Dinesh D’Souza Is Being Sued for Defamation. He May Find It Hard to Win.
One of the most interesting, and important, things to happen in politics in the past couple of years has been the increased use of defamation lawsuits to try to counter misinformation and outright lies. The best-known example of this are the lawsuits Dominion Voting Systems has filed against a host of right-wing activists and news organizations, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Fox, and OANN, for making or airing false claims that Dominion had helped rig the 2020 election for Joe Biden. While the defendants in those cases have tried multiple times to have them dismissed, those efforts have failed, and at some point may actually go to trial.
Last week saw the filing of another important defamation lawsuit, this one by a Georgia man named Mark Andrews. Andrews has sued right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza and the founders of a supposed election-audit firm called True The Vote over the claim, made in D’Souza’s film 2000 Mules and in interviews promoting the movie, that Andrews was a so-called “mule” who illegally deposited multiple ballots in dropboxes during the 2020 election.
D’Souza’s movie, which is based on True the Vote’s claim that its analysis of cellphone geolocation data shows thousands of mules were used to illegally collect and then deposit ballots in dropboxes, is a very bad…
