2024 Election

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…

Was Evan Kilgore the federal agent who shot and killed U.S. citizen and registered nurse Alex Pretti during an immigration enforcement raid in Minneapolis? No, that's not true: Kilgore denied he worked for immigration enforcement agencies and threatened to sue those who spread the claim on social media. Lead Stories found nothing suggesting that the conservative commentator had built a…

Did Republican representative Jack Kimble make a post about other countries potentially invading the U.S. "if we ever had" a "highly corrupt leader" as President? No, that's not true: The post was satire from an account on X that pretends to be a non-existent Republican politician. A screenshot of the post that went viral did not identify the account as…

Does a viral clip show real "transgender Providence Police Department spokesperson Lyle Culpepper" demanding that the public stop saying "the Brown shooter"? No, that's not true: The person in the video is comedian L.E. Staiman. In interviews, Staiman has said that he believes his videos are so absurd that people can easily understand they are parody and satire. The claim…

Has Tina Peters been "fully pardoned" by Donald Trump, wiping out her prison sentence for giving unauthorized access to Mesa County, Colorado, voting machines in 2021, when she was county clerk? No, that's not true: Trump's "pardon" of Peters is only symbolic, not official. The U.S. Constitution grants the President power to pardon only those criminals facing federal charges. Peters,…

Did the Associated Press publish a fact check titled 'No, Ghislaine Maxwell did not own a horse named "Bubba"' and did it mention her having a golden retriever at the time? No, that's not true: A viral screenshot showing such a headline along with AP's logo and mentioning Jeffrey Epstein is fake. There is no such story on the Associated…