webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

2000 mules dsouza

---

primary 10 22 pollwatch militia

MERRI OK

trifecta

2nd 9 22 as basis for const sheriff voter suppression/intimidation

boosted by OANN

see dartmouth review

see dropoff box

see dtr

see earth2

---

doh as in drug mule border racism

---

-=-=

-=-=

RWW

08/19/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

Three candidates endorsed by President Donald Trump lost their primaries on Tuesday night, including scandal-plagued Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), who lost to a former TV reporter in The Sunshine State.

I’m not aware of any senator ever saying anything like this about national security — especially during a war.

Mark Andrews sued Dinesh D’Souza after movie falsely portrayed him ‘harvesting’ ballots for 2020 presidential election.

The whole world is watching the relationship between the president and his favorite assistant.

DHS sent undercover agents into at least five church buildings to track activists attending events at Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopal, and Unitarian Universalist churches in Minnesota’s Twin Cities (and an event featuring Minnesota activists at a Lutheran church in Michigan). Multiple pastors have said they were unaware of the DHS actions inside their buildings until news broke last week.

Court papers reveal that the Department of Homeland Security’s covert surveillance of anti-ICE groups is much darker than it first appeared. Welcome to Donald Trump’s America.

Dearborn residents and counterprotesters confronted supporters of Jake Lang during a protest marked by anti-Muslim rhetoric.

-=-=

-=-=

MMA

  1. ### Dinesh D'Souza tells Laura Loomer that Candace Owens makes “wild allegations” through her “bogus investigations”

10/01/25

Media Matters 825

RWW 7 25

07/25/2025

by

Peter Montgomery

Right-wing propagandist Dinesh D’Souza, recipient of a Trump pardon after his conviction for breaking campaign finance laws, is raising campaign cash for his son-in-law, first-term Rep. Brandon Gill.

Gill, a MAGA influencer who campaigned on a promise to be Trump’s biggest booster in Congress, won a crowded primary last year with help from Trump’s endorsement. It seems likely that Gill’s relationship with D’Souza, and his work on D’Souza’s discredited election-conspiracy movie “2000 Mules,” helped him get Trump’s blessing.

D’Souza’s email pitch for campaign contributions touts Gill’s role in promoting “2000 Mules,” even though the movie’s election-fraud claims have been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked—so thoroughly in fact that last year the right-wing Salem Media Group apologized for the movie’s promotion of false claims and announced it would stop distributing both the book and movie versions.

Last year, the right-wing group True the Vote, whose analysis was at the core of the movie’s claims, “told a Georgia judge that it doesn’t have evidence to support its claims of illegal ballot stuffing during the 2020 general election and a runoff two months later,” as AP reported.

In December, D’Souza himself “acknowledged that its findings were based on a faulty analysis,” the New York Times reported, even though D’Souza continued to claim without evidence that somehow “the underlying premise of the film holds true.”

“Brandon helped me EXPOSE the STOLEN 2020 election, working on my film ‘2000 Mules,’” D’Souza writes in his fundraising email. “While the fake news media refused to report the truth, we made sure millions of Americans knew what really happened.”

D’Souza refers to Gill as a “conservative warrior” who is waging “war” against “the forces that seek to reduce America to TYRANNY!” – by which he seems to mean the mainstream media and federal judges who rule against Trump’s lawbreaking.

Gill’s approach to political discourse is every bit as thoughtful and nuanced as one of D’Souza’s propaganda flicks. Earlier this year, he told supporters that “the entire staff” of National Public Radio “hate you,” adding, “They hate Christians. They hate conservatives. They hate this country.”

---}:

---

d’souza admitted 2k mules BS

huffpo

Dinesh D’Souza — the conservative filmmaker behind the widely debunked conspiracy film “2000 Mules” — apologized to a Georgia man accused of ballot fraud during the 2020 election and admitted the documentary relied on “inaccurate information.”

The film, released in 2022, became a rallying cry for many conservatives for years, who claimed, without evidence, that the 2020 race was stolen from Donald Trump. Trump himself praised the film, which pointed to cellphone location data filmmakers said suggested ballot “mules” were paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in key swing states that voted for Joe Biden during that race.

Experts and election official from both parties quickly debunked those claims, but D’Souza vehemently defended his work for years. But he issued a mea culpa over the weekend saying he had recently learned the cell phone evidence didn’t support the “mule” theory.

“We recently learned that surveillance videos used in the film may not have actually been correlated with the geolocation data,” D’Souza said.

“I know that the film and my book create the impression that these individuals were mules that had been identified as suspected ballot harvesters … ” he went on. “While all of these individuals’ images were blurred and unrecognizable, one of the individuals has since come forward publicly and has initiated a lawsuit over the use of his blurred image in the film and the book. I owe this individual, Mark Andrews, an apology.”

Filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza apologized to a Georgia man accused of ballot fraud during the 2020 election and admitted the documentary relied on “inaccurate information.” AP Photo/John Raoux, File© AP Photo/John Raoux, File

D’Souza said if he had known the true nature of the cell phone geolocation data, “I would have clarified this and produced and edited the film differently.”

“We operated in good faith and in reliance on True the Vote,” he said. “We continue to have confidence in their work and also in the basic message of ‘2000 Mules.’”

Related video: Dinesh D'Souza admits some claims of voter fraud were false in '2000 Mules' (MSNBC)

Cash Patel has consistently pushed false claims of voter fraud

Andrews, with his face blurred out, is seen in the film as he places ballots in a drop box in Georgia. A voiceover by D’Souza says the man is committing a crime, claiming he was depositing “fraudulent votes.”

The New York Times notes the state investigated that claim and found Andrews had legally cast ballots for himself and his family at the same address.

The man filed a lawsuit against D’Souza in 2022, which is ongoing. The case claims D’Souza and others named in the suit “knew that their portrayals of Mr. Andrews were lies, as was the entire narrative of ’2000 Mules.’”

“But they have continued to peddle these lies in order to enrich themselves,” lawyers for Andrews wrote,per The Associated Press. The case also notes that video used to promote the film includes unblurred images of Andrews and the license plate on his car.

True the Vote, a nonprofit that supplied the cellphone geolocation data, is also named in the suit. The group said Monday the main points of the film remain “accurate,” but said it had no editorial control over the the documentary’s message.

D’Souza said in his statement this month his apology was not related to a settlement or under any “duress … but because it is the right thing to do, given what we have now learned.”

“While I do not believe Mr. Andrews was ever identified by the film or book, I am sorry for any harm he believes he and his family has suffered as a result of ‘2000 Mules,’” D’Souza said.

=-=-=

---

an 6 25

:{:{Almost four and one-half months into Donald Trump's second presidency, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is still facing a civil defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems for falsely claiming that their equipment was used to help Democrat Joe Biden steal the United States' 2020 election from Trump — a claim that was repeatedly debunked by countless recounts. }:

And the far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist is still angry over claims that his pillows are "lumpy" — so angry that, during an appearance on Steve Bannon's "War Room" vodcast, he threatened to bring one of them to his trial when it gets underway on Monday morning, June 2.}:

Lindell told Bannon, "Yeah, you guys, MyPillow and myself Monday morning, (June 2),the trial starts," Lindell explained. "MyPillow's being sued, everybody. By the way, Steve, this is the same lawyer that, in the deposition, called my pillows lumpy. I told my lawyers, maybe I should bring him one inside. He said: Mike, let's not go there."

Lindell's threat to bring a pillow to his civil defamation trial is getting some reactions on X, formerly Twitter.

READ MORE: 'Mass delusion fueled by charisma': Expert explains why Trump's followers still believe in him

Dinesh D'Souza, another far-right conspiracy theorist who promoted false claims about the 2020 election, is praising Lindell.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

D'Souza tweeted, "Guys! Mike Lindell is fighting a big case involving election fraud. This guy has put his company on the line. Let’s support him big time. All kinds of great deals on the famous pillows, the Giza dream sheets and more! Go to http://mypillow.com and use promo code DSOUZA."

Christian fundamentalist Craig Scoullar posted, "God will give Mike victory."

But other X users are mocking Lindell.

READ MORE:'Disappointed': Musk says Trump's bill 'undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing'

Flatulence Studios' Chris Baldassano posted, " You have to appreciate just how bats--- Mike Lindell is. He's like the neighbor who you go outside and they are sunbathing in a tiny french speedo with not a care in the world..

X user Don Dank referenced Lindell's history of substance abuse problems, noting that he was a "drug addict" in the past.

Boston Democrat Tom Williams posted, "Mike Lindell wants pillows at voting machine trial to prove they aren't 'lumpy.'"

---

Right-wing media and conspiracy theorists spread debunked viral video falsely claiming a Pennsylvania postmaster was illegally harvesting ballots

A county official confirmed that the “25-year veteran of the U.S. Postal Service,” who is now facing harassment, was “lawfully bringing ballots into the election office”

Written by Ilana Berger

Research contributions from Alex Kaplan

Published 10/30/24 MMA

IFrame Content

---

---

Tess OwenPolitics Oct 11, 2024 wired no lnx

Leaked Docs From Far-Right Militias Show History of Voter Intimidation Plans

“All the state leaders should be getting their people out … to watch for ballot stuffing,” wrote the leader of the American Patriots Three Percent militia. “Our nation depends on this."

Leaked Docs From FarRight Militias Show History of Voter Intimidation Plans

A trove of leaked internal messages and documents from the militia American Patriots Three Percent—also known as AP3—reveals how the group coordinated with election denial groups as part of a plan to conduct paramilitary surveillance of ballot boxes during the midterm elections in 2022.

This information was leaked to Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), a nonprofit that says it publishes hacked and leaked documents in the public interest. The person behind these AP3 leaks is an individual who, according to their statement uploaded by DDoSecrets, infiltrated the militia and grew so alarmed by what they were seeing that they felt compelled to go public with the information ahead of the upcoming presidential election.

Election and federal officials have already voiced concern about possible voter intimidation this November, in part due to the proliferation of politically violent rhetoric and election denialism. Some right-wing groups have already committed to conducting surveillance of ballot boxes remotely using AI-driven cameras. And last month, a Homeland Security bulletin warned that domestic extremist groups could plan on sabotaging election infrastructure including ballot drop boxes.

Devin Burghart, president and executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, says that AP3’s leaked plans for the 2022 midterms should be a warning for what may transpire next month. “Baseless election denial conspiracies stoking armed militia surveillance of ballot drop boxes is a dangerous form of voter intimidation,” Burghart tells WIRED. “The expansion of the election denial, increased militia activity, and growing coordination between them, is cause for serious concern heading into November. Now with voter suppression groups like True the Vote and some GOP elected officials targeting drop boxes for vigilante activity, the situation should be raising alarms.”

The leaked messages from 2022 show how AP3 and other militias provided paramilitary heft to ballot box monitoring operations organized by “The People’s Movement,” the group that spearheaded the 2021 anti-vaccine convoy protest, and Clean Elections USA, a group with links to the team behind the 2000 Mules film that falsely claimed widespread voter fraud. In the leaked chats, People’s Movement leader Carolyn Smith identifies herself as an honorary AP3 member.

AP3 is run by Scot Seddon, a former Army Reservist, Long Islander, and male model, according to a ProPublica profile on him published in August. That profile, which relied on the same anonymous infiltrator who leaked AP3’s internal messages to DDoSecrets, explains that AP3 escaped scrutiny in the aftermath of January 6 in part because Seddon, after spending weeks preparing his ranks to go to DC, ultimately decided to save his soldiers for another day. ProPublica reported that some members went anyway but were under strict instruction to forgo any AP3 insignia. According to the leaked messages, Seddon also directed his state leaders to participate in the “operation.”

“All of us have a vested interest in this nation,” Seddon said in a leaked video. “So all the state leaders should be getting their people out and manning and observing ballot boxes, to watch for ballot stuffing. This is priority. This goes against getting your double cheeseburger at mcdonalds … Our nation depends on this. Our future depends on this. This ain't no bullshit issue. We need to be tight on this, straight up.”

A flier using militaristic language shared across various state-specific Telegram channels lays out how this operation would work. With “Rules of Engagement” instructions, “Volunteers” are told not to interfere with anyone dropping off their ballots. If someone is suspected of dropping off “multiple ballots,” then observers are told to record the event, and make a note of the individual's appearance and their vehicle's license plate number. In the event of any sort of confrontation, they’re supposed to “report as soon as possible to your area Captain.”

“At the end of each shift, Patriots will prepare a brief report of activity and transmit it to [the ballot] box team Captain promptly,” the flier states.

The person who leaked these documents and messages says that these paramilitary observers masquerading as civilians will often have a QRF—quick reaction force—on standby who can “stage an armed response” should a threat or confrontation arise.

The goal of the “operation,” according to that flier, was to “Stop the Mules.”

“These are the individuals stuffing ballot boxes,” the flier says. “They are well trained and financed. There is a global network backing them up. They pick up fake ballots from phony non-profits and deliver them to ballot boxes, usually between 2400 hours and 0600 hours.” (This was the core conspiracy of 2,000 Mules; the conservative media company behind the film has since issued an apology for promoting election conspiracies and committed to halting its distribution).

Fears about widespread armed voter intimidation during the 2022 midterms—stemming from online chatter and warnings from federal agencies—never materialized in full. However, there were scattered instances of people showing up to observe ballot drops in Arizona. These individuals, according to the statement by the anonymous leaker in the DDoSecrets files, were not “lone wolves”—they were part of “highly organized groups who intended to influence the elections through intimidation.”

In one widely-publicized incident, two clearly armed people wearing balaclavas and tactical gear showed up in Mesa, Arizona, to conduct drop box surveillance. They were never identified, though a Telegram video on DDoSecrets shows AP3’s North Carolina chapter head Burley Ross admitting that one of them was part of his unit. Ross says that the individual was Elias Humiston, who had previously been conducting vigilante border surveillance. “I was well aware they were doing drop box observations,” said Ross. “I was not aware they were doing so in full kit.” Ross added that Humiston had since resigned from the group.

Seddon also addressed the “little incident in Arizona,” stressing the importance of maintaining clean optics to avoid scrutiny. “We had pushed for helping to maintain election integrity through monitoring the ballot boxes,” said Seddon, in a video message on Telegram. “We never told anyone to do it like that.”

:{:{The militia movement largely retreated from public view in the aftermath of the January 6 riot at the US Capitol in 2021. The high-profile implication of the Oath Keepers in the riot, which at the time was America’s biggest militia, thrust the broader militia movement into the spotlight. Amid intense scrutiny, stigma, and creeping paranoia about federal informants, some militias rebanded or even disbanded. But as WIRED reporting has shown, after a brief lull in activity, the militia movement has been quietly rebuilding, reorganizing, and recruiting. With AP3 at its helm, it’s also been engaging in armed training.}:}:

Election conspiracies have only continued to fester since 2022, and AP3 has been aggressively recruiting and organizing. Moreover, the rhetoric in the group has also intensified. “The next election won’t be decided at a Ballot Box,” wrote an AP3 leader earlier this year in a private chat, according to ProPublica. “It’ll be decided at the ammo box.”

“Every American has a right to go to the ballot box without fear and the authorities need to urgently learn the lessons of 2022—and the lessons contained in these documents—so they can prevent something even worse from happening in the coming weeks,” the infiltrator wrote in the DDoS statement.

---

---

// TRUE THE VOTE SHAREHOLD PRESSURE BLAMED

Salem Media retracts Dinesh D’Souza’s bogus voter fraud film 2000 Mules after two years of right-wing media circulation

The widely debunked documentary was mentioned in dozens of articles on The Gateway Pundit and pushed by conservative media figures including Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk

WRITTEN BY AUDREY MCCABE

PUBLISHED 06/05/24

Right-wing media conglomerate Salem Media has retracted and apologized for Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote’s conspiracy theory-laden “documentary” 2000 Mules after settling a lawsuit with a Georgia voter falsely accused by the film of committing fraud in the 2020 election.

Before halting distribution of the film and removing it from its platforms, Salem Media provided a platform to widely circulate its election integrity misinformation throughout the right-wing media ecosystem. Salem Media’s Charlie Kirk was featured in the documentary, and a search for the film name on The Gateway Pundit’s website yielded dozens of articles.

In May 2022, filmmaker D’Souza released 2000 Mules in partnership with “election integrity” group True the Vote and Salem Media. The film relies heavily on the use of cellphone geotracking, a faulty approach that reportedly fails to prove claims of ballot trafficking. (D’Souza also published a book version of 2000 Mules, which was recalled by the publisher soon after it hit bookstores and altered to retract certain allegations before its re-release. True the Vote claimed to have “had no participation in” the book.)

The documentary has been repeatedly debunked by law enforcement and the media, but right-wing media heavily promoted the film as supposed evidence of widespread voter fraud aimed at stopping former President Donald Trump from winning the 2020 presidential election.

Mark Andrews, a Georgia man falsely depicted as committing voter fraud in the film, sued D’Souza and his company, Salem Media, True the Vote and its founders Catherine Engelbrecht and Greg Phillips, and the book publisher. In a separate legal proceeding, a Fulton County Superior Court judge ordered True the Vote to provide evidence of voter fraud in Georgia, which the film asserted. True the Vote admitted in court that it did not have evidence substantiating its claims.

:{:{Salem Media recently settled in the suit, paying Andrews an undisclosed “significant” amount and issuing a formal apology}:. The outlet also claimed that it “relied on representations made to us by Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote.”

Engelbrecht claimed in a livestream that Salem retracted 2000 Mules only because of pressure from shareholders and advertisers, and True the Vote posted on X that it “stands by its processes and methodologies” and Salem’s settlement “does not change our [True the Vote’s] position.” D’Souza reposted the statement.}:

IFrame Content

Right-wing media figures and outlets have pushed the film, using it to fuel claims that the 2020 election was stolen

06/05/24

OAN will repeatedly air the debunked 2000 Mules movie ahead of the midterms}:

:{10/11/22

  1. ### Dinesh D’Souza's 2000 Mules is based on debunked conspiracy theories and lies about the 2020 election

:{05/04/22

  1. ### True the Vote founder suggests Salem only retracted 2000 Mules because of shareholder and advertiser pressure

:{06/04/24

---

https://www.alternet.org/2015/01/10-historical-facts-only-right-winger-could-believe

as you may have noticed by following their writings, conservatives are not sticklers for historical accuracy, especially when they have a point to defend and not a lot of evidence to support it. Get a load, for example, of John Podhoretz explaining how the pro-choice Rudy Giuliani reduced abortions in New York City (though, um, not really) because he cut crime, which is one of "the spiritual causes of abortion."

Yeah, deadline pressure's a bitch. But there are some bizarre notions of American history in which conservatives have become so invested they've adopted them into their worldview. The best-known example is probably Jonah Goldberg's notion of "Liberal Fascism"; nowadays anytime a conservative talks about, say, Woodrow Wilson or Hillary Clinton, you may expect him to mention their resemblance to Benito Mussolini. They don't even have to think about it, even when normal people are gaping at them open-mouthed like audience members at "Springtime for Hitler" -- it's part of the folklore that helps them understand the American experience.

There are plenty of others. I've picked out 10 such ideas that are widespread enough to qualify. (In the nomenclature I have treated "Republican" and "conservative" as synonyms because, come on.)

10. The Robber Barons weren't robbers -- they were capitalist heroes.

The overarching task of the conservative historian is to rehabilitate the image of capitalism, even at its most red-toothed and -clawed. Not a hard job, as both our history and culture ceaselessly celebrate the innovative dynamism of American business.

But one of the rare areas in which history teachers are allowed to criticize unfettered capitalism is the Gilded Age of the "robber barons" -- Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Fisk, et al. These men, many of whom first rose to prominence through unseemly wartime speculation, built enormous fortunes on the exceedingly generous terms of the times, which included bribery, monopolies, and stock manipulation, perverting the alleged power of the free market on their own behalf. They were kind of like the Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers of their day -- except they never got caught.

Most of us still look on this as a shameful thing. But historians of the conservative-libertarian persuasion such as Thomas E. Woods, Lawrence W. Reed, and Thomas J. DiLorenzo (better known now as a neo-Confederate) look at the robber barons' dirty records and ask: So what? J.P. Morgan built a nice library!

They tend to skirt the smelly stuff, and talk instead about how Carnegie's machinations drove down the price of steel -- surely you're not against low prices? And if Jay Gould and Cornelius Vanderbilt paid off legislators to acquire land for their railroads, the railroads got built, and that's what counts.

why do they so eagerly defend the robber barons even at their worst? Maybe because, as economist Brad DeLong has noted, the grotesque inequity in American wealth that characterized their era has only one equivalent in U.S. history -- that of our own time. And if one's business is excusing the perfidy and criminality of today's speculators and swindlers, it is helpful to make heroes of the speculators and swindlers who are their models.

9. Sputnik bankrupted the Soviet Union.

This one comes from the top of the conservative food chain: Sarah Palin. In her Fox News rebuttal to President Obama's recent State of the Union, Palin said that the Russians' "victory in that race to space... incurred so much debt at the time that it resulted in the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union."

It has been pointed out that Palin's version of history is confused on many points. But don't tell that to conservatives. Among them, Palin's charisma is so overweening that her bizarre POV is yet defended -- in some cases, on the grounds that her "larger and more important point about history" was misunderstood (which then mutated into "Palin was right"), and in others just because, as a poster at Lucianne Goldberg's site put it, "The left will have puppies because of it."

Palin's ahistoricism has since metastasized among her following into an indictment of America's entry into the space race, which National Review's Jonah Goldberg described as "the government tells the people what to do, and it relies on a handful of expertsto get it done according to government specifications."

(It should be noted that Sputnik revisionism didn't start with Palin; John Bircher Cleon Skousen claimed in the '50s that the USSR built Sputnik with plans stolen from the United States. It kind of figures Palin would follow in that tradition.)

8. Galileo was a conservative.

You may recall how conservatives made lifelong socialist George Orwell into a neocon icon. Now they're trying to do the same thing with Galileo.

You may think Galileo's an odd choice, because he's history's most famous scientific dissident, having been forced by the Catholic Church to deny his heretical finding that the earth revolved around the sun. But it's not his devotion to truth that makes him attractive to conservatives -- it's his persecution. As they feel themselves persecuted by a liberal conspiracy, conservatives will easily adopt as their avatar any historical figure who suffered and was later shown to be right, regardless of the relevance of his cause to theirs. If you've seen The Passion of the Christ, you know how it works.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, for reasons that should be obvious, has long portrayed Galileo's ordeal as not so bad; why, the Pope didn't even torture him, he just threatened to, and anyway the Church was only reasonably trying to "prohibit the circulation of writings which were judged harmful."

Scholarly apologists such as Jonathan Weyer and Paul Feyerabend have amplified the theme, but their heady thoughts were brought crashing to earth by National Review's Jonah Goldberg, who in 1999 attacked the "ancient, pro-enlightenment, zealot spin" on Galileo with easy-reading versions of the Catholic argument. (Dinesh D'Souza provided similar arguments at a slightly higher reading level.)

Galileo may have been prosecuted by the Church, said Goldberg, but he was persecuted by "jealous fellow-scientists," one of whom he compared to James Carville. Actually, Goldberg said, the Church loved Galileo. Admittedly they did try him, but that was "very complicated" -- the upshot being that "one need not look much further than then-Senator Al Gore's treatment of dissenters on global warming to see how modern inquisitions work."

Thus continued the rehabilitation of Galileo -- no longer the enemy of the Church, but the patron saint of global warming denialists. In 2001 the American Spectator called skeptic Lloyd Keigwin "The Galileo of Global Warming" and claimed he made a giant contribution to discrediting a movement that would impose a deadly energy clamp on the world economy...." More recently the "ClimateGate" scandal prompted a new wave of Galileo reclamation, with Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal lamenting, "The East Anglians' mistreatment of scientists who challenged global warming's claims... evokes the attempt to silence Galileo."

Scan the blogs, and you'll see plenty more of this stuff (e.g. "The Great Global Warming Inquisition"). Next stop: J. Robert Oppenheimer -- Victim of a Liberal Conspiracy.

7. The Founding Fathers really tried to end slavery.

Even in the exceedingly forgiving musical 1776, the Founding Fathers are shown willing to table the issue of slavery in order to win a consensus for the Declaration of Independence. (It also shows Jefferson "resolved to release my slaves," which he never did.)

That's not patriotic enough for Tea Party princess Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who told a sympathetic audience that "the very founders that wrote those documents [the Declaration and Constitution] worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States." The one "founder" Bachmann cited was John Quincy Adams, who was actually the son of the founder John Adams.

Her bizarre assertion got negative press, and the inevitable right-wing defenses from Glenn Beck, Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism, and others.

That's no shock; Bachmann's theme was right in line with a traditional conservative method of reconciling their fairy-tale vision of American history with the founders' self-evident hypocrisy. Fundamentalists, for example, frequently cite the founders' verbal objections to the practice as the inspiration for abolitionism.

The basic idea seems to be that because the Founders were embarrassed by slavery, that meant they were in some secret way fighting against it. Author Paul Gottfried, for example, has argued that "Presbyterian theologians spilled rivulets of ink doing what Cicero and Pliny never felt obliged to do, showing how in their society slavery was being elevated to solicitous education for a backward people. The fact that such arguments had to be provided... underscores the perceived need to humanize a 'peculiar institution.'" So, like very young children in permissive households, the founders' dim awareness of guilt excuses them from blame.

It's hard for most of us to imagine that men who, shortly after the Revolution, countenanced the military suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion would have endorsed John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, or that George Washington, who tried to solve his dental challenges by having implanting in his gums teeth extracted from his slaves, was a precocious abolitionist. But when you hang out with people in tricorner hats and knee-breeches who think the Founders were guys just like themselves, it's a little easier to suspend disbelief.

6. Teddy Roosevelt was a socialist.

Theodore Roosevelt was a naval theorist and war aficionado, a lawman in both the Dakota Territory and New York City, and a cheerful imperialist. You'd think conservatives would appreciate him better. But Glenn Beck has helped turn that around, lambasting TR at last year's CPAC and denouncing his words as "a socialist utopia" which "we need to address ... as if it is a cancer."

In an essay at Beck's site, R.J. Pestritto, a professor at the conservative Hillsdale College, said that while "the progressives were elitists; they looked down their noses at the socialists, considering them a kind of rabble," nonetheless "the progressive conception of government closely coincided with the socialist conception." Pestritto was given room to defend his and Beck's views in the Wall Street Journal. And the Ashbrook Center's Ken Thomas concluded that Roosevelt "pushed centralization of power far further than circumstances justified."

Now even when conservatives defend Roosevelt, they qualify their enthusiasm, saying while he went wrong with his statism, he did do some good things, like subjugate foreigners and so forth.

You might wonder why conservatives have chosen to start picking on the guy from Mt. Rushmore. One explanation may be that they were sick of hearing liberals say, oh, if progressive taxation is socialist, then what about TR, was he a socialist too? Now, instead of sputtering, they can just say yes.

5. Conservatives swept MLK and the Civil Rights movement to victory.

Back during the Civil Rights era, the preeminent conservative journal National Review stood foursquare against the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Many modern conservatives would be shocked to hear this, as they are convinced that Republican conservatives defeated the Klansmen of the Democratic Party to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and realize King's dream.

They usually start with the Civil War, at which time Republicans really were African Americans' better friend among the Parties, and then slide on up to the Civil Rights Act -- skipping Strom Thurmond leaving the Democratic Party over segregation, Truman's integration of the Armed Services, etc.

They point out, rightly, that a greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for the Act in both chamber. They generally don't recall that nearly all the Democratic opponents were Southern, nor that President Lyndon Johnson, who had pushed for the Act, reflected afterward that the Democrats had "lost the South for a generation" -- which turned out to be accurate, plus a decade or two, as Southerners abandoned the Democrats in consequence of their race-mixing ways.

To this day, though they are unsupported by later political developments (such as Tea Party pet Rand Paul's criticism of the Civil Rights Act), conservatives will claim King and civil rights for themselves, and react to the continuing, massive disposition of black Americans to vote Democratic as an act of stunning ingratitude.

4. Margaret Sanger was all about the eugenics.

Margaret Sanger is known to most normal people as the feminist pioneer who fought law and superstition to educate women to better methods of birth control -- mainly condoms and early diaphragms, as opposed to the caustic chemicals and folk remedies desperate women had previously used, sometimes disastrously, to prevent pregnancies.

In the course of her crusade, Sanger made common cause with a variety of world figures, including Jawaharlal Nehru, Reader's Digest founder DeWitt Wallace -- and followers of the pseudoscience of eugenics. This last was an unfortunate choice, to put it mildly, as eugenicists championed forced sterilization and even managed to get laws passed mandating it in some states.

Sanger's own writings show that eugenics was for her a hook for spreading the word about contraception, rather than the other way around; preventing unwanted pregnancy was her life's work. Still, it's a fair cop, and her eugenics endorsements -- like H.L. Mencken's anti-Semitic remarks and Robert Byrd's Klan membership -- are a dark spot on an otherwise admirable reputation.

But ask a modern conservative about Sanger, and you'll find they've got her backwards -- eugenics is literally all they know about her. Though they talk about eugenics as if it were still a popular movement, they usually don't condemn the prominent churchmen and scientists who supported it, not the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, nor Charles Lindbergh, nor Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, et al. It's always Sanger who symbolizes it -- which is rather like portraying Ezra Pound as the head of the Third Reich. Not only lowly lunatic fringe figures, but also big-time wingnuts like Jonah Goldberg and Michelle Malkin take this approach.

It's not hard to guess why: As the recent Lila Rose Planned Parenthood sting reminds us, conservatives aren't just against abortion -- they're against anyone who offers women any alternative to childbearing whatsoever. By portraying America's First Lady of Contraception as an enemy of freedom, they may hope to mask their their own authoritarian ambitions.

3. Women were better off before they got the vote.

Perhaps because they are not usually associated with the extension of rights to the disenfranchised -- or because American women tend not to vote the way they want -- conservatives are a little squirrely about women's suffrage. Some rather defensively insist that "conservatives and libertarians played central roles in drafting and ratifying" the 19th Amendment, so there. Others, like National Review's John Derbyshire, Ann Coulter and the editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, affect to be against women's suffrage, either in clumsy emulation of H.L. Mencken's playful remarks on the subject, or because they're assholes.

But among conservatives a consensus is forming that women were better off when they didn't have the vote. The notion does not seem to be based on the premise that women don't deserve the vote, mind you, but that it is extraneous to their real interest, which is to live in a pre-feminist society.

Last year Jacob G. Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation asserted that Americans were freer in the 1880s than they are today. When called on it, Hornberger said okay, maybe black people and women weren't so free. But this prompted George Mason professor Bryan Caplan to ask, "In what ways, then, were American women in 1880 less free than men?" Their lack of franchise, sexual autonomy, etc. struck Caplan as irrelevant: Such women lived in an era before gun control or the Department of Education, so, he judged, they were by definition more free than now.

Discussion generally ran against Caplan, but he had his high-profile defenders. At the Atlantic, Megan McArdle said, "The overwhelming majority of women in 1880 would be positively horrified by the prospect of living my life. Not only is it flagrantly immoral, it violates much of what they themselves thought of as the core of womanhood. Should we get excited about women being denied the right to go to medical school, who did not want to go to medical school?" We may imagine 19th-century women who did not want to go to medical school raising their fists in approval.

Others suggested that if conservative women didn't come out ahead, then women's rights were merely ephemeral. Last year Concerned Women for America celebrated the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment thus: "Women Won the Right to Vote 90 Years Ago; Conservative Women Still Fighting the Media for a 'Place at the Table.'" "90 years after the 19th Amendment," wrote Lori Zingano at RedState, "Democrats are actively seeking to figuratively repeal the amendment" -- that is, by promoting "the myth of a wage gap" between men and women and disapproving of Sarah Palin. Thus, she said, Democrats "are striving for a form of reverse-suffrage, wherein every woman must walk in lockstep with their ideology, or you are not a 'real' woman."

It is probable that, put under harsh lights and in front of a crowd, any of these people would declare himself or herself an avid women's suffragist. But among themselves they almost never mention women's rights without observing how insignificant they are alongside their own idea of the way things ought to be.

2. Darwin is a menace to Western Civilization.

You will from time to time hear about how some conservatives, at least, are cool with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. But they're usually discussing the science of evolution -- and on that score, they still can't bring a majority of Republicans onto their side.

On the philosophical implications of man evolving from monkeys, prominent conservatives have long believed and still believe that, in the words of Center for a Just Society Chairman Ken Connor, Darwin would have us believe that "God is simply a creature of our imagination. Human beings emerged gratuitously from the primordial ooze. Since we are the product of mere chance, we have no inherent dignity, value or worth." And that just ain't right.

Thus at the Conservative Book Club you can buy The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinismand Intelligent Design, which assures us that "Darwinism -- like Marxism and Freudianism before it -- is simply unfit to survive," and you can buy from the Conservative DVD Club films like How the Cambrian Fossil Record Disproves Darwin, and so on.

Some intellectual cons who can't quite go full knuckle-dragger try to finesse their way out of it.Dinesh D'Souza noted that, while "evolution does seem to turn many Christians into unbelievers," the discovery of evolutionary principles didn't sour Darwin himself on God -- Darwin's own bitterness over the death of his child did that; and when the evil Thomas Huxley later tied evolution to atheism, the embittered atheist Darwin supported him by becoming "increasingly insistent that evolution was an entirely naturalistic system, having no room for miracles or divine intervention at any point." If Darwin had been in his right mind, of course, he'd be singing Glory Hallelujah.

First Things author Peter Lawler made a noble effort, writing that as Darwinism shows that "our happiness comes from doing our duty to the species as social mammals. .. this account of who we are is basically conservative. It promotes family values—including such insights as people who come from large families are generally happier…."

Nice try, Poindexter! But, as with so much in conservative thinking, Jonah Goldberg iced the cakewith his statement that while "I disagree with those who would lump Darwin with Freud and Marx… I don't think one can glibly say that just because the book was scientifically correct (speaking broadly, we've discovered lots of new things since then) and pioneering, doesn't mean it can't also be harmful. Darwinism certainly led to many horrors and abuses across the ideological spectrum…."

This thing goes way back and, despite the efforts of some pointy-heads, conservatives aren't backing off it anytime soon.

1. FDR: History's greatest monster.

If you have aged grandparents still living who remember the New Deal, or are among America's prominent historians, you will hear nothing but good from them about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the president who shepherded America through the Great Depression and the Second World War.

Conservatives have never felt that way, of course -- back in the day they went to the Trans-Lux to hiss Roosevelt, and FDR welcomed their hatred. For some years they were obliged to keep their anger at FDR on the down-low -- after all, wasn't Reagan a Roosevelt fan? Plus there were many more people then than now who actually remembered that presidency, and it didn't play well to contradict their memories.

Lately, though, conservatives have gotten back to the Trans-Lux, and this time they're not just hissing. "FDR's public works only exacerbated the Depression," says The American Conservative. "The New Deal was harmful medicine for a struggling economy," claims The American Spectator. "Faced with a similar crisis, there cannot be more than one in a hundred who would now recommend FDR's specific curatives" -- at least, not among the hundred the Spectator would ask.

A book by right-wing factotum Amity Shlaes called The Forgotten Man, all about how FDR prolonged the Depression, has gained a place of honor on conservative bookshelves. As you may imagine, the Wall Street Journal reviewer loved it -- "Ms. Shlaes rightly reminds us," he wrote, "of the harmful effect of Rooseveltian activism and class-warfare rhetoric." The reviewer did mention that "one question that Ms. Shlaes never quite answers is just what Roosevelt should have done to beat the Depression beyond practicing a Coolidge-like passivity." But no true conservative would need to ask such a question: Of course FDR should have done as Tea Partiers counsel be done for our current depression: Cut the deficit and screw the poor.

When the book was criticized by John Updike (what does he know about books? Or the Depression? Oh, he lived through it? Well, what does he know about books?)Ross Douthat leapt to condemn Updike's "solipsistic flapdoodle": "FDR could have given us the fireside chats and the rhetoric of government action" that Updike's dad admired, said Douthat, "and yes, even the stronger safety net without the counterproductive attempts at centralized planning and the relentless scapegoating of business."

Ah, what might have been! Any previous U.S. policy may be reexamined, and no administration is sacrosanct. Who knows how things might have been better or worse had James Knox Polk chosen not to pursue the Mexican-American War? But it is evident that the current wave of anti-FDR sentiment coincides with the rise of Democratic power in the last half of the previous decade, and anti-Rooseveltians are always eager to explain how FDR's disastrous presidency -- to which the American people, for reasons unknown, returned him for four terms -- is an ominous warning for the allegedly similarly socialistic Obama.

Clearly the War on FDR is a proxy struggle with the (substantially less aggressive) current president -- they seek to make activist government look foolish, in hopes of preventing it from being tried again. But then, in a way all their other historical revisions are also directed at their current enemies. They go through the ghost of Margaret Sanger to stymie feminists; through the shades of Galileo and Darwin to warn off scientists; through the late MLK to get at voters whose enthusiasm for a black president thwarts their own electoral ambitions, etc. For them, history, like everything else, is just politics by other means.

---

---

https://facultygov.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/261/2019/10/Mayer-article-on-Right-Wing-Billionaires.pdf

16 pp

How Right-Wing Billionaires Infiltrated Higher Education Chronicle Review

By Jane Mayer FEBRUARY 12, 2016

...The Olin foundation also backed what came to be known as the Collegiate Network, privately financing a string of right-wing newspapers on America’s college campuses. Among them was The Dartmouth Review, which infamously published an editorial in Ebonics proclaiming, "Now we be comin’ to Dartmut’ and be up over our ’fros in studies, but we still be not graduatin’ Phi Beta Kappa." The paper hosted a feast of lobster and champagne to mock a student fast against global hunger, sledgehammered shantytowns erected by students protesting apartheid in South Africa, and published a transcript of a secretly taped meeting of students belonging to Dartmouth’s gay student association. The Dartmouth Review became an incubator for right-wing media figures like D’Souza and the future conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. Its counterpart at Vassar, meanwhile, gave starts in journalism to the ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl and Marc Thiessen, an online columnist at The Washington Post best known for his defense of the Bush administration’s use of torture.

...

If the Olin foundation was less than transparent about its mission, it was not for the first time. Between 1958 and 1966, it secretly served as a bank for the Central Intelligence Agency. During these eight years, the CIA laundered $1.95 million through the foundation. Olin, according to Miller, regarded his undercover role as part of his patriotic duty. Many of the government funds went to anti-Communist intellectuals and publications. But in 1967, the press exposed the covert propaganda operation, triggering a political furor and causing the CIA to fold the program. The CIA money at the Olin foundation, which was not publicized at the time, disappeared as quietly as it had arrived. The idea of using the private foundation to fund ideologically aligned intellectuals, however, persisted. The Olin foundation invested in William F. Buckley Jr., whose television show, Firing Line, the foundation supported. It also funded Allan Bloom, author of the best-selling slam from the right at American higher education, The Closing of the American Mind (in which Bloom also lashed out at rock music as a "nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbation fantasy"). The foundation also supported Dinesh D’Souza, author of Illiberal Education, which blasted "political correctness," castigating rules requiring sensitivity to women and minorities as the overreaching of liberal thought police. In addition, the Olin foundation funded professors at leading universities all over the country, including Harvard’s Harvey C. Mansfield and Samuel P. Huntington. It donated $3.3 million to Mansfield’s Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard, which emphasized a conservative interpretation of American government...

---

---

1/2 ad sponsors gone; trump crap poll 52% ppl have spoken

https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/elon-musk-unilaterally-reinstating-banned-twitter-accounts-despite-assuring-civil-rights

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/dinesh-dsouza/election-denier-dinesh-dsouzas-reach-twitter-more-doubles-after-elon-musk-takeover

no lnx vid twt

Election denier Dinesh D'Souza's reach on Twitter more than doubles after Elon Musk takeover

WRITTEN BY MADELINE PELTZ

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM CARLY EVANS & KAYLA GOGARTY

PUBLISHED 11/22/22

Since Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter on October 27, the average interactions on tweets from election denier Dinesh D’Souza have more than doubled, expanding the reach of a major source of disinformation and debunked conspiracy theories about the integrity of the 2020 election.

According to a Media Matters review of D’Souza’s tweets, he earned nearly 3.9 million interactions on 681 posts — averaging over 5,700 interactions per post during the 24-day period since Musk’s acquisition (between October 28 and November 20). This is a 144% increase from the more than 2,300 average interactions per post on D’Souza’s 682 posts from the 24-day period prior to the takeover.

D’Souza is a long-time troll and filmmaker best known for his inflammatory smears of Democrats and the left and unhinged pro-Trump commentary. His recent movie 2000 Mules took the right-wing media by storm, promoted far and wide across the echochamber as a way to keep false claims over voter fraud in the 2020 election alive in the years since Trump lost. An unfettered platform on Twitter will allow these types of conspiracy theories to spread even more easily. Musk himself recently liked a tweet from D’Souza that praised the platform under his management and replied: “Correct.”

Elon Musk replies to Dinesh D'Souza

D’Souza noted his increased engagement on his podcast, saying, “My own traction on Twitter has just exploded in the last few weeks and the reason can be put down to two words: Elon Musk” adding, “We’re delighted. I’m a big fan of Elon Musk because I think that what he’s doing is great.”

Video CitationFrom the November 21, 2022 edition of The Dinesh D'Souza Podcast

Some of D’Souza’s most engaged tweets since October 28 have promoted election denial and conspiracy theories about the attack on Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi.

On November 17, D’Souza quote-tweeted a video that edited together footage of voters dropping ballots at drop boxes in Maricopa County, Arizona, with quotes from failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and reports from Fox News about Secretary of State Katie Hobbs’ victory in the race. The video, set over ominous music, seems to suggest that the voters casting their vote were involved in some sort of undefined election fraud based on the vote tally shifting from Lake to Hobbs.

D’Souza’s tweet received over 41,000 likes, and the video has 1.4 million views as of this writing.

The account D’Souza quote tweeted, @Lauren3veMemes, has a verified blue check mark from subscribing to Twitter Blue, a subscription service launched by Musk that has since been postponed. Despite this, the program has allowed right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists an opportunity to purchase a verified platform.

D’Souza has also shared multiple conspiracy theories about the attack on Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband, falsely claiming the attacker was in his underwear when he was arrested, despite the allegation being retracted the same day it was first reported by a reporter for the local Fox affiliate in San Francisco, KTVU.

D’Souza’s tweet received nearly 50,000 likes. Another tweet falsely claiming Pelosi knew his attacker received over 83,000 likes.

D’Souza’s movie 2000 Mules, which pushed debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, has been a critical touchstone for the right-wing movement since its release in May of this year. The movie, which was based on unsubstantiated “research” from the QAnon connected group True the Vote, inspired conspiracy theorist Melody Jennings to launch a voter intimidation effort to “monitor” drop boxes in Maricopa County ahead of the midterms. Some of her volunteers showed up with what appeared to be weapons and wearing tactical gear.

---

In less than a month, Elon Musk has driven away half of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers

11/22/22 4:40 PM EST

Elon Musk is unilaterally reinstating banned Twitter accounts, despite assuring civil rights groups and advertisers that he wouldn’t

11/22/22 1:13 PM EST

Dinesh D'Souza defends the Oath Keepers

---

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/dinesh-dsouza/dinesh-dsouza-excuses-voter-intimidation-tells-audience-if-they-see-voters-they

---

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/report/conspiracy-theorists-with-badges-and-guns-pro-trump-sheriffs-vow-to-police-elections/

An Unholy Alliance of Election Deniers, ‘Constitutional Sheriffs,’ and Profiteering Propagandists Threatens Elections

Two years after former President Donald Trump began aggressively attacking the integrity of the 2020 election to justify his efforts to stay in power, an unholy alliance threatens the fair conduct of elections this fall and again in 2024. A national network of conspiracy theorists and right-wing political operatives have been joined by far-right sheriffs, whose determination has been fortified by lies about election fraud and fueled by a belief that they are waging a holy war against the forces of evil.

Richard Mack, a former Arizona county sheriff and former board member of the anti-government extremist organization Oath Keepers, summoned members and supporters of his Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association to a July gathering in Las Vegas, where he delivered an urgent message:  The country’s county sheriffs, Mack said, must launch investigations into voting fraud in the 2020 election—investigations that he thought could put Trump back in power.

“I would love for the investigations to prove that he indeed won the election, and I think at the time the Supreme Court would have to rule that he gets put back in because it was based on criminal activity,” Mack said. Though he wasn’t sure enough sheriffs would step up and “do their duty” to make investigations into the 2020 election happen, Mack urged sheriffs to take an active role in policing this year’s elections.

Mack is the founder and leader of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which teaches local sheriffs that they are the supreme law enforcement officer in their counties, and that it is their duty to resist state and federal “tyranny.”

Mack and other MAGA-minded sheriffs like Mark Lamb turned their focus to policing elections after seeing “2000 Mules,” a film produced by right-wing propagandist Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote leaders Catherine Englebrecht and Gregg Phillips, longtime promoters of election fraud conspiracy theories. Experts from across the political spectrum debunked the movie’s claims about voter fraud, but Trump and many of his supporters have embraced and promoted its inflammatory claims.

The Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol and evidence gathered by the House select committee investigating the insurrection have provided clear evidence that lies about election fraud can drive people to violence. In the weeks before Election Day, the embrace of “2000 Mules” and its inflammatory claims by public officials and far-right activists has already led to multiple reports of armed voter intimidation by vigilantes at ballot drop boxes. It could also increase the potential for violence at the polls.

“The involvement of ‘people with guns and badges’ to intimidate voters, and attempts to access voting equipment, could become ‘go-to-tactics,’” Bulwark editor Charlie Sykes told Reuters. “It doesn’t feel hyperbolic to say this is extremely dangerous.”

Armed Enforcers for the Anti-Democracy Coalition?

Mack founded CSPOA in 2009, a period of far-right ferment after the election of former President Barack Obama. As a leader of the self-described “constitutional sheriffs” movement, he has painted the federal government as authoritarian, referring to federal agencies as “the gestapo” and suggesting there were “some startling and irrefutable comparisons between Barack Obama and Adolph Hitler.”

Mack became a right-wing folk hero when he successfully challenged a Clinton-era federal gun law in the mid-90s. In 2014, Mack was back in the spotlight when he joined Cliven Bundy’s armed standoff with federal officials promoted a public relations strategy of putting women up front if shooting started.

Political scientists Emily Farris and Mirya Hollman recently conducted a survey of sheriffs’ attitudes and concluded that “Mack’s group has successfully radicalized a generation of sheriffs to believe that the office has seemingly unlimited power and autonomy.” That attitude is particularly dangerous among sheriffs, who compared to other law enforcement officials often have little structural oversight and accountability.

“We can and must take America back county by county and state by state,” Mack wrote in his 2014 book, “Are You a David?” That message is central to his current organizing efforts and one that he delivers to sheriffs and other law enforcement officials, often in state-sanctioned training sessions.

After the release of “2000 Mules” in May, Mack began shifting CSPOA’s focus from training sheriffs about his view of their constitutional superpowers to urging them to mobilize against “voter fraud.” He has described the movie’s oft-debunked claims as “overwhelming” and “compelling” evidence and said that “every sheriff and every chief of police in this country should be following up with a criminal investigation on the claims made in ‘2000 Mules.’”

Richard Mack speaks at CSPOA press conference on election fraud.

While Mack claims that his “2000 Mules”-inspired “election integrity” efforts are nonpartisan— he declared in a July press release that he simply wanted to know whether the claims made in “2000 Mules” are true and called for “honest, professional, and independent investigations”—it’s clear where his support lies when speaking to right-wing audiences. On a right-wing radio show in July, he called Trump’s defeat “a horrible, heinous crime” and “one of if not the worst crime committed against the American people in the last 100 years.”

“This is a coup against the American people,” Mack declared during a September appearance on another radio show. He recently told listeners of the right-wing Liberty Monks podcast that they “must vote for any Republican that we possibly can” to “punish the Democratic Party” and “stand against the destruction of America.”

Other sheriffs have taken up Mack’s call to investigate the 2020 presidential election and police future elections. One of Mack’s allies, Sheriff Calvin Hayden of Johnson County, Kansas, has “promoted unsubstantiated suspicions of election fraud,” according to the Kansas City Star. Hayden also offered to have his staff collect ballots from drop boxes, a move rejected by local officials as an attempt to interfere with the election.

Mack has also backed Dar Leaf, a sheriff in Berry County, Michigan, who is under investigation by the state’s attorney general over the conduct of his investigation of election equipment. Leaf has been represented by an attorney who was sanctioned by a federal judge for her role in Sidney Powell’s legal efforts to overturn the election results. Turning the system of governance on its head, Mack has said Leaf has the right to arrest state officials who interfered with his investigation.

From Insurrection to Elections: Sheriff Mark Lamb and Protect America Now

Mack isn’t the only far-right law enforcement official who was fired up by “2000 Mules.” Mark Lamb, sheriff of Arizona’s Pima County, was also drawn in by True the Vote’s conspiracy fraud claims. After viewing an interview that right-wing activist Charlie Kirk did with Engelbrecht—an interview that has been viewed more than 2 million times—Lamb contacted Englebrecht and brought his Protect America Now organization into a formal partnership with True the Vote. In October, Mack met with the Arizona Oathkeepers to talk about “election integrity” and the partnership being between Lamb and True the Vote, the Arizona Mirror reported.

An admirer of Mack and the CSPOA, Lamb built a national following through reality TV shows before turning energy toward Trumpian politics and the promotion of false voter fraud claims with the launch of his own organization in 2021.

Lamb founded Protect America Now in the month following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The insurrection, Lamb said, was not Trump’s fault, adding, “I don’t know how loud we have to get before they have to listen to us and know we will no longer tolerate them stripping our freedoms away.”

Describing Lamb as “charismatic and ambitious” in a 2021 profile, Politico reported that at ananti-vaccine rally that year, Lamb told supporters, “We’re going to find out what kind of patriots you are. We’re going to find out who is willing to die for freedom.”

Protect America Now’s website declares, “We support Sheriffs and law enforcement members that believe inGod, Family and Freedom.” The group asks for a monthly donation of $17.76 to “help us win this battle for the soul of America.” It promotes a hard-right line on immigration and other issues. In videos on Protect America Now’s YouTube channel, Lambwarns that crime is running rampant and “liberals want to take our guns.” In another, Lambsays, “together, we are fighting back against the liberal takeover.”

In June, True the Vote and Protect America Now announced ProtectAmerica.Vote, a partnership that it said would “empower sheriffs” to “support election integrity” and would bridge the gap between voters and law enforcement to “ensure we have secure elections in this country.”

Engelbrecht has said she embraced the sheriffs after the FBI dismissed True the Vote’s allegations of voter fraud. “It’s like the lights went on,” she saidat a CSPOA event this July. “It’s the sheriffs. That’s who can do these investigations; that’s who we can trust; that’s who we can turn over information to.” True the Vote says its partnership with the constitutional sheriffs will include raising grant money and providing equipment to sheriffs to expand ballot drop box surveillance and investigate fraud claims.

Lamb claims his partnership with True the Vote is a nonpartisan effort, but he makes no secret of his support for Trump and Trump’s stolen election claims. Trump “loves the rule of law,” Lamb said at a Trump rally in Arizona this July. “We’re gonna make sure that we have election integrity this year,” Lamb pledged. “We will not let happen what happened in 2020.”

Local critics say Lamb has politicized law enforcement. Pinal County, where Lamb is sheriff, experienced ballot shortages during the August primary, and Lamb, true to character,suggested on right-wing media that there might be something more at play than incompetence by election officials and vowed to investigate.

Inspired by Lies: ‘2000 Mules’ as Political Warfare

Right-wing filmmaker and author D’Souza describes his propaganda movies as weapons of political and spiritual warfare. By that measure, the “2000 Mules” movie has proven itself effective in mobilizing Trump’s troops.

Far-right wing media have boosted Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules” even though its claims have been widely debunked.

In “2000 Mules,” D’Souza dramatized claims made by Engelbrecht and Phillips that liberal nonprofits had mobilized “ballot harvesting” operations to stuff drop boxes with illegal votes. But for all the wild hype about their use of mobile device geolocation data and security camera footage from ballot drop boxes, election experts have repeatedly said that there’s essentially no there there. Even former Trump administration Attorney General William Barr dismissed the movie’s claims as laughable in testimony before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The movie’s claims have also been declared bogus by experts in cell phone tracking technology and by election officials. As critics have pointed out, despite all the data, footage, and money available to the producers, the film does not show a single documented instance of the kind of fraud it claims to expose. Georgia election officials tracked down one person the movie accused of being a “mule” and determined that the person was depositing his own ballot and his family members’ ballots, as permitted by law. On Oct. 26, a Georgia voter sued D’Souza, Englebrecht, Phillips, and True the Vote for wrongly accusing him of casting illegal votes.

Among the other demonstrably false claims in the movie was that True the Vote’s geolocation data was so accurate that it helped solve a murder case.

But MAGA world activists primed to believe Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories ate it up. Trump himself hosted a premiere for the film at Mar-a Lago in May. Many Republican officials and proponents of election conspiracies like MyPillow founder Mike Lindell have joined Trump in promoting the film and its claims.

As the film took MAGA world by storm, it came to the attention of far-right militias, too. It was cited by Lions of Liberty, an Arizona “preparedness” group connected to the far-right Oath Keepers that is organizing armed surveillance of ballot boxes, and by Matt Shea, a far-right former state legislator known for his handbook on “biblical warfare,” who is organizing similar efforts in his state.

The release of the book version of “2000 Mules” was delayed at the last minute by the publisher after it had been printed and sent to bookstores containing potentially libelous accusations against several nonprofit groups it accused of mobilizing voter fraud. Before a toned-down version was released, Engelbrecht and Phillips distanced themselves from the book, saying they were looking ahead to future elections and their work with sheriffs.

Before ‘2000 Mules’: True the Vote’s History of Election Fraud Conspiracies

True the Vote is well known among voting rights experts for its long history of promoting voter fraud conspiracy theories and supporting actions to restrict voting.

“True the Vote and groups like it are well-documented voter intimidation scams,” former Harris County Clerk and current Houston mayoral candidate Chris Hollins told Texas Monthly this summer. “They’re created to amplify conspiracy theories, funded by wealthy right-wing activists, to tie the hands of election administrators and embolden partisan poll watchers.”

Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center points to True the Vote’s “long history of anti-voter conduct, including orchestrating mass challenges to voters,” some as recent as the 2021 Georgia runoff elections.

True the Vote leaders Engelbrecht and Phillips—business and reportedly romantic partners—have profited from unproven claims of voter fraud. The organization has been the subject of multiple investigations and exposés revealing their repeated failure to make good on outlandish claims while funneling money raised by their nonprofit group into their own pockets via loans and payments to for-profit companies they run.

True the Vote was founded after the 2008 election and grew out of a local Tea Party organization in Houston, Texas, called the King Street Patriots, which was accused of conducting “1960s style” voter intimidation during the 2010 election cycle.

For the past decade, True the Vote has promoted alarmism about voter fraud and resisted voting rights protections. It falsely claimed, for example, that the Obama administration was intentionally registering noncitizens to vote and charged that renewing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would encourage “race-based segregation.” As “voter fraud” and “election integrity” became right-wing justifications for voter suppression, True the Vote pulled in money from right-wing funders and activist groups, including the Bradley Foundation, Donors Trust, the Judicial Confirmation Network, and State Policy Network.

True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht railed against a bill she said would “blow up our elections” in a March 2020 YouTube video.

When Trump was elected in 2016 while losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, Phillips stroked Trump’s ego by claiming that Phillips could verify that 3 million noncitizens cast votes in the election. While Trump touted the baselessand repeatedly debunked claim that he was the actual popular vote winner, True the Vote never released any evidence to back him up.

Though True the Vote claims that its so-called “election integrity” work is nonpartisan, the group aggressively promotes the interests of right-wing Republican candidates. In 2018, a New Jersey judge decided not to renew a 1981 ban on the Republican Party recruiting soldiers and cops as poll watchers to intimidate Black voters. True the Vote saw this as an opportunity. At a 2020 gathering of the Council for National Policy, a secretive network of influential right-wing and far-right leaders, Englebrecht touted True the Vote’s “Continue to Serve” initiative, which she said would recruit retired military and law enforcement as poll watchers. One participant suggested it would be especially useful in “inner city” and Native American precincts.

True the Vote’s credibility has been challenged by some on the right, even by other Big Lie and voter suppression advocates. After Trump’s defeat in 2020, True the Vote officials took $2.5 million from Fred Eshelman, a Trump-supporting billionaire who believed that the group was going to use state-level election data to prove Trump’s fraud claims in court. When they seemingly did little more to overturn the election than pay piles of cash to their companies and their lawyer, right-wing movement consigliere James Bopp, for a few short-lived lawsuits, Eshelman sued in an unsuccessful effort to get his money back.

Conspiracy Theories as Spiritual Warfare

Just as Christian nationalist ideology and the belief that keeping Trump in office was a sacred cause energized the Jan. 6 insurrection and suffused much of the MAGA movement, True the Vote’s leaders and their far-right sheriff allies rely on spiritual warfare rhetoric to justify their actions and motivate their followers.

Before the 2020 election, True the Vote partnered with Intercessors for America, a group of pro-Trump “prayer warriors,” to spread right-wing talking points about the threat of voter fraud. On an online prayer call in May 2020, Englebrecht called the struggle over expanded voting by mail a “spiritual battle” for “control of the free world.”

After the release of “2000 Mules,” Intercessors for America claimed that the movie documented “an indisputable and alarming gravy train for fraudulent votes.” Intercessors for America defended Engelbrecht and Phillips from critics, portraying them as victims of persecution.

This August, True the Vote held a gathering focused on voter fraud that it called “The Pit,” a name taken from a biblical passage that says God will grant his disciples relief from days of trouble “until a pit is dug for the wicked.” On a “prayer call” promoting the event,Intercessors for America’s Kris Kubalsaid that election fraud is “demonic” and an “evil from Satan.”  True the Vote, she declared, was involved in a “supernatural battle.” Phillips agreed that “there is so much evil around all of this right now.”

“God wants us to expose that pit and shut it down, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Engelbrecht said. True the Vote leaders did not release compelling new evidence of voter fraud at “The Pit,” but they did announce the creation of a “fusion center” that would gather “actionable intelligence” for local sheriffs to act on.

Like Engelbrecht and Phillips, Mack portrays his “constitutional sheriff” movement and its involvement in election issues in spiritual terms. In his 2014 book, “Are You a David?” Mack argued that “modern-day Davids”—by which he meant sheriffs and other local public servants—are “the only viable solution for the restoration of our God-given rights, in conjunction with our willingness to repent and return to God’s law as a people.” At a July press conference Mack organized during the right-wing “Freedom Fest” held in Las Vegas, he urged sheriffs to “join us in this holy cause.”

Sheriffs: The Law or a Threat to the Law?

There is a long history in this country of corrupt local sheriffs abusing their power, from Jim Clark leading attacks on civil rights marchers in Alabama in the 1960s to Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva overseeing a department notorious for violent deputy gangs threatening public safety today.

In 2020, the research group Political Research Associates identified 136 sheriffs aligned with the far-right “patriot” and militia movement in which Political Research Associates situates Mack’s CSPOA. The research group noted that at the time, 90 percent of the 3,081 county sheriffs in the United States were white men, and that “there has been a concerted effort in the last decade to mobilize sheriffs toward further supporting and expanding systems of racialized social control and expulsion.” The Reflective Democracy Campaign, a project of the Women’s Donor Network, noted that “The alarmingly skewed demographics of sheriffs suggest a system hard-wired for abuse, and their track record of mistreating women and people of color confirms it.”

Some sheriff’s offices have connections to, or have been infiltrated by, other far-right extremist groups. The Brennan Center found that sheriff’s deputies in Washington state and Louisiana had publicly supported and joined the Proud Boys—whose leaders have been charged with seditious conspiracy in the attack on the Capitol—and noted that a sheriff’s deputy in Orange County, California, was photographed wearing a patch that included the word “Oath Keeper” and the logo of the Three Percenters on his bulletproof vest. The Washington state and Louisiana deputies were fired; the California deputy was not.

Added to this already toxic mix are messages from the likes of Mack and Lamb that sheriffs must investigate electoral fraud. Such declarations are a “significant overreach of authority,” David Mahoney, a former president of the National Sheriffs Association, told The Guardian.

So what role, if any, should sheriffs play in our elections?

“There is a critical role for law enforcement to play in protecting our election: they should be offering protection to election officials and election workers that have come under attack as a result of lies being spread by groups like True the Vote,” the Brennan Center’s Sean Morales-Doyletold The Guardian in August.

It is not difficult to imagine the chilling effect of being accused of voter fraud by a person with a badge and gun, what Jessica Pishko called “part of an escalating campaign to police the vote” in a recent story for Bolts magazine. “The prospect of increased involvement of armed officers recalls the days of voter intimidation in the Jim Crow South (and beyond), and could also help encourage extremist vigilante violence by perpetuating baseless rumors of fraud, often against Black and Latinx communities,” Pishko wrote.

Recent reports of armed bands gathering at ballot drop boxes and challenging voters suggests that Pishko was right. (This week a federal court ordered a group in Arizona to stop intimidating voters with their armed and body-armored presence at ballot drop boxes.) [check]

The multi-faceted campaign to corrupt elections by convincing millions of Americans that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump by Black and Brown voters is a threat to democracy. It has created and inflamed a large group of enraged Trump supporters and sparked harassment and threats against election officials. It has led to a wave of state laws designed to restrict registration and voting. It has led to Trumpist partisans and conspiracy theorists becoming poll workers and running for political offices where they will have the power to interfere with the administration of elections. And it has led some armed vigilantes to set up intimidating “security” operations at voting locations.

Added to this volatile mix are groups of sheriffs riled up by falsehoods and propaganda, pumped up an ideology of virtually unchecked power, and spurred on by the belief that they are engaged in a holy war to save America from destruction. Voters and other public officials must be alert to the abuses that could flow from these new partnerships and be prepared to hold individuals accountable for any actions to intimidate or interfere with people exercising their right to vote.

---

---

10 22

Former President Donald Trump is not done spinning conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. In fact, he recently took those unfounded claims to a new level.

According to HuffPost, the former president participated in a podcast discussion with Dinesh D’Souza, a far-right commentator and known conspiracy theorist who was pardoned by Trump in 2018 after admitting to illegally donating to a Republican political candidate.

During the discussion, Trump attempted to spin a new bizarre claim insisting "people voted 28 times in the 2020 election to cheat him out of a second term in office, HuffPost reports.

READ MORE: [Donald Trump email to aides shows 'intentional' and 'premeditated' election plot: January 6th panel

At one point, D’Souza asked the former president: “It seems to me that what you’re saying is that you think that there was cheating all different ways."

Trump responded with a reference to D’Souza's documentary titled, "2,000 Mules," before claiming some voters cast multiple votes.

“Yeah, ‘2,000 Mules’ was one way,” Trump replied. “That was a very conclusive way because you were taking government tapes. ... And then, of course, they voted six, seven, eight times. As much as they could in the local area. Some of the people went back, I guess they said 28 times in one day, to vote at different places.”

Although Trump has lauded D'Souza's film, which claims to uncover incidents of voter fraud, it has been described as "endlessly debunkable” by fact checkers.

READ MORE: [Georgia district attorney finds credible allegations of crimes in Donald Trump election fraud case

Trump did not offer a reference for the quoted figure. However, HuffPost notes that "an executive producer of '2,000 Mules' claimed on Fox News earlier this year that the average amount of visits by said mules was 38."

Trump also insisted the so-called "ballot stuffers" refrained from overdoing the scheme so it wouldn't be uncovered. “They’re very smart,” he said.

Although Trump was defeated two years ago, he is continuing to spread lies about the 2020 election as he mulls another run in 2024.

READ MORE: Georgia election official's testimony will refute Donald Trump's accusations that she stole votes

---

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/14/arizona-ag-true-the-vote-00061973

no lnx

KYLE CHENEY and NICHOLAS WU

10/14/2022

The office of Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is asking the FBI and IRS to investigate True the Vote, a conservative vote-monitoring nonprofit Donald Trump has repeatedly touted for its efforts to raise doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

:{:{}:

}:

Reginald Grigsby, an investigator with Brnovich’s office, described a series of questionable interactions with the group’s leaders and suggested there may be evidence of financial improprieties if the agencies pursued them.

:{:{}:

}:

“Given TTV’s status as a nonprofit organization, it would appear that further review of its financials may be warranted,” Grigsby wrote.

:{:{}:

}:

The letter, dated Friday, is particularly remarkable coming from the office of Brnovich, a Republican who once vied for Trump’s support in a Senate GOP primary bid that hinged on false claims about the 2020 election results.

The IRS and the FBI’s Phoenix field office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A True the Vote spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.

Grigsby urged the federal agencies to pursue the group after what it described as multiple suspicious interactions with leaders Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips. Grigsby said the pair met with state investigators three times since early 2021 and promised to provide data it said would prove widespread fraud in the 2020 election — but the evidence never arrived.

:{:{}:

}:

Even though the group never turned over the promised data, Grigsby wrote, it began publicly claiming that it had given the state a hard drive — a claim Grigsby indicated the group also made to the Arizona Senate and to the Phoenix office of the FBI.

“Not only is this patently false, TTV acknowledged via correspondence and during a meeting with them that they had not given us the information but that they would,” he wrote.

True the Vote propagated claims of vote fraud by relying on geolocation data, which became the central focus of the movie “2000 Mules.” Trump has cited the movie as proof the election was stolen, and he’s praised the group’s work. But the movie’s claims have been sharply called into question by federal investigators and researchers who have tested its theories.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr delivered a forceful rebuke of the movie’s premise in testimony to the Jan. 6 select committee. He told the panel that in any metropolitan area, geolocation data would likely show “hundreds” of people who passed by drop boxes on multiple occasions.

“The premise that if you go by a box, five boxes or whatever it was, you know that that’s a mule is just indefensible,” Barr said, adding, “It didn’t establish widespread illegal harvesting,” Barr said.

Despite Barr’s mockery of the premise, Trump has promoted its claims both online and during his public events.

:{:{}:

}:

In an April 2022 meeting, Grigsby said the group claimed to have evidence of “243 mules” who had stuffed ballot boxes in Arizona. But they presented no hard evidence to back it up, he said.

In his most recent meeting with the group on June 1, Grigsby said Engelbrecht and Phillips indicated they had shared all their data with the FBI and were working with the bureau as informants. But he said the FBI’s Phoenix field office quickly confirmed this to be false and said the group had, in turn, told FBI agents to contact Brnovich’s office to obtain their data.

:{:{}:

}:

Grigsby also flagged the nonprofit status of the organization, noting the “considerable sums of money” they had raised while alleging massive voter fraud and promises to provide law enforcement with the information — even as they remained unable to provide the information.

---

---

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7wvj/lions-of-liberty-oath-keepers-midterm-ballot-boxes

Armed Fringe Groups Are Gearing Up to ‘Protect’ Midterm Ballot Dropboxes

The groups, inspired by conspiracy theories and the Big Lie about the 2020 election, could deter some voters, experts warn.

TO

By Tess Owen

October 6, 2022​Screenshot of a YCPT meeting in August led by Jim Arroyo

A “patriot group” in Arizona called Lions of Liberty—which is closely tied to the Oath Keepers—is organizing their supporters to go out and conduct round-the-clock surveillance of ballot dropboxes during the midterm elections. It’s the latest sign that groups with clear ties to extremists, galvanized by conspiracy theories, are seeking to take matters into their own hands this election season. 

Ballot dropboxes have become the central focus of election fraud conspiracy theorists, thanks to the debunked documentary 2,000 Mules, by right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza.

That film claims that a shadowy network of hired “mules” in contested states were hired by nonprofits as part of a giant ballot trafficking operation to stuff dropboxes with fake absentee ballots, all with the goal of stealing the 2020 election from Donald Trump. The film was released in May, six months before the midterms, reinvigorated the “Stop the Steal” movement and inspired vigilante efforts around the country—in some cases spearheaded by innocuous-sounding groups that obscure the known ideologues and extremists behind them.

Lions of Liberty is the “political arm” of a newly-formed nonprofit called Yavapai County Preparedness Team (YCPT), led by the former vice president of Arizona’s Oath Keeper chapter, Jim Arroyo. At a meeting in August that was posted to YouTube, Arroyo explained that they had turned the Oath Keeper chapter into a corporate nonprofit under the name of YCPT, which in turn gave them the ability to get a bank account.

In an email to VICE News, Arroyo said that the Arizona chapter officially broke ties with the national leadership of the notorious militia group after it was  implicated in the violent riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6. (Five members are currently standing trial for seditious conspiracy charges, including the group’s leader Stewart Rhodes. Prosecutors allege that Rhodes and his cohort plotted an “armed rebellion to shatter a bedrock of American democracy.”) However, they had been operating more or less independently from the national organization for about four years, said Arroyo; Rhodes broke ties with the Arizona contingent after they declined to assist in armed vigilante activities at the border, out of respect for Border Patrol.

News

The Oath Keepers’ Jan. 6 Texts Sure Do Look Damning

GREG WALTERS

10.05.22

Arroyo, who insists YCPT is not a militia, led that August meeting in an Oath Keepers hat and T-shirt. He explained to the crowd that he would need volunteers to monitor ballot drop boxes, and that he was particularly concerned about the period between midnight and 6 a.m. “If you saw the movie 2,000 Mules” he said, that timeframe was “when the bulk of the problems happen, that’s when we will be on scene with a camera and flashlight.” Arroyo told VICE News that some volunteers might be armed. “This is Arizona; almost everyone is armed, all the time,” he said. “That's not a big deal here.”

Arroyo said he will likely pick up a couple of shifts to monitor dropboxes.

In the August meeting, Arroyo assured members of the crowd that they’d be welcome to continue wearing their Oath Keepers merch, even while conducting ballot dropbox surveillance. “Your shirts and hats are what tell the world you’re not ashamed to be an Oath Keeper, or afraid of the government just because of that crap that happened on January the 6th, which was completely staged. It was a setup,” Arroyo said, before acknowledging, “Yeah, they did something stupid beyond all belief.”

During the meeting, Arroyo also stoked fears of an imminent civil war. “This is not the same as (Black Lives Matter) and George Floyd or antifa. This is a direct confrontation with the federal government,” he said. “This is now the federal government of the United States of America in direct conflict with its own citizenry.”

The Lions of Liberty describe themselves as a “resolute nucleus of concerned, passionate conservative patriots who are determined to correct the course for our country which has been hijacked and undermined by global elites, communists, leftists, deep state bureaucrats, and fake news.” Their goal? “To bring God back to our leadership and win this spiritual battle for the soul of our nation.”

The Lions of Liberty aren’t the only ones calling for and coordinating vigilante activity around the midterm elections.

Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a Seattle-based nonprofit, has been closely tracking this trend.

“The threat of groups of far-right vigilantes, some potentially armed, fueled by Big Lie misinformation, lurking near ballot dropboxes, could potentially deter some from casting their votes,” warned Burghart. “The possibility of conflict in such a scenario is real.”

Burghart added that “dropbox vigilantism” perpetuates unsubstantiated claims of rampant voter fraud that “keep the Big Lie alive and further erodes confidence in elections and democracy.”

:{:{}:

}:

Former Washington state Rep. Matt Shea runs On Fire Ministries, an apocalyptic Christian nationalist church in Spokane, and has been leading “training sessions” for prospective volunteers to monitor dropboxes. 

“We are doing something for the community. How many of you watched 2,000 Mules? Raise your hands,” said Shea during a service in September. “I think it would be good if we had some folks who were certified, trained, dropbox observers, in Spokane County.” The training took place on Sept. 30.

Shea is a particularly controversial character; a 2019 investigation by the Washington Legislature concluded that he’d “participated in an act of domestic terrorism” for his involvement in three armed conflicts against the federal government between 2014 and 2016, including the Bundys’ armed standoffs in Nevada and Oregon and an armed conflict with the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department in Priest River, Idaho.

And a group called True the Vote, which was involved in the 2,000 Mules documentary, is also teaming up with the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) to monitor dropboxes nationwide. CSPOA is headed by Richard Mack, who has long-standing ties to the militia movement, including to the Oath Keepers.

“The plan from national Big Lie groups, like True the Vote, is to use those “voter fraud” claims to get sympathetic sheriffs to intervene in elections,” said Burghart.

Dropbox surveillance efforts started getting underway earlier this summer, during the primaries, described then by the New York Times as a “nascent” movement. In some places, like in Arizona, groups were planning dropbox “tailgate parties.” One person with a handle referencing QAnon posted a photo of their party to Trump’s platform Truth Social, and credited Seth Keshel, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer and conspiracy theorist, for the idea.

[Screenshot from the app TruthSocial showing a "dropbox tailgate party"

Brian Cates, a columnist for the fringe-right publication The Epoch Times, has long been a proponent of the “Big Lie” and has been riling up his more than 120,000 followers on Telegram around the idea of taking matters into their own hands this election season. 

“The time for calling for people to just show up to vote is long past. We’re moving into another completely different era,” he wrote. “Citizens will be given the tools to monitor all the dropboxes and engage in massive real-time information operations in order to bring about election integrity.”

“Forewarned is forearmed,” he added. “An army of patriots is going to force compliance with the election laws in their states before these next elections are held.”

One of the primary examples of “evidence” of nefarious activity offered by 2,000 Mules was surveillance videos that appeared to show individuals posting multiple ballots into a dropbox, including in Georgia. Submitting multiple ballots on behalf of other people is known as “ballot harvesting,” and it is legal in several states, including Georgia.

However, the fact that submitting multiple ballots has been presented as a telltale sign of election fraud lays the groundwork for possible confrontations between dropbox “monitors” and people who are acting entirely within the law. (Right-wing political commentator Monica Matthews, from Clear Talk Media, even tried to remind her followers of this fact. “Before you all plan Dropbox tailgate parties to monitor the integrity of your elections- MAKE SURE you check your new state laws. Some states allow harvesting,” she wrote on Twitter in August. “Confronting people at dropboxes could land you in jail.”)

Earlier this summer, ahead of Washington’s August 2 primary, some signs began showing up near dropboxes near Seattle saying “This Ballot Dropbox is Under Surveillance” and warned of criminal penalties for ballot harvesting, the Seattle Times reported. However, it’s also legal in Washington to drop off multiple ballots at once on behalf of family members.

The signs also had a QR code that allowed passersby to report “suspicious activity” to the King County Republican Party(whose chair disavowed the vigilante activity). Amber Krabach, a GOP activist, QAnon conspiracy theorist and member of the Kings County Republicans’ “Election integrity Committee”, was behind the signs. The county elections office asked the sheriff’s department to investigate whether Krabach had broken a state law barring civilians from influencing someone’s vote within 25 feet of a ballot dropbox. They didn’t press charges, but they did refer the matter to the FBI.

All these vigilante efforts are taking place against a backdrop of increasingly incendiary rhetoric from GOP figures and far-right forums alike, about what will happen if they get even so much of a whiff of “voter fraud” this election season.

“If our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place—and it’s bloodshed,” said ex-Congressman Madison Cawthorn at a GOP event in North Carolina this summer.

:{:{}:

}:

On Patriots.win, a pro-Trump forum, some have discussed the need to bring guns to monitor dropboxes. Someone shared an article from the right-wing Gateway Pundit claiming they’d found evidence of massive voter fraud in Detroit during the 2020 election. “We need people waiting for that shit this time and take that shit at gun point,” someone responded. “Use walkie-talkies and don't park anywhere near there or use fake plates and a vehicle wrap.”

Others, like Arroyo from YCPT, have stoked fears of an imminent civil war instigated by the Democrats. “Keep your powder dry until after the midterms,” one person wrote. “No matter what, they are going to try like hell to provoke a civil war before then.”

“Hold the line till Nov… then do whatever the fuck you gotta do,” another user on patriots.win wrote.

---

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/dinesh-dsouza/oan-will-repeatedly-air-debunked-2000-mules-movie-midterms

---

---

https://www.dailykos.com › stories › 2022 › 9 › 1 › 2120294 › --Constitutional-sheriffs-embrace-of-Big-Lie-could-have-consequences-for-elections-in-November

Extremist sheriffs double down with their embrace of Trumpist 'election ...

Sep 1, 2022 Leaf harkened to the "constitutionalist" claim that county sheriffs are the supreme law of the land, saying: "What that does, it gives you the power—and I don't know if you're gonna appreciate me...

kos

no lnx vid

Extremist sheriffs double down with their embrace of Trumpist ‘election integrity’ campaign

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff

ThursdaySeptember 01, 2022 **

Barry County, MI, Sheriff Dar Leaf

Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf sought warrants on voting machines even after coming under investigation for tampering with the devices.

Daily Kos

TAGS

Arizona

Constitutionalists

Michigan

PinalCounty

Recommended

RichardMack

RightWingExtremists

ConstitutionalSheriffs

cspoa

MarkLamb

BarryCounty

ExtremistSheriffs

It’s a testament to the cult power of Donald Trump’s Big Lie that an elected lawman who himself now faces investigation for tampering with voting machines will not only refuse to apologize, but proceed to double down. Another law enforcement official subscribing to the same authoritarian conspiracy theories is meanwhile threatening everyone within his fiefdom with repercussions if they don’t submit to his similar “investigations,” and setting the stage for his nakedly partisan deputies to patrol at polling places.

These cases, both involving the so-called “constitutional sheriffs” movement’s open embrace of Trump’s election denialism, reflect the challenge that awaits much of the country—particularly the rural areas where these sheriffs rule—when we head to the polls in November. Their well-financed campaign, coordinated with leading Trumpists, to overturn election results and seize voting machines they suspect of skewing the vote could wreak havoc with election results around the country if it continues to gain steam.

Dar Leaf, the sheriff of Michigan’s Barry County, has played a leading role in the unfolding saga. It recently emerged that not only does Leaf insist that his dubious “investigations” of election outcomes in his county—based almost entirely on a fraudulent Dinesh D’Souza pseudodocumentary—are legitimate, but that he has continued to seek warrants to confiscate voting tabulators from election officials in townships throughout his county.

Leaf sought warrants to seize machines and search offices of the Barry County Clerk, as well as in Woodland Township and Irving Township, Bridge Michigan found through a Freedom of Information Act request. His affidavits could not cite any evidence justifying the searches, saying only that Leaf sought "evidence of the crime of election law violations."

The report found that Leaf wanted to seize "components of voting and election equipment"—tabulation machines, poll books, election reporting modules, as well as 2020 election paper ballots. He also demanded keys to unlock the devices.

Leaf’s intentions, the affidavits showed, were to have the voting equipment "forensically examined" by someone "who is certified and trained to conduct data extractions."

His involvement in seizing one such tabulator in 2021—which resulted in its being dismantled and examined, then returned with its seals broken—is part of a state investigation that involves not just Leaf, but the Republican nominee for Michigan’s attorney general, Matthew DePerno.

Last month, the current Democratic attorney general, Dana Nesso, filed a petition for a special prosecutor to handle that investigation since it involves her likely Republican opponent in the fall election. The petition indicated that state police investigators believed that DePerno was “one of the prime instigators,” along with Leaf and a state legislator, of a conspiracy to persuade Michigan clerks to allow unauthorized access to voting machines.

DePerno’s campaign issued a statement ridiculing Nessel’s petition as “an incoherent liberal fever dream of lies.”

Barry County Prosecutor Julie Nakfoor Pratt's office refused to sign off on the warrant requests because Leaf had not established "probable cause" to conduct the searches.

"There just wasn't anything in there that amounted to any fraud that I could see," she told Bridge Michigan.

Leaf’s efforts on Trump’s behalf began in December 2020, when he filed a lawsuit demanding Barry County’s voting machines be impounded—which was swiftly laughed out of court. He then embarked on an “investigation” of the machines by sending a deputy and a private investigator to grill township officials about their intricacies.

It was during one of these interrogations that the Irving Township clerk surrendered one of the town’s Dominion machines to Leaf’s team. “I’ve been told they took it (to the Detroit area) and tore it apart,” she told a local TV station, noting that when the machine was returned during a meeting in a parking lot, its security seal had been broken.

Dominion’s machineswere the focus of a conspiracy theory popular after the election among the Trumpist right claiming that vote totals had been secretly manipulated to hand the presidency to Joe Biden. The theory was widely circulated on right-wing media such as Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax, all of whom now face multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits from the company.

Leaf was connected through his attorney, Carson Tucker, to a number of the leading Trump-loving conspiracists the former president employed, including ex-Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood. “My client Barry County Sheriff and several other county sheriffs in Michigan would like to consider issuing probable cause warrants to sequester Dominion voting machines if there is evidence of criminal manipulation,” Tucker wrote to them in one email.

His claims made little sense in Barry County, where Trump won by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. Rutland Charter Township clerk Ruth Hawthorne observed tartly: “They seem to think there was some kind of microchip in our tabulators that was throwing votes to Biden. But Trump won Barry County. He won by 65 percent of the vote, so I don’t know where they’re thinking that any kind of chips were in any of our machines or thinking that something had happened to them. The whole thing is nutty. It is nutty, totally nutty.”

Leaf’s extremism was well established before the 2020 election. He had appeared on stage at an anti-masking rally bashing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer with three of the “Patriots” who were later charged with plotting to kidnap and execute her. He first suggested to reporters that perhaps the plotters were only trying to make a “citizens arrest.” Leaf and other Michigan “constitutional sheriffs” also later refused to enforce a statewide ban on guns in Michigan polling places.

His “election integrity” campaign in Michigan caught the attention of Richard Mack, the founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Keepers Association (CSPOA), who then announced a nationwide campaign involving all of the country’s “constitutional sheriffs.”

In May, Mack called on sheriffs and police around the U.S. “to come together in pursuit of the truth regarding the 2020 election.” A CSPOA press release made clear that the basis of their “investigations” was D’Souza’s widely debunked pseudodocumentary, 2000 Mules:

Considering the persistent allegations of election fraud since even before the 2020 elections began, and as a response to the perpetual polarizing effect this has had on the American people, the CSPOA would like to put this issue to rest. Our constitutional republic and peaceful future as a free people absolutely depend on it.

In the opinion of the CSPOA, there is very compelling physical evidence presented by truethevote.org in the movie “2000 Mules” produced by Dinesh D'Souza. “Law Enforcement has to step in at this point,” asserts D'Souza, and we absolutely agree with him. Therefore, we are asking for all local law enforcement agencies to work together to pursue investigations to determine the veracity of the “2000 Mules” information.

In fact, D’Souza’s documentary has been repeatedly demonstrated to be utterly groundless garbage. It has been debunked by Reuters, the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, FactCheck.org, Politifact, and NPR, to name only a few of the outlets where its phony “facts” and false premises have been eviscerated.

In short order, the CSPOA had teamed up with Trump’s most fervent election denialists, True the Vote, which receives substantial funding from notorious pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell. “Constitutional sheriffs” in other counties—including one in Kansas and another in Wisconsin—attempted similar “investigations” but came up empty-handed.

At a Las Vegas gathering organized by Mack and True the Vote in July, Leaf called the county prosecutor’s refusal to hand out the search warrants "ridiculous,” adding: “We think we have enough for search warrants and everything else,” Leaf said during the conference, which also featured speeches from Trump loyalists like Lindell. “We're gonna keep moving forward, folks. We’re not done with this.”

Leaf harkened to the “constitutionalist” claim that county sheriffs are the supreme law of the land, saying: “What that does, it gives you the power—and I don’t know if you’re gonna appreciate me saying this—if we can’t get anywhere, we’re looking at doing grand juries, at the common law.”

One of True the Vote’s partners in the “election integrity” campaign is another “constitutional sheriffs” organization called Protect America Now, run by Sheriff Mark Lamb of Arizona’s Pinal County.Lamb was a featured speaker at a Trump rally in Prescott in July, where he revved the crowd up with promises that the nation’s sheriffs would intervene on their behalf in future elections.

“We’re gonna make sure that we have election integrity this year,” Lamb declared. “Sheriffs are going to enforce the law. This is about the rule of law. It is against the law to violate elections laws—and that’s a novel idea, we’re going to hold you accountable for that. We will not let happen what happened in 2020.”

Lamb has plenty of local critics in Pinal County. At recent meeting of the county’s Board of Supervisors, he was accused by longtime residents of indulging in baseless fearmongering over election results.

:{:{}:

}:

Roberto Reveles, a longtime Arizona civil rights activist, told commissioners that Lamb was engaging in naked partisan threats: “I recently was subjected to the intimidation referred to by a previous speaker. Sheriff Mark Lamb walked up to me and pointed at me … and said, ‘You and your fellow Democrats are destroying our country.’”

Lamb defended himself shortly afterwards during an appearance on Newsmax. “Last week in the board meeting I had probably 8 to 10 Democrats show up and absolutely blast me because I believe in the ‘Big Lie,’” Lamb said.

“It clearly shows that these folks don’t care about election integrity,” he continued. “They’re happy that their guy is in power, and right now they should care more than ever because this guy in office, Joe Biden and his administration, is absolutely destroying America and freedom and they’re turning this into a country that we just don’t recognize.”

Local Democrats like Ralph Atchue, formerly a candidate for Arizona Senate, state that Lamb and his deputies will begin patrolling polling places. “I hear from everybody that the line is being crossed,” Atchue told Jessica Pishko of Bolts. “Completely blurred.”

Far-right election denialists in Seattle’s King County placed signs during the July primary at ballot drop boxes warning people that their actions were being recorded on camera. Ironically, the King County Sheriff’s Office is now investigating those actions at the behest of the county’s elections office.

“The specter of law enforcement at the polls is already enough to discourage people from going to the polls,” observes Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. “Moreover, the threat of surveillance of polling places and drop boxes proposed by groups like True the Vote is meant to intimidate voters, particularly people of color, and deter them from casting ballots.”

---

---

https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/oans-summer-election-conspiracy-theories

The 2020 presidential election was 693 days ago, and One America News Network is still a major hub for both denying the reality of 2020 and projecting conspiracy theories onto future elections.

Since June, OAN’s election fraud coverage has continued to hinge on hosts’ and guests’ repeated denials of the fairness of the 2020 election. It has included everything from claims that the ballot counts were tampered with to continued promotion of Dinesh D'Souza's ridiculous 2000 Mules documentary. And despite an ongoing $1.6 billion defamation suit, OAN has even proclaimed that “we were right” about Dominion Voting Systems.

With the stolen election as bedrock, OAN is looking grimly toward the future, with paranoid warnings that the Democrats will now use TikTok, postal unions, and their October surprise — “the next COVID election variant” — to cheat in the midterms and beyond. All this as the supposedly “Stalinesque” FBI runs interference for President Joe Biden’s political goals with actions like seizing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s cell phone.

OAN’s stolen election cinematic universe remains as rich with misinformation as ever, and they're hoping their viewers get involved. As Steve Bannon put it during an appearance on the network, “It’s all about … whether this audience, whether this audience turns out and brings people with it, and becomes poll workers, election judges, election officials, and also force multipliers to get everybody to the polls...

---

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/true-the-vote-election-fraud/

no lnx many

How True the Vote Fabricates Claims of Election Fraud, for Fun and Profit

Gregg Phillips, a former Texas official who claims that “2,000 mules” stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump, has raised millions of dollars to chase nonexistent fraudulent votes.

By Mimi Swartz

August 22, 2022

Gregg Phillips True the Vote

Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips.]

If your movie preferences lean toward the likes of Top Gun: Maverick, or if your politics fall anywhere to the left of Liz Cheney, you might have missed the theatrical release of a documentary titled 2000 Mules. But if you tuned in to the January 6 hearings, you might have caught a reference to the film by former attorney general William Barr, who, doubling as a movie critic, dismissed it as “singularly unimpressive” and “indefensible.”

Directed by right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza, 2000 Mules purports to prove that Democrats engaged in widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election and stole the presidency from Donald Trump—who, coincidentally or not, pardoned D’Souza in 2018 after his felony conviction for making illegal campaign contributions. Trump, who hosted a screening of 2000 Mules at Mar-a-Lago, called it the “greatest and most impactful documentary of our time.”

As with so many things hyped by the former president, the film became a viral sensation, complete with its own eponymous hashtag. It is among the highest-grossing documentaries of the year so far, having earned nearly $1.5 million at the box office since its May release. (Documentaries don’t tend to attract Marvel franchise–size audiences.) Streaming revenues—D’Souza’s website sells the film for $19.99 a pop—totaled $10 million in just the first two weeks of release, according to Salem Media Group, the conservative Christian company that financed the film.

Whatever haul it’s actually made, 2000 Mules and its claims have clearly achieved a broad reach. A Rasmussen poll of 1,000 likely U.S. voters conducted in the first week in June found that 41 percent had heard of the film and 15 percent had seen it. (Of the 146 likely voters who had watched the film, 77 percent said it strengthened their “conviction that there was systematic and widespread election fraud in the 2020 election.”) One of the movie’s admiring viewers was Texas Secretary of State John Scott, a Greg Abbott appointee who briefly represented Trump in a challenge to Pennsylvania’s 2000 election tally. “It’s really amazing,” the state election chief told an audience of Jewish conservatives in Dallas in mid-July. “You get an enormous amount of information.”

This success has come despite the movie’s claims being repeatedly debunked. The Associated Press, NPR, the New York Times, PolitiFact, and the Washington Post, among others, have pointed out that the film’s central assertion—that cellphone tracking data reveals multiple trips by Democrat-funded flunkies (a.k.a. “mules”) to stuff drop boxes with phony ballots in battleground states—is just so much hooey. The film contains video footage of people putting multiple ballots into drop boxes (which is not, as the film would have it, illegal). But as NPR notes, the videos never show the same individuals taking votes to multiple drop boxes, or returning to the same boxes to stuff them with additional ballots.

Some of the alleged ballot-harvesters get tagged as though they’ve been spied on by undercover cops—including “dog guy,” who was filmed with his pup. Another fellow is deemed suspicious for taking a picture of his bike propped against a drop box after voting. “If you’re just casting your own ballot,” one of the film’s talking heads asks darkly, “what reason in the world would you have to come back and take a picture of the box?” Millions of Instagram users could provide the answer.

The absurdities don’t stop there. A map that purports to depict cellphone usage in Atlanta—one of the main alleged centers of mulish activity—actually shows a slice of Moscow, according to the Washington Post. The film boasts that the “geolocation” technology not only backs up Trump’s assertions of systematic election theft but had such pinpoint accuracy that it also helped solve the murder of an eight-year-old girl in Georgia. Law enforcement officials told NPR that there was no truth to the story; the murder had been solved two months before the brains behind 2000 Mules said they turned over their evidence to authorities.

You might think such disproven claims would discredit the filmmakers. But for many conspiracy theorists, the depictions of shadowy, hoodie-wearing figures approaching ballot drop boxes, interspersed with images of dark rooms lit by computer screens displaying incomprehensible maps and diagrams, is proof aplenty.

The star of the show, along with D’Souza and the hoodied mules, is Gregg Phillips, a Republican who has served as a state official in Mississippi and Texas. He is credited with developing the technology used to “prove” the mules’ nefarious deeds. According to the film, Phillips has “a deep background in election intelligence; he’s worked projects over the world; he has a massive thirty years’ experience.” His costar is Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of the Houston-based nonprofit True the Vote, whose stated mission is to “restore America’s confidence in our electoral process.”

Phillips has served as a board member and a highly paid “researcher” for True the Vote. He and Engelbrecht are listed as executive producers of 2000 Mules. And both have shown, time and again, how a lot of money can be made by purporting to show—despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary—that voter fraud is an organized threat to our democracy. As Texas-based reporter Cassandra Jaramillo writes in a recent exposé for the investigative website Reveal, “True the Vote highlights how exploiting the Big Lie has become a lucrative enterprise.”

Engelbrecht and Phillips make a cinematic pair. She is blond, always impeccably made up, and earnest in the way of a former Texas beauty queen turned marketing executive. The tall, pale-eyed Phillips, who began his political career, and his hunt for voter fraud, in Alabama in the eighties, is as steady and sincere as an undertaker, with the kind of elaborate, well-tended facial hair that evokes a Civil War general. You could think of them as the Barbie and Ken of voter fraud, or maybe the Bonnie and Clyde.

Engelbrecht, a former small-business owner and Parent Teacher Organization board member in southeast Texas, began chasing alleged voter fraud in 2009 after finding herself “sickened” by the election of President Barack Obama. She’s been a leading advocate for restrictive voter ID laws and purges of voter rolls, and has organized controversial poll-watching efforts focused on Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Houston.

Elected officials including the late Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas have raised questions about the tactics of Engelbrecht’s organizations. King Street Patriots, the anti-voter-fraud group that Engelbrecht founded prior to True the Vote, in 2009, was registered as a charitable 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Democratic officials and voting rights groups such as Fair Fight, founded by Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic legislator and current candidate for governor of Georgia, have charged that True the Vote uses “suppressive tactics” and supports only Republican candidates, in violation of nonprofit rules. Journalists for the Washington Post and the Center for Investigative Reporting have documented questionable financial dealings—including the transfer of large sums of money going to Engelbrecht’s and Phillips’s for-profit businesses. In every case, the two have denied wrongdoing.

(Texas Monthly made multiple requests to interview Engelbrecht and Phillips, then sent a detailed list of questions to them and James Bopp, a lawyer who has represented True the Vote. Brian Glicklich, True the Vote’s communications consultant, said Engelbrecht and Phillips would not respond to questions or meet with a reporter.)

Phillips became nationally notorious immediately after the 2016 election, when he tweeted on November 11—soon after Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton—that he had “Completed analysis of database of 180 million voter registrations. Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million.” At the time, Phillips was marketing an app he’d created, called VoteStand, which allowed users to send photos or videos of suspected improper voting or electioneering to a central database.

Not surprisingly, President-elect Trump jumped on Phillips’s claim, tweeting: “Look forward to seeing final results of VoteStand. Gregg Phillips and crew say at least 3,000,000 votes were illegal.” (Coincidentally or not, that is approximately the margin by which Clinton won the popular vote.) Despite promises to produce evidence of his claims, Phillips never did so. Reputable election officials from both parties, in states across the country, said no such fraud took place. But Phillips’s “finding” became the basis for Trump to repeatedly assert what he started saying in November of that year: “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

The Associated Press, among others, started poking into Phillips’s history in the wake of his splashy claim. In 2017, AP reported that the self-proclaimed foe of voter fraud was registered in 2016 to vote in three states: Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. Queried on that subject, Phillips’s response was, “Why would I know or care? Doesn’t that just demonstrate how broken the system is?”

Across the country, judges appointed by presidents of both parties have heard claims of widespread voter fraud, with not one finding any compelling evidence to support them. Yet Phillips and Engelbrecht, along with Trump, have brought to mind Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels’ observation that “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” When the lie is amplified by partisan outlets such as Fox News and by influencers on social media, that makes it easier for the conspiracy mongers to advance their political goals—and for some to make money along the way.

Christian Menefee, a Democrat who serves as county attorney for Harris County, where Houston is located, told me that “the lies and exaggerations about voter fraud . . . are used by conspiracy theorists to file meritless lawsuits, and by elected officials to push partisan audits that end up finding nothing. It leads legislators to pass restrictive voting laws, causes people to question election processes that have been safely used for decades, and makes election workers fear they’ll find themselves in court if they make a minor mistake. These are real impacts, changing how our elections are run and making it harder for eligible voters to cast ballots.”

Andrew Wheat, the research director of the corruption-exposing nonprofit group Texans for Public Justice, put it a little differently. “Sometimes you get the feeling that we as a human race have lost the ability to do a simple Google search, because these hustlers keep doing the same things over and over.”

When Gregg Phillips entered political life in his home state of Alabama, he was a clean-shaven, baby-faced fund-raiser for the state’s Republican party. As he later told the Atlantic, “Our first voter project I did when I worked for the GOP in Alabama back in the 1980s. I’ve been involved off and on since then, and I’ve always said we need to ensure integrity in our systems.”

At a legislative hearing in Arizona in late May, Phillips recounted an experience back home that he said turned him into a crusader against voter fraud. In 1994, a race for chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama between the Democratic incumbent, Ernest “Sonny” Hornsby, and a Republican challenger, Perry O. Hooper Sr., came down to fewer than 300 votes out of 1.1 million cast. Hooper, whose campaign was run by GOP campaign guru Karl Rove, won after a recount. But while the outcome was in question, Hooper’s campaign made vociferous charges of voter fraud, which were never proved. Phillips said he advised the campaign in its investigation. “I worked in Alabama since I was a kid and you know, 15,000 votes showing up in Selma, Alabama”—a city that is overwhelmingly Black—“was not a super big surprise to anyone,” Phillips told his Arizona audience.

In 1991, Phillips moved on to work in Mississippi as a fund-raiser for Kirk Fordice, who became the first Republican to be elected governor of the state since Reconstruction. Fordice, in turn, tapped Phillips to head the Mississippi Department of Human Services in 1993. But when the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (or PEER), made up of legislators appointed by the lieutenant governor and house Speaker, conducted a background check on Phillips, it found discrepancies in his résumé. Phillips, who was then 33, claimed he’d majored in finance at the University of Alabama, but the committee’s records search showed he had majored in transportation. And though Phillips said he was a registered voter in Mississippi at the time, the committee found that his name did not appear on the rolls. Phillips also failed to file a required financial report to the state ethics commission. And he was, according to reports citing his former wife’s new husband, a deadbeat dad who’d failed to pay child support. (Phillips denied that accusation.)

Nevertheless, the state Senate approved his nomination. Within two years, Phillips left for more lucrative work with a contractor who had benefited from an $878,000 deal with his department. Phillips’s new salary: $84,000 a year. (In today’s dollars, that’s around $164,000.) A subsequent investigation by the same PEER committee concluded that “Mr. Phillips’ actions create the appearance of impropriety, facilitating an erosion of the public trust.” The committee also asserted that Phillips’s moves “relative to the contractual arrangement create the appearance of impropriety and could constitute a violation of state ethics laws.” Phillips denied any wrongdoing.

Phillips’s next public position was as the executive director of the Mississippi GOP, which was hellbent on combatting alleged voter fraud in Black communities (in a state that is 38 percent Black). A lawsuit from Black leaders in one such area resulted in a restraining order against the state GOP’s voter-intimidation tactics, and representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice stationed themselves at polling locations during Mississippi’s 1995 elections to make sure voters of color were not turned away. The state GOP provided no evidence of the fraud that it had alleged.

Phillips hadn’t yet become a national figure, but his pattern was set: a life of toggling between ever-more-lucrative public and private-sector jobs. Phillips has mostly shown impeccable timing in his entrances and exits, experiencing only one glitch: he was up for a job as head of human resources for the state of Alabama in 1995, but a negative editorial in the Birmingham News dashed his chances, citing Phillips’s “shaky qualifications and a suspect track record.”

For some Texas Republicans, though, Phillips’s track record seemed to inspire little more than a shoulder shrug. In 2003, Phillips was hired as executive deputy commissioner of the state Health and Human Services Commission under Governor Rick Perry. (When a Houston Chronicle reporter later looked into how Phillips had come to be hired, no officials could recall. There were no letters of recommendation in his file.)

Another reported conflict of interest followed. When Phillips oversaw a billion-dollar plan to streamline and privatize Health and Human Services, two clients of a company called Enterject, a “management consulting services” firm that Phillips had founded, won $167 million in state contracts. Phillips claimed to have severed all ties with Enterject while serving in state government, but his then-wife was the company’s chief financial officer. In addition, the Chronicle reported, “a company called GHT Development Inc. owned the Internet registration for the Enterject Web site. GHT listed Gregg Phillips as its chief executive.”

When Phillips resigned from the Texas HHSC, he said it was because of a lingering health issue and that he wanted to spend more time with his family. But as it had in Mississippi, controversy followed him. According to a subsequent Dallas Morning News investigation, the company Phillips hired to replace state workers—to the tune of $899 million for five years—produced chaos, including jammed call centers and clients who were separated wrongfully from their benefits. “Most infamously,” the News reported, “applicants for a time were given a wrong fax number for sending pay stubs and other private documents. It belonged to a Seattle warehouse that had no part of the deal.”

Five years later, in 2010, the state hired an Austin-based company called AutoGov to help fix the continuing problems in Health and Human Services, at a cost to taxpayers of $207,500. State officials thought the company’s software expertise might simplify some of the confusion Phillips had left behind. Phillips, it turned out, had founded AutoGov and served as its chairman and CEO. The News reported that there was nothing illegal about bringing Phillips back into the fold given the years he had been away from state government, but noted that “critics of the deal say it’s troubling that a former employee is getting paid to try to fix problems spawned by an idea he helped hatch.”

Engelbrecht and Phillips have shown, time and again, how a lot of money can be made by purporting to show that voter fraud is an organized threat to our democracy.

Nobody can deny that Phillips is relentlessly entrepreneurial. In 2012, he garnered attention nationally with his VoteStand app. “People will have somewhere to turn if they see voter fraud or something that is not quite right in their eyes,” Phillips explained to Politico. “We think this will help us leave a positive legacy this election cycle, rather than just putting up a bunch of ads.” The app, available for iPhone through Apple’s app store, purportedly sent all reports to a “team of experts that are interested in and investigating this issue,” Phillips said, though he declined to offer more specifics about how the app worked and who had paid for its development. (He also declined to answer Texas Monthly’s question about who the “experts” were.)

It turned out that funding for VoteStand came from a super PAC, Winning Our Future, for which Phillips served as managing director. The PAC, which received $15 million from right-wing billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, backed former Republican U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s unsuccessful presidential run in 2012.

Phillips appears to have connected with Catherine Engelbrecht around 2014, when she was continuing to gain national notoriety for fighting imaginary voter fraud. Phillips had his mysterious technology, and Engelbrecht had a platform to market their investigations nationwide.That year, Phillips followed up on VoteStand with a nonprofit he founded called theVoters Trust, which offered a $1 million bounty to anyone who could prove that IRS leaders or members of the Obama administration were targeting right-wing or tea party groups. (It’s unclear who collected the cash, if anyone did.)

Even before that time, Englebrecht’s efforts, like Phillips’s, had begun to attract scrutiny. In 2011, the Texas Observer reported on multiple controversies emanating from her King Street Patriots, including one that involved a video featuring a doctored image of a Black woman holding a sign declaring, “I only got to vote once!” In a harbinger of things to come, Engelbrecht’s group had taken “evidence” of invalid voter applications to Harris County’s Republican voter registrar, Leo Vasquez, who subsequently claimed in August 2010 to have found more than five thousand such invalid applications.

The questionable research from King Street Patriots was challenged by Houston Votes, a progressive group that was registering voters. Englebrecht had publicly claimed that Houston Votes was being controlled by the New Black Panthers, a “radical, racist, criminal hate group.” The group’s leader filed a defamation suit, but the damage had been done: before the allegations were made, Houston Votes had been registering one thousand minority voters a day; afterward, its daily tally dropped to two hundred. That November, at the request of Democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, federal monitors from the Department of Justice came to Houston to protect voters against intimidation by King Street poll watchers on Election Day.

More trouble followed. The Texas Democratic Party filed a lawsuit alleging that King Street Patriots made “unlawful expenditures in coordination with the Republican Party and/or one or more of its candidates.” The suit further alleged that King Street was a “sham domestic nonprofit corporation that instead acts as an unregistered and illegal political committee.” Though King Street denied the allegations, a state court judge ruled in favor of the Democrats. Appeals dragged on for several years, however, by which time King Street had morphed into a different group, True the Vote. The case was ultimately dismissed by agreement of both parties, and, according to Chad Dunn, the attorney who represented the Democrats, “It looks like Catherine went into the vote-suppression business full-time.”

None of the controversies stopped Engelbrecht from becoming a tea party star, hosting events where she charmed Republican county clerks, state legislators, and members of Congress in Texas and beyond. Despite the clear partisan flavor of these events, Engelbrecht continued to claim that True the Vote was nonpartisan. Engelbrecht was becoming a Fox News darling, and True the Vote said it was organizing poll-watching volunteers in 35 states, while pushing for voter roll purges and drawing accusations of voter intimidation.

It’s easy to see why Engelbrecht and Phillips joined forces. They had a lot in common, including a loathing for President Obama, a love of the spotlight, and a penchant for turning a personal profit from their crusades against alleged voter fraud. Their companies have shared a mailing address, and in 2016 Engelbrecht was named the chief financial officer of one of Phillips’s companies. Engelbrecht and Phillips have been coy about a reported romantic link, though both listed the same address in the small Central Texas town of Cat Spring, about sixty miles west of Houston, for several years. “You know, Gregg and I have actually talked about this and how we would answer this question,” Engelbrecht told the New York Times in May, “and the best answer that I think either of us are going to give is, it is totally unrelated and unimportant.”

Regardless, they’ve made quite a team. By 2016, True the Vote’s national influence was growing, with a substantial network of volunteers, event co-sponsorships with the Koch brothers’ tea party advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, and data collected by Phillips, who by then was touting a proprietary algorithm for his research. (That includes the research that he claimed—without ever showing any evidence—proved that more than three million noncitizens voted in 2016.) In the two years prior to 2016, one of Phillips’s companies was paid $30,000 by True the Vote, while he was a board member of the organization.

Allegations of widespread voter fraud were repeated by Donald Trump and right-wing media so often that they became gospel, first on the far right and eventually among a majority of Republicans. Phillips was always eager to congratulate himself for his work. “I’ve torn down govt in two states, eliminated 20K jobs and saved $5 billion,” he boasted in a 2016 tweet. “Requires enormous stones.”

When legitimate media outlets came calling, Phillips was more circumspect about his never-proved claim of more than three million illegal votes. “I’m not gonna be goaded into going faster than I want to,” he told the Atlantic in January 2017, when pressed about releasing his data. “I’m not a government official.” Besides, he said, “Our interest is not in uncovering anything that might somehow change any past election, because once those votes are certified, they’re certified and that’s over. The work that we’re doing could create a foundation for looking at elections moving forward.” The same month, The Guardian reported that the man who had built a career excising government waste owed about $100,000 in back taxes. Phillips said he owed less than $50,000, and that he was “in a disagreement with the IRS.”

A lesser man might have retreated with his spoils to, say, a villa in the Caymans. Not Phillips. Joe Biden’s victory in 2020—along with Trump’s incessant claim that the election had been stolen—inspired a deeply conservative North Carolina donor by the name of Fred Eshelman to wire $2 million shortly after Election Day to True the Vote, whose leaders were saying they needed to raise $7.3 million to stop the certification of the election and get to the bottom of the grand conspiracy that robbed Trump of his presidency. A former pharmaceutical executive and financier who gave $100 million to the University of North Carolina, Eshelman could afford to make the biggest donation True the Vote had ever received.

On November 9, not long after Eshelman’s payment arrived, Phillips’s latest venture, OPSEC, billed True the Vote $350,000. The following day, True the Vote gave a $500,000 retainer to Bopp, a right-wing lawyer best known for winning the Citizens United case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down limits on corporate campaign contributions. While True the Vote had promised that OPSEC would “aggregate and analyze data to identify patterns of election subversion,”Bopp’s role was to try to persuade judges to give the organization access to voter rolls in closely contested states so it could show proof of fraud. Eshelman was told that Bopp would file lawsuits in seven states. He filed four, and then voluntarily withdrew each of them within a week.

Eschelman pitched in another $500,000 after a consultant told him True the Vote needed “additional short-term money for Bopp.” But Bopp, Engelbrecht, and Phillips had promised much and delivered little. “We were just not getting any data or proof,” a lobbyist for Eshelman later told the Washington Post. “We were looking at this and saying to ourselves, ‘This just is not adding up.’”

Disgusted, Eshelman filed suit, demanding a refund. The lawsuit, first filed in federal court, was withdrawn and then refiled in Texas, where a judge threw out the case, ruling that Eshelman did not have standing to sue in the state. The proper authority to investigate the case, the judge said, was the Texas attorney general’s office. Republican attorney general Ken Paxton—who’s been a guest on Engelbrecht’s podcast, has taken no action.

Or rather, the Attorney General’s office has chosen a different kind of action. On May 13th,  before the official May 20th release date of 2000 Mules, Jonathan White, the Division Chief of the AG’s Election Integrity Division, sent out an email to his team, stating that Deputy AG Josh Reno had invited everyone on it to a screening of D’Souza’s “voter fraud documentary” the next evening. The event was free to all comers, along with a plus-one.General Paxton had a block of reservations, White continued, and would be present. “I think they would love to have a good showing from our office…” the head of AG’s Election Integrity Division wrote. The office hosted another screening on June 6, complete with a BBQ lunch.

Meanwhile, according to Reveal’s reporting, court records showed that Phillips’s voter analysis company, OPSEC Group LLC, continued to bill True the Vote after Eschelman broke ties, receiving another $400,000 for a project called Eyes on Georgia.

True the Vote’s tax returns, linked to in the Reveal exposé, have been “riddled with inconsistencies and have regularly been amended,” Jaramillo wrote. Her extensive investigation found that along with the handsome sums paid to Phillips’s various companies for their data analysis, True the Vote has made questionable loans to Engelbrecht, who received $113,396 in 2019 alone.

Phillips is currently CEO and Engelbrecht is “chief experience officer” of a company called CoverMe Services Inc.—formerly known as AutoGov—which says it uses software to “bridge the financial and social service gaps faced by both hospitals and their patients.” CoverMe claims that “in the span of a five-minute interview, hospitals can provide patients with real-time eligibility and enrollment support, creating better outcomes for both the patient and provider.” The State of Mississippi has paid the company close to $1.7 million for its services.

But that doesn’t mean Phillips has given up on voter fraud investigations—especially after the attention garnered by 2000 Mules. The film has the ultimate power-endorser in Trump, who brought up Phillips’s claims again in a twelve-page missive refuting the claims of the January 6 committee. “The data is astonishing!” Trump said in his publicly released statement. “Rather than 2000 mules, the number jumps to 54,000 mules.”

Both Engelbrecht and Phillips are now certified stars on the conspiracy circuit—with their credibility boosted by state and federal lawmakers eager to use their “findings” to make the case for overturning elections. In Wisconsin, the duo addressed the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections in March. In Michigan, seventeen Republican House members asked the state’s attorney general to investigate the claims made in 2000 Mules. Representative Andy Biggs, a Republican from Arizona, has called for congressional hearings about the film’s allegations. On July 27, in a sign of how much weight Phillips’s name now carries in far-right circles, Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake tweeted prior to her primary victory, “I am honored to have the endorsement of True the Vote’s Gregg Phillips!”

Engelbrecht and Phillips have still failed to present any credible evidence to prove the claims they made in the movie. In the Arizona legislative hearing, Phillips said criticism of their methods came from “journalistic terrorists.” (The Republican Party of Arizona picked up on his phrase, twice tweeting out: “The mainstream media is domestic terrorists.”) Asked to describe his process in greater detail, Phillips refused, calling the methods “proprietary.”

Phillips says criticism of True the Vote’s methods comes from “journalistic terrorists.”

On a right-wing podcast in late spring, he claimed that an even bigger finding would soon be revealed. At the hearing in Arizona, he doubled down: “We do indeed have a matter brewing that is ten times bigger than Mules,” he said, inspiring excited whispers in the audience. “It’ll be about six weeks before we can clear our way through it, but I assure you it is the most explosive issue that you have ever come in contact with related to elections in the United States.”

Twelve weeks later, as this story was being published, the explosive revelation had still not been delivered.But Phillips was still dropping hints to titillate the conspiracy-minded. On a podcast in late July, he claimed that what would be revealed stems from an “op” involving “the United States government, which we worked for,” until “we were betrayed by the United States government.” This month, True the Vote held asymposium inArizona called “The Pit,” where Phillips promised to roll out “devastating” findings, including “the part that was left out of the movie.” The proceedings were livestreamed on the Right Side Broadcasting Network. But in lieu of a big reveal, Engelbrecht and Phillips announced they were putting up a new website that would include surveillance video taken at drop boxes and documents from various election lawsuits—but not the geolocation data that was the basis for the film’s allegations. And that, they said, would be a wrap on 2000 Mules. “The end of Mules!” Engelbrecht exclaimed. “End scene. We’re done.”

The pair had already been moving on to their next project. In late July, Phillips appeared withEngelbrecht on a stage in Las Vegas at a gathering of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, an organization of local police officials who claim that federal and state authorities are subordinate to local sheriffs. They were joined by sheriffs who have signed on to True the Vote’s Protect America Now initiative, designed to encourage them to investigate elections—or, as the True the Vote website puts it, to “equip local sheriffs with the tools that they need to fight potential fraud,” such as enhanced video surveillance. A national hotline, according to True the Vote, will be set up “to connect American citizens with their local sheriffs in case they see anything awry” at the polls this fall. Five Texas sheriffs (and one former sheriff) from small, rural counties have signed up.

And so it goes, despite the many investigations of Phillips and Engelbrecht, and despite True the Vote’s continued inability to prove that voter fraud exists. “True the Vote and groups like it are well-documented voter intimidation scams,” said Chris Hollins, a Democrat running for mayor of Houston who, as county clerk for Harris, was on the front lines in the 2020 election. “They’re created to amplify conspiracy theories, funded by wealthy right-wing activists, to tie the hands of election administrators and embolden partisan poll watchers.”

They are also created, as Engelbrecht and Phillips have long demonstrated, with an eye toward making money. To support their efforts to “equip” sheriffs for November’s elections, True the Vote aims to raise a cool $1 million.

Correction 8/22/2022: An earlier version of this article reported Miriam and Sheldon Adelson had given $15 billion to the super PAC Winning Our Future. They gave $15 million.

Update 8/24/2022: This article has been updated to include information about invitations to members of the Texas Attorney General’s office to watch 2,000 Mules.

---