2024 Election

Have you come across viral videos showing how people mock influencers for wearing Christian-themed clothing? Lead Stories has identified several of these clips in recent weeks and determined that many were AI-generated. The people and scenarios depicted there were not real -- social media accounts posted this kind of content to play on religious sentiment, driving likes and shares as…

Does a real order from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts allow Donald Trump to seek "four additional years" as president? No, that's not true: A search of the Supreme Court of the United States' docket found no order bearing the number shown in the fake document. Supreme Court orders are public records. While portions of a case file may…

Did the United States have an election with 133 million registered voters in which 159 million votes were cast? No, that's not true: Official government figures for national elections do not support that claim. More than 158 million Americans cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election, but more than 168 million were registered to vote. The claim appeared in a…

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 Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyár, who is challenging sitting Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in the April 2026 election, describe U.S. President Donald Trump as "a senile grandpa" in a public speech? No, that's not true: The claim originated from a fake report that stole the logo of Euronews, a real news organization, in an apparent attempt to make the…

Did German Chancellor Friedrich Merz use $550 million of state funds to build a private "doomsday" plane? No, that's not true: There is no credible evidence or proof that Merz commissioned a fortified warplane. The website that published the article was registered one day before the publication of the story and is not an established media organization. An online detection…

Did the BBC use AI to fabricate remarks by President Donald Trump in a Jan. 6, 2021, speech in a documentary that aired just before the 2024 election? No, that's not true: The $5 billion lawsuit Trump filed against the BBC does not allege that it used AI. Instead, it argues that the network edited together unrelated portions of the…

Is a video showing a Politico report claiming Germany is preparing to take in 400,000 Palestinian refugees real? No, that's not true: There are no reports from Politico or any other news organization that Germany plans to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees, Palestinian or otherwise. In addition, an online AI detection tool determined that the audio in 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…

Did Elliot Forhan, a Democrat running to be Ohio's attorney general, post a video on TikTok in which he says "I'm going to kill Donald Trump"? Yes, that's true: Forhan, who served one term in the Ohio legislature, shared a 41-second-long video on his campaign's TikTok account. He said if elected he would put Trump on trial before an Ohio…