True the Vote founder suggests Salem only retracted 2000 Mules because of shareholder and advertiser pressure

Catherine Engelbrecht: “Salem is a publicly traded company, and they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. And they have a bunch of advertisers that ... can be easily pressured. ... It has nothing to do with the accuracy of the material.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

 

From a June 3, 2024, stream on Locals

CATHERINE ENGELBRECHT (TRUE THE VOTE FOUNDER): On Friday, we were surprised to read that Salem Media had announced that they had settled in a lawsuit that was filed several years ago by an individual that appeared in the 2000 Mules movie, and that individual sued Salem Media and Dinesh D'Souza and True the Vote and myself and Gregg Phillips. 

...

And so when we read Salem's position — you know, the way that I read it was Salem is a publicly traded company, and they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. And they have a bunch of advertisers that are — you know, can be easily pressured. And they made — they made a business decision. Do I wish that they would have made a different decision? I don't even know. I — they made the decision that they made. Does it change our position at all? No.

...

You know, the movie and book are pulled because that's what Salem wanted to do. It has nothing to do with the accuracy of the material that was presented into that climate when it was first all done.

The Associated Press reported on May 31: 

The publisher of “2000 Mules” issued a statement Friday apologizing to a Georgia man who was shown in the film and falsely accused of ballot fraud during the 2020 election.

The widely debunked film includes surveillance video showing Mark Andrews, his face blurred, putting five ballots in a drop box in Lawrenceville, an Atlanta suburb, as a voiceover by conservative pundit and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza says: “What you are seeing is a crime. These are fraudulent votes.”

Salem Media Group said in the statement that it has “removed the film from Salem’s platforms, and there will be no future distribution of the film or the book by Salem.”

“It was never our intent that the publication of the 2000 Mules film and book would harm Mr. Andrews. We apologize for the hurt the inclusion of Mr. Andrews’ image in the movie, book, and promotional materials have caused Mr. Andrews and his family,” the statement said.

A state investigation found that Andrews was dropping off ballots for himself, his wife and their three adult children, who all lived at the same address. That is legal in Georgia, and an investigator said there was no evidence of wrongdoing by Andrews.

The film uses research from True the Vote, a Texas-based nonprofit, and suggests that ballot “mules” aligned with Democrats were paid to illegally collect and deliver ballots in Georgia and four other closely watched states. An Associated Press analysis found that it is based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data.