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John Rich, half the country music duo Big & Rich<\/a>, gained huge social media attention by tying the arrest of a suspected quadruple-killer in Idaho to “2,000 Mules,” the widely debunked election denier film.<\/p>\n “They caught the Idaho killer using cellphone ping data, the exact same method used to track the #2000Mules,” Rich told<\/a> his 832,000<\/a> Twitter followers in a Jan. 5 post that quickly spread across Facebook<\/a>. The tweet has received more than 100,000 engagements, including likes and retweets.<\/p>\n “One’s praised as \u2018brilliant detective work,\u2019 the other has been vilified as \u2018not credible,\u2019” he wrote. “See how this works? We live in a mirrored fun house where every image is bent.”<\/p>\n The Facebook post was flagged as part of Facebook\u2019s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership<\/a> with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)<\/p>\n This comparison falls flat: The methods to track down information using cellphone data were not exactly the same and the Idaho arrest didn\u2019t give credibility to the movie.<\/p>\n To find the suspected killer, law enforcement investigators used cellphone data specific to his phone and corroborated it with other evidence, including DNA.\u00a0<\/p>\n The “2,000 Mules” movie used aggregated and anonymized cell data to claim that people dumped 400,000 illegal ballots into drop boxes in the 2020 election. But the data showed only that people with cellphones were near the boxes, which could have been for any number of possible reasons.\u00a0<\/p>\n “What \u20182,000 Mules\u2019 tried to do was say that we know these people went to these ballot boxes, and you cannot definitively say that,” said Aaron Striegel, a University of Notre Dame computer science and engineering professor. “What you know is they might have been around them, within the city block.”<\/p>\n Who is Rich?<\/p>\n Rich and “Big” Kenny Alphin comprise Big & Rich, whose hit songs<\/a> include “Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy).”\u00a0<\/p>\n Rich is politically active. He wrote “Raisin\u2019 McCain,” a song<\/a> promoting the 2008 presidential campaign of John McCain, a Republican Arizona senator who died a decade later. In 2017, the duo were the headline performers at a gala<\/a> ahead of Donald Trump\u2019s presidential inauguration.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rich previously has raised questions<\/a> on Twitter about fraud and voting irregularities in the 2020 and 2022 elections. The tweet we\u2019re fact-checking received praise<\/a> from election denier Kari Lake<\/a>, the Republican who lost in the November Arizona governor\u2019s race.\u00a0<\/p>\n Evidence beyond cell data led to Idaho arrest<\/p>\n Bryan C. Kohlberger, 28, is charged<\/a> with first-degree murder in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students in a home near campus Nov. 13.\u00a0<\/p>\n Seniors Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21; junior Xana Kernodle, 20; and freshman Ethan Chapin, 20, were killed.<\/p>\n Before his arrest<\/a> Dec. 30 at his family\u2019s Pennsylvania home, Kohlberger<\/a> was a<\/a> doctoral criminology<\/a> student at Washington State University, which is several miles from the Idaho campus.<\/p>\n To show probable cause that Kohlberger committed the killings, law enforcement investigators used cellphone tracking, video surveillance and DNA evidence on a knife sheath at the scene of the killings, a police affidavit<\/a> filed in court said.<\/p>\n That\u2019s different from what “2,000 Mules” did.<\/p>\n Cell data didn\u2019t support \u20182,000 Mules\u2019 illegal voting\u00a0claim<\/p>\n “2,000 Mules,” released in May, was produced by far-right commentator Dinesh D\u2019Souza<\/a>, who has a history of spreading falsehoods.\u00a0<\/p>\n The film alleged that “mules” \u2014 people it defined as collecting and returning completed mail ballots \u2014 submitted 400,000 illegal ballots in five swing states in the 2020 election.\u00a0<\/p>\n The claim was based on cellphone data conservative group True the Vote said it had purchased. The group said<\/a> it bought $2 million worth of anonymized cellphone geolocation data \u2014 the “pings” that track a person\u2019s location based on app activity.<\/p>\n Experts told PolitiFact<\/a> the movie\u2019s evidence was inherently flawed. The film was also debunked by FactCheck.org<\/a>, Reuters<\/a>, The Associated Press<\/a> and The Washington Post<\/a>, which said it “offers the least convincing election-fraud theory yet.”<\/p>\n Cellphone location data can determine only whether a person came near a ballot drop box, and accuracy depends on factors such as cell tower capability and topography, Striegel said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Using a comparison, he said the data can tell “you went to a big-box store like Home Depot or Walmart, but it would be hard to say if you visited, say, a strip mall to say which store you actually went into.”<\/p>\n People could have passed near the drop boxes, which are typically in busy areas, for any number of reasons.<\/p>\n “That\u2019s the problem with the \u20182,000 Mules,\u2019 there just are a lot of other explanations that are viable” for why people were near a ballot box, Striegel said, “and that\u2019s the primary evidence they provide.”<\/p>\n Cell tracking can place the location of a phone within 5 meters (16 feet) under ideal conditions, said Cooper Quintin, senior technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group.<\/p>\n “But you can\u2019t show what (the people with the phones) were doing, whether they were putting ballots in or whether they were committing a murder. You have to have additional evidence for that,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n We tried to reach Rich by emailing addresses on the band\u2019s website<\/a> and YouTube channel<\/a>, and on Rich\u2019s business website<\/a>, but received no reply.<\/p>\n Our ruling<\/p>\n Rich said cellphone data used to arrest a suspected Idaho quadruple-killer proves that criticism of the “2000 Mules” movie\u2019s use of cell data is unfounded.<\/p>\n Idaho police obtained data specifically for the suspect\u2019s cellphone and used corroborating evidence, including DNA at the crime scene, to arrest him.<\/p>\n “2,000 Mules” used purchased aggregated and anonymous cellphone location data, which signaled that people were near ballot drop boxes, but did not prove that the boxes were stuffed with illegal ballots. The data does not show what people were doing in those geographic areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n We rate the statement False.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n