“UNIMPRESSED”: Former AG Barr laughs at Dinesh D’Sousa’s 2000 Mules film and its deceptive evidence

"UNIMPRESSED": Former AG Barr laughs at Dinesh D'Sousa's 2000 Mules film and its deceptive evidence

Convicted – and pardoned – felon Dinesh D’Souza was apparently not amused by Bill Barr’s deposition to the House Select Committee on January 6th which featured the former U.S. Attorney General laughing at DeSouza’s misinformation-laden “documentary” 2000 Mules. DeSouza responded to Barr’s cruel mockery of his heavily partisan right-wing extremist “expose” by referring to the two-time Attorney General as “ignorant.”

The D’Souza-produced film claims to prove widespread fraud in the 2020 election but instead features multiple fraud claims that were thoroughly debunked and refuted many times over by those on both sides of the political aisle.

2000 Mules relies on mobile phone geotracking data to make many of its primary unsupported points — data that has been criticized for not being sufficiently specific to prove anything.  Add to that the grainy night-time CCTV footage it employs, and it appears the film’s credibility is about as reliable as Donald Trump is being exposed as in these House hearings.

Now, Journalist Adam Klasfeld has revealed that the data used as “proof” in the film may not have come from the U.S. at all.

The revelation only goes to further undermine a movie so baseless that even far-right propaganda news outlets Fox News and OAN wouldn’t promote the film.

Geotracking data is collected by cell phone companies that can pinpoint one’s location in a general geographical area. One of the many problems in 2000 Mules is that this data is not exact. A metro area the size of Atlanta or Detroit makes the data even less reliable without further context or substantiation. And now, The Washington Post’s Phillip Bump has revealed that the location of the geotracking data used in the film may be Moscow, Russia.

Bump points to a map used in 2000 Mules that reportedly shows the locations of ballot drop-off boxes in the Altlanta Metro area and the movement of the supposed ballot “mules” dropping off fraudulent ballots. Unfortunately for D’Souza, the map clearly shows a river that doesn’t exist in the Atlanta area and it turns out that the supposed drop boxes on the map don’t actually correspond to any actual locations in Atlanta. The reason? Because it’s actually a map of Moscow, not Atlanta.

One would think that with all the accusations of the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia — accusations that were affirmed by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee — D’Souza could have picked a map of a city in a different country, but the fact that he used a map of Moscow does have a certain appropriate symmetry to it.

Day two of the January 6th Select Committee’s televised hearings focused on testimony from long-time Republican operatives, including former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr. He stated unequivocally in his taped testimony that there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election. Barr did acknowledge, however, that much of the American public was falling for Trump’s sensationalistic accusations.

2000 Mules definitely falls into the category of sensationalistic accusations.

“And I haven’t seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that including the 2,000 Mulesmovie,” Barr said, laughing heartily at how ludicrous the film is. “Just in a nutshell, you know, the GBI [Georgia Bureau of Investigation] was unimpressed with it and I was similarly unimpressed with it.”

Barr reiterated in his deposition that he found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

“I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations but they were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people, members of the public that there was this systemic corruption in the system and that their votes didn’t count and that these machines controlled by somebody else were actually determining it, which was complete nonsense,” the former Attorney General said.

Unfortunately, many Americans have believed — and still believe — the false claims pushed in the film. They truly accept the lie that 2000 Mules provides unequivocal proof that the 2020 election was stolen and that “mules” were tracked going back and forth to ballot boxes.

The “Big Lie” refuses to die. Especially when it’s funded and disseminated by shadowy right-wing sources who are fundamentally opposed to America’s democratic process.

Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick

Ty Ross

News journalist for Washington Press and Occupy Democrats.