2022 Election

Does a video show "illegal cutout windows" in Maricopa County, Arizona, ballot envelopes in order to make it easy to identify Republican ballots for election-fraud purposes? No, that's not true: The window is there so the QR code can be scanned as part of ballot-quality control, former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer told Lead Stories. The ballot package is not…

Did Rep. Thomas Massie lose by 10,280 votes in Kentucky's 4th Congressional District Republican primary in May 2026, while candidate Ed Gallrein received 10,854 mail-in votes? And did Massie receive 50,301 votes out of 66,874 total votes in the 2022 primary, compared with 47,539 out of 105,361 total votes in 2026? Yes, those tallies are all true: Election results from…

Was Cole Tomas Allen, the man accused of shooting at attendees at the 2026 White House Correspondents' Dinner, on the payroll of the Democratic National Committee and several California Democratic politicians, including Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris and Adam Schiff? No, that's not true: A DNC spokesperson, a Newsom spokesperson, and a Pelosi spokesperson all told Lead Stories the…

Did California pay the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) more than $100 million mainly to fund protests as a viral social media post said? No, that's not true: California's payments to CHIRLA were overwhelmingly tied to immigration legal services and social welfare programs. There is no evidence in state budget records that any funds were used to pay or…

Does a video titled "Operation Metro Freeze" show real footage of a deportation flight in Minnesota? No, that's not true: AI made that clip. Early versions of it showed a watermark pointing to a specific generative AI tool and it's unlikely a military transport plane would have a tail number like the one in the video. The claim appeared in…

Was Democratic politician Stacey Abrams indicted in Georgia for voter fraud? No, that's not true: The false claim was made on a self-described satire page whose logo was removed from the variations of the claim later spread by other accounts. No credible news organization reported on the existence of the purported lawsuit. The claim originated from a post (archived here)…

Is a video of Minneapolis mayor candidate Omar Fateh saying "Look at me, I am the mayor now" authentic? No, that's not true: Fake audio was added to a clip from a real video of Fateh speaking to a state Senate hearing in 2022 in which he never spoke those words. The voice and accent in the fake audio do…

Were the Minnesota shootings targeting state lawmakers and their family members motivated by leftist political views of the suspect, Vance Luther Boelter? While many details remain unclear as of June16, 2025, available evidence doesn't support this theory. Here is what we know about Boelter's political affiliation. A rumor about Boelter's left-leaning views appeared in a post (archived here) on X,…

Was U.S. President Donald Trump's account on X blocked again in the aftermath of the public feud with the platform's owner Elon Musk on June 5, 2025? No, that's not true: The account was still active, as of this writing. The screenshot that resurfaced on social media showed what Trump's account looked like in 2021 - after he had been…

On June 3, 2025 I was invited to make a statement during a public hearing at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium organized by the Special Committee on the European Democracy Shield. The hearing was titled "Enforcement of the EU Digital Rulebook and political advertising in the context of foreign interference: understanding Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) and disinformation…