Dec 04, 2024 15:20
More than two years after the widely debunked film “2000 Mules” poured gasoline on right-wing conspiracy theories about election fraud, the documentary’s writer and director, Dinesh D’Souza, has acknowledged that its findings were based on a faulty analysis.
Mr. D’Souza said in a statement on his website that the analysis used in the film, which claimed to depict a vast ring of “mules” illegally gathering large numbers of ballots and surreptitiously placing them in drop boxes, was incorrect.
In his statement, Mr. D’Souza directly apologized to Mark Andrews, a Georgia voter featured in the film who sued its producers in 2022 for defamation. The film shows a clip of Mr. Andrews, with his face blurred out, placing ballots into a drop box near Atlanta, along with voice-over commentary by Mr. D’Souza calling the action “a crime” and adding, “These are fraudulent votes.” (A state investigation found that Mr. Andrews had lawfully cast ballots for himself and his family members, who all lived at the same address.)
“I owe this individual, Mark Andrews, an apology,” Mr. D’Souza said. “I now understand that the surveillance videos used in the film were characterized on the basis of inaccurate information provided to me and my team. If I had known then that the videos were not linked to geolocation data, I would have clarified this and produced and edited the film differently.”
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