Did ballots in Arizona show "VERIFIED AND APPROVED" stamps behind a black triangle, meaning that the image was fake or not a valid ballot? No, that's not true: The image shown during the presentation of the Maricopa County election audit was an inversed image made by the scanner, the Office of Maricopa County Records told Lead Stories. The claim appeared…

Are "duplicate ballots" in Maricopa County, Arizona, proof of voter fraud? No, that's not true: "Duplicate ballots" or ballot envelopes don't prove duplicate votes. If a voter sends back a mail-in ballot and the signature on the envelope is questioned, or there is no signature, election officials will work to cure that signature by contacting the voter. If the issue…

Did President Joe Biden order the Veterans Administration to withhold health benefits from unvaccinated military veterans? No, that's not true: This is a satirical article published by a self-described satire website. There have been no presidential orders or announcements that would cause the VA to stop health benefits for otherwise qualified veterans. We are pointing this out because the spoof…

Did Vice President Kamala Harris "admit" that COVID-19 vaccines don't work? No, that's not true: Her tweet that is the basis for the claim is a summary of public health recommendations that reflect reality: No vaccine is 100% effective and breakthrough infections of the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, however mild among vaccinated persons, have been documented and could result in…

Do President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden own 10% of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd (CATL), a leading lithium-ion battery development and manufacturing company based in China, a country with financial interests in Afghanistan lithium? No, that's not true: According to public financial documents, the elder Bidens are not financially linked to CATL. However, because of his equity…

Did 351,709 votes that had been cast to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom mysteriously vanish during a live CNN broadcast of the California election night results when about half of the votes had been counted? No, that's not true: There was a data entry error made by a staffer of Edison Research Polling, which falsely inflated the count of the…

Did Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spend thousands of dollars for her dress and her ticket to the Met Gala 2021, held by The Metropolitan Museum of Art? No, that's not true: according to her communications director, Ocasio-Cortez's dress, which displayed the slogan "Tax The Rich," was borrowed. And a spokesperson for the Met confirmed that Ocasio-Cortez attended the event as a…

Did the president of the United States refuse to pay to fly the body of Sgt. Ryan Knauss, killed in the August 2021 Kabul airport bombing, to Arlington National Cemetery? No, that's not true: The president is not responsible for decisions regarding the burial of soldiers. "That is not within the president's purview," says the director of the civilian funeral…

Was Jill Biden arrested at Tyler Perry's house in Atlanta on charges of elder abuse? No, that's not true: A video does not show President Joe Biden's wife being arrested. Claims that Jill Biden was arrested are completely made up. The first lady has been seen in public multiple times since the date when it was claimed she was arrested.…

Has an Arizona Republican's door-knocking campaign and back-of-the-envelope estimate proved there were "173,104 lost votes and 96,389 ghost votes" in Maricopa County's 2020 election? No, that's not true: Even if every person answering every door told the truth and every canvasser entered their answers correctly, the real estate agent's claim uses rough reckoning, not field-tested methods of extrapolation. The Maricopa…

Did the military raid Hunter Biden's home in California on August 30, 2021? No, that's not true: A duty officer at the Pentagon verified with Lead Stories that it's false. Also, this could not have been possible as the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the U.S. military from enforcing domestic laws, and Lead Stories has previously debunked multiple contentions published by…

Did the United States leave behind military working dogs in cages in Afghanistan? No, that's not true: "No military working dogs were left behind," the Pentagon told Lead Stories. The photograph of dogs in cages at the Hamid Karzai International Airport were dogs that were under the care of an animal rescue organization, not the U.S. military. The claim appeared…

Did the military arrest Hunter Biden, the son of U.S. President Joe Biden, on August 30, 2021? No, that's not true: It is not even possible, as the Posse Comitatus Act makes it a federal crime to use the U.S. military for domestic law enforcement. Also, the claim is made on a website known for publishing false assertions and that…

Did Kamala Harris once pose for red carpet photos with Jeffrey Epstein? No, that's not true: On September 17, 2015, Kamala Harris and her husband Douglas Emhoff were photographed together at a black-tie dinner for the opening of the Broad Museum in Los Angeles. The original photo from the inaugural event at the museum is in the Getty Image library…

Has the government sent letters to farmers telling them that they must destroy their crops and be paid one-and-a-half times the value of the crop or lose all government farm subsidies? No, that's not true: A collection of hoax TikTok videos has been circulating with baseless claims about a global or U.S. government plot to destroy crops and depopulate the…

Did President Joe Biden not go to Dover Air Force Base (AFB) on August 29, 2021, to attend the dignified transfer of the remains of service members killed in a suicide bombing at Kabul airport in Afghanistan? No, that's not true: A spokesperson from Mortuary Affairs at Dover AFB told Lead Stories that "President Biden was here" for the transfer…

Was Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's younger brother arrested on charges of sexual conduct with a minor? No, that's not true: The Montreal Police Department told Lead Stories they had "no file" on Alexandre Trudeau. The website that posted the story has a history of publishing false stories. The claim appeared as an article by The Conservative Beaver on August…

Does a Facebook video show President Joe Biden crying and leaving a press briefing, only to come back and ask former President Donald Trump to return? No, that's not true: the video is clickbait and shows footage of a Pentagon press briefing. The video does not feature Biden at all. The claim appeared in the title of a Facebook video…

Did a set of computer backups released at Mike Lindell's Cyber Symposium prove Dominion Voting Systems erased "election logs" from Mesa County, Colorado, voting machines after the 2020 election? No, that's not true: Independent cybersecurity experts at the event said the two backup copies (called "images") turned out to be from two different servers and cannot logically be used to…

Was the fifth Mike Lindell election fraud video correct in claiming a major American voting machine company is controlled by Chinese Communist Party investors and that voting machines used in the 2020 election were hacked via the internet? No, the claims were made without accompanying evidence. Federal banking and finance forms fall well short of supporting the claim that Dominion…