'2000 Mules' was a lie? Cuing apologies from Kari Lake and company in 5, 4, 3 ...

So, it turns out that “2000 Mules” was mere donkey droppings.

The investigative whizzes who claimed to have evidence of 2,000 ballot “mules” stuffing drop boxes in five key battleground states, including Arizona, were apparently scamming the red-hatted rubes who glommed onto the documentary as proof that the 2020 election had been stolen.

I, for one, am just shocked.

In Arizona, Republicans flocked to screening parties when the Dinesh D’Souza documentary was released in May 2022, plunking down as much as $12 to watch the supposed evidence of ballot stuffing play out before their very eyes.

Kari Lake, others promoted '2000 Mules'

The Arizona Legislature actually held a hearing in June 2022, inviting the people behind the documentary, True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, to lay out their “findings” of an elaborate scheme in which unnamed nonprofits dispatched 243 “mules” to systematically stuff ballot drop boxes in Maricopa and Yuma counties.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Lesko, then-state GOP Chair Kelli Ward, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb and state Sen. Wendy Rogers sat among the enthusiastic crowd at the hearing, co-hosted by then-Senate Elections Committee Chair Kelly Townsend, who would later call for “vigilantes” to monitor drop boxes in the 2022 election.

U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs demanded an immediate congressional hearing on the “illegal activity exposed in the documentary 2000 Mules.”

U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar hosted a screening of the film, along with Ward, state Sen. Sonny Borrelli and several others in the Legislature’s conspiracy crowd.

Kari Lake attended the documentary’s grand premiere at Mar-a-Lago and promoted the film.

“The Left will do anything to distract America from @DineshDSouza’s 2000 Miles movie,’” she tweeted. “Do not stop talking about it. If networks don’t want to cover it, force them to. Send it to everyone you know. This is black & white proof that cannot be refuted. Next, we need 2000 Arrests.”

True the Vote says it has no evidence

Strange that Lake hasn’t shared today’s news on social media.

It seems True the Vote just told a Georgia judge that it doesn’t have evidence to support its claims of illegal ballot stuffing during the 2020 election.

This should be no surprise to anyone in Arizona, given the group’s refusal to turn over evidence in 2022, when requested to do so by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. Oh, there were plenty of promises by True the Vote that the data backing up their claims would be handed over.

Lawmakers have time for '2000 Mules': But not the state budget

It just never was.

Eventually the AG’s Office asked the FBI and IRS to investigate, noting that True the Vote had repeatedly rebuffed all requests to share the documentary’s alleged evidence, yet raised “considerable sums of money” based on claims of having that evidence.

Georgia officials, meanwhile, took it one step further.

The state Election Board subpoenaed the documents and later went to court demanding that True the Vote turn over the evidence of this massive conspiracy to steal the election, one stuffed dropbox at a time.

A judge last year ordered True the Vote to turn over names and contact information for anyone who had provided information, along with any recordings, transcripts, witness statements or other evidence supporting its conspiracy claims.

Ballot stuffing claims were just manure

This week, True the Vote’s attorneys finally responded to a judge’s order that they pony up the goods.

Here is what they said:

“TTV has no such documents in its possession, custody, or control.”

So now we wait ... for Lake and Mark Finchem and others who grabbed onto the mules as evidence of some widespread conspiracy to admit they were wrong.

For the Republicans in the Legislature to stop their hysterics over drop boxes and maybe even to pass a bill that would prevent armed vigilantes staking them out this year and intimidating voters trying to exercise their constitutional right to cast a ballot.

Those mules? Turns out they didn’t exist.

Yet two years later, here we are, awash in manure.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: '2000 Mules' was a giant pile of 'stolen election' manure