AP Refers to 'True the Vote' Election Integrity Experts As 'Conspiracy Theorists' While Reporting on AZ Senate Hearing
Mainstream media outlets have sought to discredit the successful documentary film “2000 Mules” at every turn, so it comes as no surprise when Arizona senators held a hearing Tuesday with some of its stars, the Associated Press would label them “conspiracy theorists.”
True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, election integrity experts, worked with conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza to make the movie about alleged illicit conduct that took place during the 2020 general election.
Engelbrecht and Philips testified Tuesday at the Capitol in Phoenix about the research underlying the case made in “2000 Mules.”
The central premise of the documentary is that an illegal ballot harvesting scheme took place in the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin during the 2020 general election.
These are all states that former President Donald Trump won in 2016 but flipped to Democratic then-candidate Joe Biden in 2020.
A βmuleβ is a term used in the movie for those who were allegedly paid to repeatedly pick up batches of ballots and place them in drop boxes.
Engelbrecht and Philips told lawmakers theyΒ used cellphone geo-tracking data to identify people who made 10 or more drop box stops along with five or more visits to non-governmental organizations working on voter turnout during the 2020 general election.
The Associated Press’ headline for Tuesday’s hearing was: “Arizona Lawmakers Hear From Election Conspiracy Theorists.”
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The lede sentence read, “Arizona Republican lawmakers heard Tuesday from members of the Texas-based conservative group that provided research for a widely debunked documentary that alleges widespread voter fraud led to former President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.”
The news organization went on to cite its own fact check, claiming True the Vote’s analysis was “flawed” based on false assumptions of how precise cellphone tracking data is and other reasons people might frequently happen to go by drop boxes, or others who had business being there such as election workers.
Phillips called these reporters who cast doubt on how accurate phone cell phone data is “journalist terrorists.”
He told lawmakers the U.S. government can place someone within “centimeters” using their cellphone data.
Engelbrecht quoted from Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion in the 2018 Supreme Court case Carpenter v. United States.
In it, he wrote, βWhen the government tracks the location of a cell phone it achieves near perfect surveillance, as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phoneβs user.”
Engelbrecht explained True the Vote’s “mule” threshold, saying it was very high.
“We wanted to focus on a very clear, narrow data set that showed what we would consider this extreme outlier behavior, and ultimately we settled on 10 times. The devices that we focused in on went to drop boxes 10 or more times,” she said.
“And here in Arizona they went an average of 21 times,” Engelbrecht added.
The election integrity experts showed a graphic indicating 202 likely mules had been identified in Maricopa County and 41 in Yuma County.
It was quite the honor to co-chair the elections hearing yesterday where we hosted True The Vote, who presented their methodology to us. It was great being in a room full of patriots to continue to demand election security. Keep pressing no matter how long it takes! pic.twitter.com/xRua7GGwaw
β Senator Kelly Townsend ?? (@AZKellyT) June 1, 2022
To further guard against accidentally picking up people who happened to pass by drop box locations regularly, True the Vote bought cellphone data from September, October and November, showing before, during and after election season.
Only those whose cellphones placed them at drop boxes when voting was occurring were included in True the Voteβs data, the group said.
The mules followed a pattern of repeatedly going to drop box locations and back to the offices of non-governmental organizations, where ballots were allegedly collected. The movie called these locations βstash houses.β
“We are able to assure you that weβre not including false positives,” Phillips testified.
Engelbrecht told Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk in an April interview, βPings donβt lie.β
In addition to cellphone data, Phillips said in β2000 Mulesβ that his group has 4 million minutes of surveillance footage from drop boxes it obtained through public records requests, allegedly showing the mules in action.
This is what stuffing the ballot box looks like pic.twitter.com/okpcKa9O4c
β Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) April 11, 2022
Earlier this week, D’Souza addressed a fact check by Reuters, which again sought to undermine “2000 Mules” by questioning its use of cellphone tracking data.
I dissect the Reuters “fact check” which Sandra Smith of Fox News referred to as a definitive debunking of “2000 Mules”. @Reuters pic.twitter.com/GR0ueH07oh
β Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) June 1, 2022
In the piece, Reuters quoted University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Kenneth R Mayer, who said geotracking doesn’t have “the granularity” to show people actually used the drop boxes versus just walking or driving by.
“Geotracking can tell the difference,” D’Souza said flatly.
“Itβs basically the difference between a moving dot and a dot that goes to a particular location and then stops,” he continued.
“In other words, the geotracking can easily tell the difference between going by an object, say a drop box, and going to that drop box.”
Mainstream media outlets may not like the information found in “2000 Mules,” but resorting to name calling is no way to get to the truth.
