The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: dinesh d souza
Accountability Looms For Media Outfits That Spread Lies About 2020 Election

Accountability Looms For Media Outfits That Spread Lies About 2020 Election

A wave of litigation seeking accountability from media purveyors of smears and lies that falsely depicted the 2020 presidential election as "stolen" is percolating in courts around the country -- and heading toward trials or settlements in the near future.

These lawsuits augment the most high-profile investigations and prosecutions seeking accountability from Donald Trump and his White House and campaign aides for seeking to overturn the election’s result.

Indictments are anticipated from the probe conducted by Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, and possibly from the U.S. Department of Justice, whose investigation and prosecution of the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is one of the largest in its history. (That said, some DOJ observers expect the first federal indictment of Trump to focus on his removal of government documents to his Florida home.)

While Trump faces 19 pending civil and criminal cases, according to JustSecurity.org, an online analytical forum, there are an additional 10 pending cases at various stages in state and federal courts that are targeting Trump allies in right-wing media and propaganda fronts.

The lawsuits allege the media-based provocateurs smeared election officials, local government workers, ordinary voters, and others by publishing false and defamatory claims about them, or additionally violated their civil rights by deploying illegal and violent tactics.

The suits stand apart from pending litigation by Dominion Voting Systems, one of the nation’s largest voting machinery makers, which is seeking $1.6 billion from Fox News for defaming its computer systems.

Many of these cases are being litigated with the help of ProtectDemocracy.org, “a nonpartisan nonprofit organization formed in late 2016 with an urgent and explicit mission: to prevent American democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government.”

Protect Democracy’s ongoing lawsuits include:

• A lawsuit against filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, True the Vote, Salem Media, and others involved in the 2020 election conspiracy film, 2000 Mules, for defamation and voter intimidation, on behalf of a Georgia man who was falsely accused of breaking the law in the movie and its related promotional materials.

• A defamation lawsuit against Rudolph Giuliani in federal court brought by two former election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, who testified before the House Select Committee on January 6. In late October, a judge denied Giuliani’s motion to dismiss the case.

• A lawsuit that led to a settlement with One America News Network, known as OAN, for the pro-Trump network’s publication of false reports about the 2020 election. A similar suit in a Missouri court against The Gateway Pundit, another pro-Trump right-wing website, is moving toward discovery and interviews of witnesses under oath.

• A defamation lawsuit against Project Veritas, James O’Keefe, and Richard Hopkins, for spreading the lie after the 2020 election that the postmaster in Erie, Pennsylvania, was illegally backdating ballots at postal facilities. A state court denied motions to dismiss the case.

• A voter intimidation lawsuit in Texas in response to an incident in 2020 where the “Texas Trump Train” – a caravan of Trump-supporting motor vehicles – tried to force a Joe Biden campaign bus off a highway at high speed. Discovery has been proceeding.

These suits are in addition to other litigation involving election denial. Last week in Arizona, in a lawsuit brought by the League of Women Voters, a federal judge barred “unlawful voter intimidation” by Trump backers who were staking out ballot drop boxes, carrying guns, wearing body armor, and taking photos and videos of voters, some of whom they followed.

The media-centered lawsuits are part of a spectrum of litigation that seeks to unearth evidence about the broad national conspiracy by Trump and his allies to overturn 2020’s popular and Electoral College votes.

Notably, AmericanOversight.org, has filed public records requests for communications (e-mails, texts, and phone logs, for example) that have revealed the misconduct of Trump-allied activists, including the discovery of plans by state GOP officials and activists to forge fake Electoral College documents.

While it remains to be seen what will ensue from these lawsuits, they not only suggest that long-awaited legal accountability is looming, but underscore that spreading disinformation is a strategy deeply connected to more direct attempts to undermine election results and seize illegitimate power.

Arizona's GOP Attorney General Urges Federal Probe Of 'True the Vote'

Arizona's GOP Attorney General Urges Federal Probe Of 'True the Vote'

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, an election-denying Republican, has asked the IRS and FBI to look into the finances of the Texas-based non-profit behind election conspiracy movie 2000 Mules, True the Vote, for allegedly raising money off baseless allegations and outright lies about voter fraud in the 2020 elections.

Brnovich’s office had asked True the Vote, led by Catherine Engelbrecht, a longtime election fraud conspiracy theorist, for data about some of its claims in convicted felon Dinesh D'Souza’s election-denying film — particularly its unfounded allegations of fraudulent ballots and “stash houses” in Maricopa and Yuma counties — but never heard back from the group, according to the New York Times.

In the right-wing documentary, which multiple experts have thoroughly debunked, True the Vote touted geolocation data that showed hundreds of people around the country, called “mules,” coordinating in illegal ballot stuffing for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in 2020.

In a letter, dated Friday and reported on byPolitico and even Fox News, a staffer with the Special Investigations Section of Brnovich’s office, Reginald Grigsby, assailed True the Vote for failing to report back to the attorney general’s office with information to back its allegations of rampant voter fraud while falsely suggesting it had — saying it had given the state a hard drive — in fundraising communications.

"They indicate they have provided the information to law enforcement agencies; in our case they have not after promising to do so. Another law enforcement agency has also stated they have not provided them the information, informing them they had given the information to us," Grigsby wrote in the letter.

Grigsby urged the federal agencies to look into multiple questionable interactions with the group’s leaders, Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, a former Texas official and 2000 Mules star, and suggested that an investigation might turn up evidence of financial wrongdoing, Politico noted in its report Friday.

"TTV has raised considerable sums of money alleging they had evidence of widespread voter fraud and their efforts would train the public to protect election integrity at the polls and to help protect all voters' rights," the letter said. “Given TTV’s status as a nonprofit organization, it would appear that further review of its financials may be warranted,” it added.

Engelbrecht and Phillips had three meetings with representatives of the attorney general’s Special Investigations Section — on June 23, 2021, April 5, 2022, and June 1, 2022 — Grigsby noted, during which “Ms. Engelbrecht and Mr. Phillips stated they would provide us with the information to support their allegations."

“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,” Grigsby wrote.

Top Republicans, including former President Trump, have presented the movie as hard evidence that an overarching Democrat-orchestrated effort to rig the elections in multiple battleground states had cost Trump the victory in 2020.

The former president hosted a screening of 2000 Mules at his Mar-a-Lago resort, and in attendance were a number of big names in the Republican sphere, including Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse and disgraced conservative provocateur Michael Flynn.

"There's no way they can discount what is in this movie," Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake told Newsmax in May. "It is in black and white."

True the Vote raised $7 million after Trump’s defeat, promising to investigate and provide evidence of fraud in Counties in Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, but never did, incurring lawsuits and accusations of deceit from Republican-leaning donors.

Despite not turning up any evidence of fraud in the 2020 elections, Engelbrecht has moved on to propagating the possibility of electoral wrongdoing in the upcoming midterm elections.

Voter Suppression Outfit Raised Millions — But Where Did The Money Go?

Voter Suppression Outfit Raised Millions — But Where Did The Money Go?

Long before the rise of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement — long before the Big Lie and the January 6, 2021 insurrection — True the Vote made voter suppression its top priority. Founded in Houston in 2009 by far-right Tea Party activist Catherine Engelbrecht, True the Vote has spent 13 years pushing the false narrative that voter fraud is widespread in Democratic areas. And True the Vote has raised millions of dollars with that narrative. But exactly how that money has been spent, according to Mother Jones reporter Cassandra Jaramillo, remains a mystery.

“A review of thousands of pages of documents from state filings, tax returns, and court records…. paints the picture of an organization that enriches Engelbrecht and partner Gregg Phillips rather than actually rooting out any fraud,” Jaramillo reports in an article published on June 8. “According to the documents, True the Vote has given questionable loans to Engelbrecht and has a history of awarding contracts to companies run by Engelbrecht and Phillips.

Within days of receiving $2.5 million from a donor to stop the certification of the 2020 election, True the Vote distributed much of the money to a company owned by Phillips, (attorney James) Bopp’s law firm, and Engelbrecht directly for a campaign that quickly fizzled out.”

True the Vote, according to Jaramillo, has “engaged in a series of questionable transactions that sent more than $1 million combined to its founder, a longtime board member romantically linked to the founder, and the group’s general counsel, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.”

True the Vote has a shameful history. The group claims that its mission is to “prevent voter fraud,” but its real mission is making it more difficult to vote — especially if one is African-American. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California has been a vehement critic of True the Vote’s efforts to discourage African-Americans and Latinos from voting, saying that a more accurate name for the group would be “Stop the Vote.”

Nonetheless, True the Vote’s voter suppression efforts have made Engelbrecht a star in the MAGA movement and the right-wing media.


“A former PTA mom-turned-Tea Party activist, True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht has played a pivotal role in helping drive the voter fraud movement from the political fringes to a central pillar in the Republican Party’s ideology,” Jaramillo observes. “Casting herself as a God-fearing, small-town Texan, she’s spread the voter-fraud gospel by commanding airtime on cable television, space on the pages of Breitbart News, and even theater seats, as a new feature film dramatizing her organization’s exploits, 2000 Mules, plays in cinemas across the country.”

A "documentary" by far-right conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza, 2000 Mules claims to offer proof that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump. But the movie proves nothing, and D’Souza’s sloppy reporting has drawn widespread criticism. Never Trump conservative Amanda Carpenter, for example, has slammed 2000 Mules as a badly done, embarrassing cash grab on D’Souza’s part.

According to Jaramillo, Reveal’s findings don’t look good for True the Vote.

“The records show: True the Vote regularly reported loans to Engelbrecht, including more than $113,000 in 2019, according to a tax filing,” Jaramillo notes. “Texas law bans nonprofits from loaning money to directors; Engelbrecht is both a director and an employee.”


Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

D’Souza’s ‘Big Lie’ Movie Is So Bad Fox Won’t Promote It

D’Souza’s ‘Big Lie’ Movie Is So Bad Fox Won’t Promote It

Sixteen months into Joe Biden’s presidency, far-right pundit and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza continues to shamelessly promote the Big Lie and falsely claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump — a claim that the 61-year-old D’Souza makes in his new documentary “2000 Mules.” Journalist Anthony L. Fisher critiques “2000 Mules” in a scathing op-ed published by the Daily Beast on May 19, arguing that D’Souza’s documentary is so sloppy and badly done that even Fox News and Newsmax have ignored it.

“The new documentary 2000 Mules, a Dinesh D’Souza joint, is barely more credible than your average rando conspiracy theory video on YouTube, but its production values attach to it a superficial seriousness,” Fisher explains. “The film’s intended audience will see a rational ‘just asking questions’ kinda guy, D’Souza, talking with some ideological allies — like Charlie Kirk, Dennis Prager, Sebastian Gorka, and Larry Elder — who are merely concerned about voter integrity in the America they love.”

Fisher continues, “But the bulk of the film consists of D’Souza’s highly dramatized explainer sessions with a couple of technological ‘experts,’ also credited as executive producers, whose claims that they’ve used geo-tracking data to uncover thousands of vote-harvesting mules fall apart under the barest of scrutiny. Surveillance footage of people taking selfies after dropping their votes in dropboxes is presented as ‘A-ha!’ evidence — while ignoring the fact that people taking voter selfies was a mundanely common thing to do in 2020, and for quite a few years prior.”


According to Fisher, 2000 Mules suffers from “relentless repetition of innuendo” and “almost no verifiable facts.” D’Souza, Fisher notes, complains about Republicans who want to move on from the 2020 election and slams them as cowards.

“D’Souza’s whining extends beyond the film itself, and into coverage of the film,” Fisher observes. “Or in the case of Fox News and Newsmax, the lack of coverage around 2000 Mules — likely because both networks have already been sued for pushing potentially slanderous Big Lie accusations against voting technology companies. D’Souza’s white knight, Donald Trump, came to the film’s defense when he slammed Fox for ignoring ‘the greatest & most impactful documentary of our time.’ But even a Trump-supporting right-wing fire-breather like Ben Shapiro can’t bring himself to say D’Souza made a persuasive case with 2000 Mules, because the film’s central thesis simply isn’t backed by any supporting evidence — much less an overwhelming amount of verifiable, unimpeachable data.”

Someone who doesn’t already buy into the Big Lie, Fisher stresses, won’t change their mind because of 2000 Mules.

“The film isn’t meant to persuade anyone, it’s meant to reinforce the already passionate certainty in people who believe in something that simply does not exist,” Fisher writes. “It is a vile piece of agitprop, pushing a falsehood that could very well tear our country apart. It’s also a very stupid movie, packaged as smart, fearless muckraking. In a sense, it’s a 90-minute safe space for MAGA snowflakes who can’t accept the fact that their hero is a loser.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.