True the Vote, the election denial group responsible for the debunked film 2000 Mules that falsely alleged election fraud in the 2020 election, is preparing to release a new movie. As President Donald Trump continues to threaten the midterms, the new film is set to relitigate the 2020 election, making allegations about systemic election fraud in Black communities—allegations that have already been dismissed by multiple courts.
True the Vote appears to be working with Lorenzo Sewell, a pastor from Detroit who spoke at Trump’s inauguration last year. Sewell told WIRED the documentary, which he has not seen yet, is called Trap—”because people are trapped”—and will be released “in the next month or so.”
The film is set to repeat many of the claims first made in a 2024 lawsuit filed by Detroit political activist Ramon Jackson, who claimed that Democratic election officials, including Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson and Detroit city clerk Janice Winfrey, orchestrated a scheme to register former Detroit residents and cast votes under false registrations in elections dating back to 2017. The court case was dismissed for lack of standing and failure to produce sufficient evidence. However, after Trump visited Sewell’s church in June 2024 as part of an effort to court Black voters, the pastor teamed up with Jackson to continue to push these claims.
“There is a pattern right now happening in our country where Democrats are voting for poor black people without their knowledge,” says Sewell, without evidence. “They're switching their vote, and they're doing it when someone goes and moves out of state.”
Sewell believes the same scheme was happening in cities that, like Detroit, have large lower-income Black populations, listing locations such as Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Philadelphia as examples. While Sewell admitted he didn’t have any evidence to back up these claims, he says, “I can, in any election, detect and determine cheating, period. Democrat or Republican, I have a proven system.”
Sewell says that his system consists of examining lists of people who have voted in an election and seeing how and where people voted. “Black people don't vote absentee,” Sewell claims. However, a study published this week says that voting by mail is more common among Black voters in communities with high hate-crime rates.
Sewell says that he also flags entries that are “not conducive to the names of our community.” As proof, Sewell sent WIRED images of ballot envelopes cast by people with names he claims are not real. Sewell provided WIRED with copies of 10 affidavits he and his team have so far collected from voters who claim their address or identity have been falsely used to cast votes in recent elections. WIRED was unable to independently verify the claims made in the affidavits. Sewell did not provide specifics about how figures like Benson, Winfrey, or other election officials supposedly identified the individuals involved, how they falsely registered names at their addresses, or how they cast absentee ballots in their names.
Benson and Winfrey did not respond to requests for comment.
Sewell did not say when True the Vote got involved in the project, simply saying they heard about him because “I’m famous.” The group and its cofounder Catherine Engelbrecht did not respond to multiple requests for comment. However, the group and its leadership has acknowledged that they are making a documentary focused on Michigan.
In a True the Vote newsletter sent to supporters last week, Engelbrecht wrote about “filming a documentary in Detroit,” but provided no other information. Her cofounder Gregg Phillips, who once claimed he teleported to a Waffle House and was recently pushed out of his leadership position at FEMA, has also referenced the documentary several times on Truth Social.
“Pastor Lorenzo is awesome,” Phillips wrote last week, adding: “Can’t wait for the documentary!” Phillips also posted a picture of himself with Engelbrecht and Tina Peters, the pardoned former Mesa County Clerk who became a hero in the election denial community after she used another person’s credentials to facilitate an associate watching a software update of her county’s election management system. It’s unclear if Peters is taking part in the documentary, and a representative for her did not respond to a request for comment.
“Just wait until you learn about the documentary Catherine and Pastor Lorenzo are launching,” Phillips wrote on July 5, adding: “Makes mules look like childs [sic] play.”
On July 7, referring to a letter the DOJ sent to state election officials warning them they could be prosecuted for noncitizen voting, Phillips tagged True the Vote and wrote: “With this a base for the bombs you are dropping in the new documentary, the whole thing will be epic …”
2000 Mules, which was released by right-wing activist Dinesh d’Souza in 2022, became a lightning rod for the election denial community and was promoted by Trump. The film alleged, based on data provided by True the Vote, that so-called “mules” were depositing multiple ballots into drop boxes in swing states. The film was pulled from distribution in 2024 after production company Salem Media Group settled a lawsuit with a Georgia man who was wrongly identified as a mule in the film.
Election experts are now concerned that True the Vote’s new documentary could have a similar impact on those willing to believe Trump’s claims about rigged elections.
“The 2020 election is the most scrutinized election in world history, so any claims [True the Vote] makes six years later are clearly false and more designed to cause people to doubt the outcome of elections that the filmmakers might not like the outcome of,” says David Becker, the head of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, who also worked as a senior trial attorney in the Department of Justice’s Voting Section. “These particular filmmakers have a pretty sketchy history with documentaries. Their previous documentary was found to be pretty much completely false.”
