One of the later-appearing arguments that the 2020 election was stolen appears in the documentary 2000 Mules, hosted by Dinesh D'Souza. The documentary reports on the claims of the group True the Vote about ballot harvesting in swing states.
True the Vote acquired anonymous cell phone location data from millions of users. They correlated this with locations of ballot drop boxes, and claimed to find evidence of thousands of 'mules', that is, people who visited multiple drop boxes to deposit ballots.
Ballot harvesting is the practice of collecting ballots from multiple voters to (presumably) deposit them in the mail or a ballot drop box. This practice is generally legal for immediate family members, but most states make it illegal for strangers or large quantities of ballots. The reason for this is that ballot harvesting created a risk of voter fraud, as ballots from unsympathetic voters could be discarded. This occurred in the 2018 congressional election in North Carolina's 9th district, where Mark Harris (R) employed a campaign consultant who was found to have harvested ballots and manipulated them.
Media articles often describe 2000 Mules as 'widely debunked', citing two 'fact check' articles by Reuters and AP written shortly after its release. There is also a fact check by Mlive focused on Michigan. The claim that it is 'widely debunked' is an overstatement. While the articles raise legitimate questions about the film, they cannot debunk it, since they don't have the information to do so.
Additional questions have been raised by conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and Erick Erickson, who found the documentary unpersuasive. The right-leaning site The Dispatch also did its own fact check.
One criticism deals with the use of cell phone location data. Several experts say that this data is not as precise as True the Vote claims. If so, their list of 'mules' likely includes many innocent people who just happened to walk near several drop boxes while out and about.
Another problem is exactly what 2000 Mules claims and does not claim. They claim there are 2000 mules, but never identify any of them. They claim to know which organizations they work for, but never identify them either. The fact that they don't suggests a lack of confidence in their claims. Of course, if they are wrong, they would likely be sued by the individuals and groups they identify.
The movie shows some people taking selfies while depositing ballots in drop boxes. They claim this is how the mules provide proof of their work. However, they never show video of the same person depositing ballots in more than one location, which is what they claim the cell phone data shows.
Subsequent questioning has revealed more reasons to doubt the thesis of 2000 Mules. It is important to remember that while ballot harvesting is illegal in most states, that does not mean that the ballots are themselves illegal. Under questioning by the Wisconsin legislature, Catherine Engelbrecht admitted that they were not claiming that any of the ballots they claim were harvested were illegal. If a legitimate voter gives a ballot to a harvester, the harvesting may be illegal, but the ballot is not.
Creating hundreds of thousands of illegal votes would be very difficult. To be counted, a vote must correspond to a registered voter, so a fraudster cannot just make up names for their fraudulent ballots. If they try to use the names of real registered voters, there is a high risk that multiple ballots will be received using the same name, which would trigger an immediate investigation. This did not happen in the 2020 election.
Despite (or because of) the questions about their validity, the claims of 2000 Mules and True the Vote have made should be investigated and proved true or false once and for all. In fact, the Georgia Secretary of State is trying to do that. He has requested the evidence True the Vote says it has. They are refusing to turn it over, so he has filed suit to force them to do so.
This development makes it appear very doubtful that the claims of 2000 Mules are true.
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