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.
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