EGN NEWS DESK
The conservative media firm Salem Media Group has apologized to a Georgia man who was falsely depicted as having dedicated election fraud within the movie “2,000 Mules,” which Salem co-produced and launched in 2022.
The documentary, written and directed by the right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza, claimed that Democrats had conspired with nonprofit teams to rig the 2020 election in favor of President Biden by utilizing “mules” who stuffed poll packing containers in swing states.
More than one million individuals watched “2,000 Mules” in simply the primary two weeks after its launch in May 2022, and the movie grossed over $10 million. Its unfounded allegations grew to become an article of religion for an untold variety of Americans satisfied that the election had been stolen. Five months later, Salem launched a companion guide.
The movie options surveillance video of the person from Georgia, Mark Andrews, as he locations ballots right into a drop field close to Atlanta, together with voice-over commentary by Mr. D’Souza calling the motion “a criminal offense” and including, “These are fraudulent votes.”
Although Mr. Andrews’s face is blurred within the photographs, the movie’s producers used unblurred variations of the identical video to advertise the movie on a wide range of conservative information retailers, together with Tucker Carlson’s former present on Fox News and a present hosted by Charlie Kirk, a founding father of Turning Point USA, and produced by Salem.
Mr. Andrews sued Mr. D’Souza, together with Salem and two people related to the right-wing election-monitoring group True the Vote, for defamation in October 2022. State investigators in Georgia have since discovered that Mr. Andrews dedicated no crime and that he had legally deposited the ballots for himself and a number of other members of his household.
“It was by no means our intent that the publication of the ‘2,000 Mules’ movie and guide would hurt Mr. Andrews,” Salem stated in a press release on Friday. “We apologize for the harm the inclusion of Mr. Andrews’s picture within the film, guide and promotional supplies have precipitated Mr. Andrews and his household.”
Salem, one of many largest radio broadcasters within the nation, with 115 stations, additionally syndicates radio and podcast content material, operates a number of web sites and publishes a lot of conservative Christian-themed magazines. It stated on Friday that it had taken “2,000 Mules” off its platforms and that it could now not distribute the movie and the guide.
As the 2022 midterm elections approached, the movie grew to become a contact level for a wide range of establishments and people alleging that the presidency had been stolen from Donald J. Trump, who for his half known as it “the best and most impactful documentary of our time.”
Several advocacy teams, impressed by “2,000 Mules,” fashioned to stake out poll packing containers — at instances with people carrying firearms — and to warn voters towards voting early.
But among the movie’s staunchest promoters, together with Rudolph W. Giuliani, who attended a screening at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Fla., and Fox News, which aired a number of segments concerning the movie, later admitted that they’d peddled lies concerning the election. In February, a lawyer for True the Vote informed a Georgia courtroom that it had no proof to assist its allegations of election fraud within the state.
Despite such admissions, many Americans proceed to imagine that the 2020 election was rigged. A ballot performed final August by CNN discovered that greater than two-thirds of Republican voters didn’t imagine that President Biden had received pretty.
Mr. D’Souza didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. Catherine Engelbrecht, the founding father of True the Vote, didn’t reply a cellphone name or reply to an electronic mail in search of a response.
“2,000 Mules” relied closely on cellphone location information offered by True the Vote, which Mr. D’Souza claimed confirmed poll mules approaching poll packing containers a number of instances a day, in addition to attending Black Lives Matter protests. The movie claimed to offer proof of fraud in battleground states that have been vital to the result of the 2020 election, together with Georgia and Arizona. True the Vote officers claimed that they’d turned over proof of fraud to the F.B.I.
But subsequent investigations have debunked the documentary’s claims, and Arizona’s legal professional normal referred True the Vote to the F.B.I. and the Internal Revenue Service for investigation, noting that the group had offered no proof to substantiate its fraud claims.
In September, a federal judge in Georgia rejected efforts by defendants to dismiss Mr. Andrews’s defamation case. The case is pending.
