Former Attorney General William Barr burst into loud laughter during testimony played before the 6 January insurrection hearings on Monday at the mention of 2000 Mules, a debunked election conspiracy documentary embraced by Donald Trump as proof that the election was stolen from him.
“My opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen by fraud,” Barr told House investigators. “And I haven’t seen anything since the election that changes my mind on that, including the 2000 Mules movie,” he added
Barr called the movie, by conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, “singularly unimpressive” and accused it of making “indefensible” claims.
The documentary claims that numerous people were illegally paid in highly contested states like Georgia and Arizona to collect and fraudulently deposit Democratic votes.
The film, which has been repeatedly debunked by fact-checkers, does not have any concrete proof that this actually occurred, besides a single unnamed whistleblower from Arizona claiming she saw what she “assumed” were payoffs taking place.
The video also makes specious use of cellphone geolocation data, which it claims shows ballot “mules” returning again and again to ballot drop locations.
Experts say such cell tower data is imprecise, and that there are many reasons why someone in a dense metro area like Atlanta or Philadelphia might pass by a ballot drop location for reasons totally unrelated to an election.
“You could use cellular evidence to say this person was in that area, but to say they were at the ballot box, you’re stretching it a lot,” Aaron Striegel, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame, told The Associated Press. “There’s always a pretty healthy amount of uncertainty that comes with this.”
D’Souza, who himself pleaded guilty to illegal election contributions in 2014 before being pardoned by Trump, lashed out at Barr on Twitter by challenging Barr to a debate on voter fraud.
“I’d like to invite Bill Barr to a public debate on election fraud. Given his blithe chuckling dismissal of #2000Mules this should be easy for him. What do you say, Barr? Do you dare to back up your belly laughs with arguments that can withstand rebuttal and cross-examination?” the documentarian wrote.
Bill Barr laughs at how unbelievably stupid Dinesh D'Souza's "2000 Mules" is pic.twitter.com/o0c2xVVWvh
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) June 13, 2022
I’d like to invite Bill Barr to a public debate on election fraud. Given his blithe chuckling dismissal of #2000Mules this should be easy for him. What do you say, Barr? Do you dare to back up your belly laughs with arguments that can withstand rebuttal and cross-examination?
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) June 13, 2022
