The conspiracy theory-promoting group True the Vote says it has no evidence to back up its claims about widespread, systemic voter fraud during the 2020 elections.
The group, which was heavily featured in Dinesh D’Souza’s viral documentary “2000 Mules,” claimed that ballot “mules” worked with a network of left-wing organizations to steal the election for Joe Biden. The film and its claims made a huge splash, and Donald Trump praised True the Vote for supposedly exposing “great election fraud.”
But in responding to a subpoena for any evidence supporting those claims, the group came up empty-handed.
In a court filing in Georgia, True the Vote said it did not have any records of the supposed network of non-governmental organizations it alleged facilitated the massive ballot trafficking scheme. True the Vote also said it had no contact information for sources who had ostensibly provided the group with a detailed account of the alleged ballot scheme, nor for any of the unnamed researchers or investigators it relied on for its allegations.
The subpoena also specifically asked for the identity, contact information, and any records evidencing the claims of “John Doe,” an unidentified person who True the Vote claimed had admitted to personally participating in the ballot trafficking.
“TTV does not have in its possession, custody, or control, identity and contact information for John Doe or any such items concerning him,” the group said in the filing.
The new revelations were in a Fulton County Superior Court filing dated Dec. 11, reported on by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and subsequently the Associated Press, on Wednesday.
In 2021, True the Vote brought a formal complaint alleging widespread irregularities in the 2020 election. In response, Georgia state officials requested ― and then demanded ― proof of the group’s claims as part of their investigation. Georgia officials have followed up on True the Vote’s complaint in the years since, but the group has repeatedly failed or refused to provide evidence backing its claims to investigators.
“Once again, True the Vote has proven itself untrustworthy and unable to provide a shred of evidence for a single one of their fairy-tale allegations,” Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, said in a statement to several outlets Wednesday. “Like all the lies about Georgia’s 2020 election, their fabricated claims of ballot harvesting have been repeatedly debunked.”
“True the Vote made wild and false allegations as a fundraising grift that undermined public confidence in the integrity of Georgia’s elections,” Hassinger told HuffPost in an email Thursday. “Now that they’ve admitted to their con in court, they owe the voters of Georgia an apology.”
True the Vote didn’t respond to HuffPost’s list of questions about the filing, but told the Journal-Constitution that it had previously given information to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation regarding cell phone signals that came close to multiple drop boxes in 2020.
“The [Georgia Bureau of Investigation] consequently has ready access to the underlying data, and could, we believe, reconstruct it, but it declines to do that,” the group told the paper in a statement. “At this point, it would be redundant and cost-prohibitive for True the Vote to do so on its own. It is in that sense that there is nothing more for True the Vote to provide that it has not already provided to the GBI.”
In short, the group claimed the cell phone location data constituted evidence of “mules” dropping off multiple ballots at multiple locations. They also said the cell phone pings pointed to unnamed nonprofits that they said arranged and paid for the operation.
But there were serious problems with that argument: The cell phone data is imprecise, and can’t determine anything beyond general locations within a 100-foot radius. What’s more, drop boxes are located at popular communal locations like libraries and county buildings, and it wouldn’t be at all uncommon for someone to visit those types of locations repeatedly.
True the Vote claimed to know the identities of the non-profits involved in the supposed ballot mule operation ― but never identified them, and couldn’t identify them in the Georgia filing.
True the Vote hasn’t provided “any other kind of evidence that ties these cell phones to ballot harvesting,” D. Victor Reynolds, then director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said in 2021.
The Georgia State Election Board has tried for years to get True the Vote to turn over any evidence for its claims, including with subpoenas dating back to April 2022. In October 2022, a spokesperson for the Georgia secretary of state’s office told HuffPost, “The status of the subpoenas hasn’t changed ― they were issued, and TTV hasn’t complied.”
In July last year, the Elections Board asked a Fulton County Superior Court judge to order True the Vote to comply with the subpoena. Now, True the Vote has done so ― and had nothing specific to show.
The court filing first reported Wednesday does include some vague responses, but no concrete information. For example, asked for evidence ― or contact information for individuals who provided accounts ― of “coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta,” as referenced in the group’s 2021 complaint, True the Vote provided a two-sentence response.
The first sentence said the group did not have any contact information to share. The second sentence said True the Vote was providing information that it deemed “non-privileged items not requiring retrieval of massive amounts of raw data from cold storage.”
True the Vote did not respond to HuffPost’s question about what that meant. The document at other times referenced, but did not explain, that it was providing “any otherwise responsive non-privileged items that are within TTV’s possession, custody, or control.”
“While the case has been administratively closed, the Court does contemplate further litigation,” a spokesperson for Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office, Shawn Conroy, told HuffPost. The office declined to give further comment.
True the Vote’s filing is far from the first time high-profile election conspiracy theorists have said they do not have the evidence to back up their claims.
Just a few days ago, James O’Keefe and Project Veritas ― the struggling right-wing media outfit ― admitted that they weren’t aware of any evidence that election fraud had occurred at an Erie, Pennsylvania, post office during the 2020 election. The claim had originated with Richard Hopkins, a Trump supporter and mail carrier.
The settlement in the lawsuit against O’Keefe, Project Veritas and Hopkins over the claim last week came more than three years after Hopkins recanted his allegation.
And Mark Andrews, a Georgia resident who was accused in “2000 Mules” of breaking the law by acting as a ballot mule, sued D’Souza, True the Vote and others for defamation and voter intimidation in 2022.
“What you are seeing is a crime,” D’Souza said in “2,000 Mules” as video of Andrews legally dropping off his family’s ballots played on screen. “These are fraudulent votes.”
They were not fraudulent votes, an investigation into related claims found.
In October, a federal court greenlit Andrews’ lawsuit, allowing it to proceed to discovery.