The film was written, directed, produced, and narrated by right-wing political commentator and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, who has a history of creating and spreading false conspiracy theories.

[11] The Associated Press (AP) reported that the film relies on "faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data" provided by conservative[12] non-profit True the Vote.

[13] National Public Radio (NPR) reported True the Vote "made multiple misleading or false claims about its [own] work".

[18] 2000 Mules opens with a misleadingly edited clip from October 2020 of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden responding to a podcaster's question about boosting his election turnout.

His second statement was taken out of context in clips and memes that went viral on conservative media at the time, purporting to be an admission that Democrats were preparing to commit election fraud.

[8][10] AP explained that in various swing counties across the five states, True the Vote used phone pings to cellphone towers to identify people who had passed near ballot drop boxes and various unnamed nonprofit organizations multiple times per day, concluding that such people were paid mules for ballot collection and deposits.

True the Vote asserted it had conducted "pattern of life" filtering of such people before election season; the AP noted limitations of that approach.

[8] The film also asserts that some of the geolocated alleged mules were present at what it called "antifa riots" in Atlanta during the George Floyd protests in spring 2020.

The homicide was not a cold case, and both suspects were arrested by state rather than federal officials, with no indication phone geolocation played a role.

True the Vote stated days after 2000 Mules was released that it had notified the FBI of its analysis more than two months after the suspects had been indicted.

[10][8] Phillips narrates a surveillance video in which a man on a bicycle rides up to a drop box and deposits his ballot.

The film speculates that nonprofits acquired ballots from voters who had moved or died, by stealing them from mailboxes, or by coercion of incapacitated elderly people.

[16] Phillips said in an interview with right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, one of the panelists in the film, that it took "12 people 16 hours a day for 15 months" to conduct their data analysis.

A university spokesman said he was not aware of any such analysis conducted there, noting Phillips had taken a publicly available tour and leased office space in a separate building in the same research park that "appeared to us to be sporadically used, if at all".

[14] The film conflates with its premise a case involving unlawful ballot collection by two Yuma County, Arizona, women during the August 2020 primary elections; the women had collected ballots for others, although they were not family members or caregivers as required by law, and their prosecutions were underway before the film's release.

[31][32] True the Vote did not cooperate with investigations by Georgia election officials, refusing to disclose the names of people who allegedly collected ballots.

In a letter to True the Vote, the bureau noted that the data it was provided counted a "visit" to a drop box as extending to a radius of 100 feet (30 m).

[34][21][35] The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in February 2024 that True the Vote said in a filing with the Fulton County Superior Court in response to the Election Board lawsuit that, "it doesn’t have documents about illegal ballot collection, the name of its purported informant or confidentiality agreements it previously said existed.

[44] In his twelve page rebuttal to testimony and evidence that was presented in public hearings by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Trump cited the movie in one of its sections that focused on "ballot trafficking" claims.

[45] Media outlets such as PolitiFact, the Associated Press and The Washington Post criticized the film for its factual errors and omissions, making implausible claims, and promoting conspiracy theories about the supposed theft of the 2020 presidential election.

[9][8][10][16][22][46] Writing in The Bulwark, Republican author and political advisor Amanda Carpenter characterized 2000 Mules as "a hilarious mockumentary" that "doesn't survive the most basic fact-checks to support its most important claims".

"[47] The Dispatch, a conservative publication,[48] wrote that "The film's ballot harvesting theory is full of holes" and that, "D'Souza has a history of promoting false and misleading claims.

[51] Eight Arizona Republican officials held a meeting with about 200 others to hear a presentation from Phillips and Engelbrecht weeks after the film's release.

[53] In June 2022 testimony to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Barr laughed at the mention of 2000 Mules, and when asked to assess it, dismissed its assertions there had been widespread election fraud,[54] calling the movie "indefensible".

[55] Jeffrey Clark, a former Trump Justice Department official who was the central figure in a Trump scheme to install Clark as acting attorney general to announce falsely that the department had found election fraud, promoted 2000 Mules while taunting law professor Steve Vladeck and Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias on Twitter.

He asked Elias, who had thwarted every lawsuit Trump's legal team had pursued after the election, "Were you part of the massive multi-State operation #TrueTheVote uncovered?

"[56][57] Three screenings were held during the Republican Party of Texas' June 2022 convention, which saw attendees approve a resolution falsely describing Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election as illegitimate.

[35][61] In October 2022, Atlanta citizen Mark Andrews sued Dinesh D'Souza, True the Vote, Gregg Phillips, Catherine Engelbrecht and Salem Media Group for defamation, conspiracy, and intrusion on seclusion.

[63] A state investigation found that Andrews was legally dropping off ballots for himself, his wife, and their three adult children, who all lived at the same address.

[7][67] On December 1, 2024, D'Souza posted a statement which included "We recently learned that surveillance videos used in the film may not have actually been correlated with the geolocation data [...] Again, I apologize to Mr.