DE PERE, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – A film alleging widespread fraud in the 2020 Presidential election is being shown in theatres across the country this week, including in De Pere Tuesday evening.
Media fact checkers are poking holes in the theories presented in the film, 2000 Mules. However, supporters say there is enough evidence that law enforcement investigations should be launched.
About 150 people filed into the De Pere Cinema for the area’s first public showing of 2000 Mules.
“I’m concerned about the last election in particular,” said Ken Glowacki of Green Bay. “When I heard Dinesh D’Souza was doing a documentary on it, I wanted to see. I want to know how the Democrats did it.”
D’Souza, a Republican filmmaker, created 2000 Mules.
In 2014, D’Souza was convicted of illegal political contributions, but President Donald Trump pardoned him a few years later.
The film alleges at least 2,000 people, called mules, were paid by activist organizations to illegally return absentee ballots to drop boxes in swing states, including Wisconsin.
Using cell phone data, the film claims each mule was tracked to make an average of 38 drop box visits in the weeks leading up to the election, putting in an average of 5 ballots per visit.
In Wisconsin, 100 mules were identified as making an average of 28 drop box visits.
The research comes from True the Vote, a Texas-based nonprofit, whose leaders testified in front of Wisconsin’s Assembly Committee for Campaigns and Elections in March.
“The ping technology is part of our phones and it adds real facts to the conversations about whose been around the drop boxes,” said State Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, chair of the Assembly committee.
Democratic State Representative Mark Spreitzer, of Beloit, is also on the elections committee and listened to True the Vote’s testimony on its geotracking data.
“The True the Vote folks didn’t really provide any evidence in support of their theory that any illegal ballots were cast. In fact, they even said that they weren’t prepared to assert that any illegal ballots were cast in Wisconsin.”
Spreitzer says he hasn’t seen the 2000 Mules film.
The Associated Press put out a fact check for it and pointed out experts say cellphone data isn’t precise enough to put people directly at drop boxes, the notion people were paid to ballot harvest is only supported by one unidentified whistleblower in Arizona, and there is no way to tell whether people shown in surveillance video are the same people as ones whose cellphones were tracked.
“I’m skeptical of anybody who comes in and says they have proprietary data, but then doesn’t release that data source so that legislators or members of the public can examine it,” said Spreitzer.
Brandtjen says True the Vote has been in talks with Green Bay and Racine police departments and plans to get them data.
“The chain of custody of who gets what is really important, so I know they’ve been talking to both the agencies and then allowing themselves to give that information in a format that’s easy for them to use,” said Brandtjen.
True the Vote has said it is working to publicly release all its video and data.
The two Marcus Cinemas in the Green Bay area also have showings of 2-thousand Mules scheduled for later this week.
