ATLANTA — Conservative filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza has apologized to a metro Atlanta man who brought a lawsuit after he was falsely identified as a possible ballot harvester in D'Souza's film alleging widespread fraud in the 2020 election, "2000 Mules."
D'Souza posted the apology to his website, directed toward Mark Andrews of Gwinnett County.
The Associated Press reported roughly two years ago that Andrews was shown in the film with his face blurred depositing five ballots in a Lawrenceville drop box.
A voiceover by D'Souza said: “What you are seeing is a crime. These are fraudulent votes.” In fact, a state investigation found, Andrews was dropping off ballots for himself, his wife and their three adult children, who all live at the same address. This is legal in Georgia and a state investigator said there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
Andrews filed a federal lawsuit in late 2022. The film's publisher, Salem Media Group, issued an apology statement earlier this year, at which time the case was still ongoing. Salem said at that time it was removing "2000 Mules" from its platforms and would not further distribute it.
D'Souza's apology references the lawsuit and says, "I owe this individual, Mark Andrews, an apology."
"I now understand that the surveillance videos used in the film were characterized on the basis of inaccurate information provided to me and my team," D'Souza states. "If I had known then that the videos were not linked to geolocation data, I would have clarified this and produced and edited the film differently."
D'Souza goes on to say that the apology is not being made "under the terms of a settlement agreement or other duress, but because it is the right thing to do, given what we have learned."
The filmmaker maintains the premise of "2000 Mules" -- that, in his words, "there was systematic election fraud sufficient to call the outcome into question" in 2020 -- is "accurate."
"While the video in the film created an incorrect inference as to Mr. Andrews, the underlying premise of the film holds true," he states.
Georgia election and law enforcement officials investigated several 2020 election fraud claims, and closed a case on the most notorious of those claims -- centered around "suitcases full of ballots" under tables at State Farm Arena on Election Night -- as "false and unsubstantiated."
Regarding the specific allegations of ballot harvesting, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced in 2021 that an investigation was "not justified" based on cell phone data purporting to link individuals with repeated trips to ballot boxes. That data had been brought to the state by a group called True The Vote. The group and its data were central to D'Souza's "2000 Mules" film.
D'Souza's apology note says his film used ballot drop box surveillance videos provided by True The Vote as a "supplement to the geolocation data" the group had collected.
"We were assured that the surveillance videos had been linked to geolocation cell phone data, such that each video depicted an individual who had made at least 10 visits to drop boxes. Indeed, it is clear from the interviews within the film itself that True the Vote was correlating the videos to geolocation data," D'Souza states in his post. "We recently learned that surveillance videos used in the film may not have actually been correlated with the geolocation data."
D'Souza adds: "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.'"
An earlier Associated Press analysis found the film to be based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data.
The lawsuit originally filled by Andrews said D'Souza and True the Vote "knew that their portrayals of Mr. Andrews were lies, as was the entire narrative of 2000 Mules," but that they "continued to peddle these lies in order to enrich themselves.”
