Was 2020 Stolen?

In the wee hours of November 4, 2020, people staying up through the election returns observed something odd: many states stopped counting their ballots. In some cases, the numbers even seemed to drop briefly. In the middle of the night, the trends suddenly changed. By morning, Biden had won the election.

Donald Trump immediately began claiming fraud. In fact, he had predicted it during one of the debates. Just as immediately, media pundits throughout the country began to counter Trump’s claims with a carefully orchestrated campaign of their own: “the most secure election in American history,” they all intoned; “no evidence of significant or widespread voter fraud,” they quoted; “the big lie,” they scoffed. The “lie” was soon used to justify widespread censorship on social media.

And just like that, the election of 2020 was swept under the rug. Yes, there was “some fraud.” One of my friends who worked at a North Carolina counting facility observed another worker caught bringing multiple ballots into the building, stuffed inside his pants and under his sweatshirt. The man was dismissed from the facility, but without being charged or reported. Other anecdotal evidence of post-election fraud was presented. But such fraud was neither widespread nor significant.

Or was it?

In the middle of the night, the trends suddenly changed. By morning, Biden had won the election.

In his new documentary 2000 Mules, Dinesh D’Souza, using research conducted by True the Vote, lays out a compelling and convincing case that fraud was indeed significant, even if it wasn’t widespread. It didn’t have to be. As Catherine Engelbrecht, a founder of True the Vote, notes in the film, “You don’t need a lot of fraud; you just need a little in the right places at the right time.” Those “right places” were a few significant counties in five significant states: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona. D’Souza then asserts that they discovered “coordinated, systematic fraud in all the key states.”

During the film D’Souza interviews Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, a True the Vote investigator, skillfully eliciting an easy-to-follow explanation of how they were able to collect this evidence. Here’s how it worked: data collectors already have systems in place for following cellphones in order to create targeted advertising for their clients. This is an appalling invasion of privacy, but we’ve all experienced ads that appear on our phones related to a place we’ve just been or words we’ve just said. True the Vote simply purchased access to the data from October 1 to election day, and then followed the cellphones that traveled between nonprofit organizations and ballot dropboxes. To avoid counting cellphones that just happened to travel near a box, they only followed the phones that had visited ten or more boxes and five or more NPOs. In Atlanta alone, they identified 242 phones that visited an average of 24 dropboxes and eight NPOs in one tw0-week period. In Milwaukee the average was 28 dropbox visits per device; in Michigan, some cellphones visited more than 100 dropboxes. One phone visited 27 dropboxes in six counties in one night. Explain that.

I say “cellphones” instead of “people” because the data can only say for certain who owns the phone, not who had the phone as it traveled from dropbox to dropbox. Critics of the film have tried to disparage D’Souza as “racist” because so many people caught on video appear to be Black or Hispanic. But the data collectors were not following people — they were following cellphones. That the owners happened to be Black or Hispanic had nothing to do with the search parameters.

Next, True the Vote applied for FOIA access to security camera video at the dropboxes — a total of 4 million minutes of official, state-mandated video, designed to discourage fraud. Guided by the time stamps of the cellphone pings, they were able to search the video records and see the human “mules” (so-called because of the similarity to drug trafficking and sex trafficking operations) stuffing multiple ballots into the dropboxes and then scurrying away. In one case, 271 people visited a dropbox that accumulated 1,962 ballots from them. Explain that, too.

The purpose of this documentary is not to change the outcome of 2020, but to protect the outcome of 2024 — and every election in our constitutional democracy.

D’Souza also explains the significance of the visits to non-profit organizations. These 501(c)(3) orgs are strictly forbidden from collecting ballots for voters and then delivering them to collection sites. There is no acceptable reason for there to be a connection between them and the ballot boxes. Yet it appears that they became “stash houses,” as D’Souza and company call them, continuing the trafficking metaphor. Mules would pick up the ballots from an organization, drop them at multiple dropboxes, and then receive $10 or more per ballot, according to two whistleblowers interviewed in the film. Mules can even be seen taking pictures of themselves depositing the ballots and discarding the plastic gloves they wore while handling them. D’Souza and Engelbrecht surmise that the pictures provided evidence they had completed their tasks.

D’Souza estimates that there were enough illegal ballots to have changed the outcome in three of the five key states. Without those ballots, Trump could have won the election. But while the evidence vindicates Trump’s claim of fraud, it does not provide evidence for overturning the election. As Sebastian Gorka, who joins a discussion group that explores the evidence in the film, observes, “It’s the perfect crime, because it can’t be curated after it is committed. The evidence [the signed envelope] is immediately separated from the ballot.” There is no way to know what was on those illegal ballots — no way to prove whether they were marked for Biden or for Trump. Or for Jorgensen, for that matter.

And there’s the rub. Trump still lost the election, and that is not going to change. It’s time to stop singing that song.

So why does it matter? D’Souza explains: “Without free and honest elections we are not a democracy. We are a political cartel masquerading as a democracy.” The purpose of this documentary is not to change the outcome of 2020, but to protect the outcome of 2024 — and every election in our constitutional democracy.

The Internet Movie and Film Database lists the film as “comedy” and “fantasy.” How predictable.

What’s next? Multiple felonies were committed. Each cellphone leads to a person whose name is on its account. Each video identifies multiple persons stuffing multiple ballots into multiple boxes. Those felonies need to be prosecuted, even though the wronged parties — the voters whose ballots were nullified by a deluge of false ballots — cannot be indemnified.

Dinesh D’Souza deserves to win a Pulitzer for his reporting on this remarkable investigation. (The book will be out in August.) He won’t, of course; he’s on the wrong side of the media for that. (In fact, the Internet Movie and Film Database lists the film as “comedy” and “fantasy.” How predictable.) But he deserves all the accolades he is receiving for this documentary. It’s fast paced, informative, compelling, and convincing.

I recommend that you not rely on word-of-mouth or reviews — even this review. You need to see this film and decide for yourself. And then decide what to do about it.