn't need a thorough review of the vote – they had all they needed to prove Trump won. It was stolen. He won the Electoral College in all five states.
[...]
Every day we feel more suppression, repression and tyranny in America. Most of it deals with the 2020 election results. It was a turning point. It certainly was for Trump!
We are quickly losing America's freedom – big time!
Farah's tone got desperate again in his May 23 column:
Are our elections hopelessly broken?
All you have to do to answer the question is see the movie "2000 Mules," produced by Dinesh D'Souza. It doesn't tell the whole story. It just presents a clear picture, one undeniable, seeing-is-believing American nightmare that portrays fraud on a massive scale that cannot be ignored.
Time is running short. Nothing is more important, hyper-critical to our very way of life than coming to grips with election fraud right now.
Not watching "2000 Mules" is not an option for any American. It will only keep you in the dark. It presents the stark reality of how we were all cheated in 2020 – swindled, chiseled, deceived, defrauded, duped, scammed and hoaxed.
The election was stolen. And there's no denying it, refuting it, or discrediting it. What the film reveals is the truth – not the whole story but enough to change the basic narrative and the winner of the 2020 presidential race.
Well, you might ask, what's preventing accountability for the steal?
Fear – on all sides. Disinformation. Lies.
It's ruining this country. It's threatening to take it down.
Rather than admitting his and WND's role in spreading fear, disinformation and lies -- or even report on the disinformation and lies in D'Souza's film -- Farah decided to create a new enemy in a Democratic lawyer, Mark Elias, because he "admitted hiring Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump, and that was the company that then hired Christopher Steele to create the now-discredited Steele dossier of false claims about President Trump."
Farah's May 30 column was a tirade against Fox News in general and correspondent Sandra Smith in particular for an interview with Republican Rep. Mo Brooks, who got slapped down by Smith for bringing up D'Souza's film:
Smith said it has been debunked by Reuters – by REUTERS! And for that Fox has never uttered the film's name.
Yet Brooks was not finished.
"I'm sorry, but other fact checkers are looking at it and find you're absolutely wrong, Sandra."
She's dead wrong.
Sandra Smith is a disgrace.
I will not watch her ever again – at least not until she apologizes for her behavior on the election of 2020.
As for Mo Brooks, he was great. It was one of the best interviews I've seen on TV lately.
He disagrees with President Trump, yet he remains passionate that the election was stolen.
[...]
It's not too late to see "2000 Mules."
It's a must.
And it will prevail.
Despite what Smith said about it:
"That has been looked at and fact-checked by multiple outlets, including Reuters, who have debunked that as any sort of proof that there was widespread voter fraud."
Fact checkers, please!
Fox News are CENSORS!
But Farah did not link to the Reuters fact-check he was attacking (for merely existing; at no point did Farah make an attempt to rebut anything in it), meaning that he's acting as a censor too.
Like Farah, WND columnist Jack Cashill can't resist a good conspiracy theory, no matter how much it gets debunked, so he was eager to help WND promote "2000 Mules." Cashill's May 4 column gushing over the film even shared a conspiracy theory with Farah, that the leak of a draft of a Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade was timed to distract from the film:
On Monday evening, I and thousands of other people laid down $20 apiece at 270 neighborhood theaters across America to watch the premiere of Dinesh D'Souza's new documentary, "2,000 Mules."
On a night of pouring rain in Kansas City, some 250 people filled our theater to capacity and broke into a spontaneous chant of "USA! USA!" at movie's end.
The movie was that cathartic. Like D'Souza's Greek chorus of Salem radio hosts – Dennis Prager, Larry Elder, Seb Gorka, Eric Metaxas, Charlie Kirk – the moviegoers strongly suspected the election was stolen, but they needed to see how it was stolen.
[...]
Upon returning home Monday night, I immediately went to Twitter to see what people on the right – I expected nothing from the left – were saying about the movie. The answer? Nothing.
All talk was about the leaked Supreme Court document. I immediately suspected mischief on the part of Politico, which could have published Alito's lengthy opinion at any time.
This was a huge story. I totally get it, but I fail to understand why so many conservative pundits and politicians did not go see the movie Monday and have said nothing about it since.
The major media have begun sniping at the movie, as D'Souza's chorus predicted they would. They have to. To acknowledge the election was stolen is to admit the Democratic Party is little more than an organized criminal cartel.
Cashill reiterated his conspiracy theory in his May 11 column:
Last week I argued on these pages that the left timed the release of the Alito brief to offset the premier of Dinesh D'Souza's "2000 Mules." If so, the left miscalculated. The film did not need any woke offsetting. The "don't wanna know" (DWK) Right was up to the job.
For the timid Right, "Mules" was a Level 5 DWK. Never before had its thought leaders been confronted with an exposure this consequential and this exquisitely well documented.
If D'Souza and his collaborators at True the Vote are right, all the DWK talking points of the last 20 months are shot. The Democrats did steal the presidential election. They also stole the Senate with their capture of the two Georgia seats. And the Jan. 6 crowd was right to protest, arguably even to riot – peacefully, of course.
I have been dealing with the DWKs for the last 20 years, but I am still surprised that Fox News and Newsmax, among other conservative media, are pretending "2000 Mules" is not worth discussion.
Every day these media hold out they lose the respect of their viewers. This story is too big to ignore. Too many ordinary people know what the media moguls don't wanna know.
Cashill went on to whine that his previously never-proven conspiracy theories -- that TWA Flight 800 was shot down by a U.S. missile was ignored and that the plane crash that killed Clinton Commerce Secretary Ron Brown wasn't an accident -- were ignored by most normal people. Cashill concluded by declaring that "I will offer my public support to the Missouri senatorial candidate who first introduces "2000 Mules" into the public sphere."
Jim Darlington complained in a May 26 column hyperbolically headlined "Was censoring of '2000 Mules' the sign of America's death?"
No one, anywhere, did not see the stolen election. One candidate was up by so much, and then counting stopped at 2 a.m. everywhere it mattered, only to bring us a new, absurdly improbable president the next morning. How sad that so many acquiesced to the drumbeat of lies and finally nodded in frightful agreement to what their hearts knew was false.
Well before the election we had allowed that maybe only a little censorship was in store. InfoWars' large following was effectively decimated and any mention of the others quickly following ... was censored. We saw this coming long before the election. The lie, that challenges to a stolen election were really an effort to steal the election, filled the streets till there was no room to walk anywhere else. Years of passivity in the face of an ever-growing symphony of lies proved that the Big Lie could easily succeed.
[...]
Greg Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht, from True the Vote, applied this same technology and similar sourcing, virtually mapping the paths of thousands of "mules" making numerous trips between ballot drop boxes and various left-wing NGO's nearby, repeatedly inserting 10 or 20 ballots at a time, their activities being confirmed, quite plainly, by video evidence.
The authorities gladly boasted of the technique used to round up the "insurrectionists." But they want to bury the undeniable proofs, offered in "2000 Mules," as deeply as inhumanly possible. The roster of those willing to turn a blind eye to this treachery must never be forgotten.
So, what do we do next? We should go inside the church and thank the Lord for our freedom, while we still can.
Like the rest of the WND bogus brigade, he too was sure to censor any mention of how the film has been discredited.
Farah and WND have served up nothing regarding D'Souza's film except rah-rah promotion (making one wonder if D'Souza is paying WND for all this great press) and incessant, stenographical shouting that the film is true without proving it or actually debunking any of the criticism. It seems that a "news" organization on the brink of collapse should be working to boost its journalistic credibility, not being a PR agent for a discredited film.
