False claims about the Charlie Kirk assassination, the Jeffrey Epstein files, and purported verbal gaffes by President Trump topped the list of most-read Lead Stories fact checks in 2025. Here are our most read fact checks of the past year, reflecting our reader's interest in finding out the truth about various viral stories. If you see something suspicious in 2026,…
Were President Donald Trump, former President Barack Obama or TV host Jimmy Kimmel silenced after calling Harvard grads "overrated and dumb" when opponents revealed their SAT scores? No, that's not true: There is no public record of Trump, Obama or Kimmel saying it. There is also no record of anyone confronting those men with their SAT scores. Facebook pages administered…
Was the "Obama Fraud Vault" showing $4.5 billion stolen from Obama's foundation released on Fox News live in December 2025? No, that's not true: Nearly identical stories claiming that Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, Jeanine Pirro, Greg Gutfeld, Sen. John Kennedy, and other conservative figures "just unleashed the Obama Fraud Vault on FOX live" were published by a network of websites…
Did Zohran Mamdani, Melania Trump, Sen. John Kennedy or other prominent Americans go live with a 3 a.m. emergency monologue claiming they were under threat for secrets they were about to expose about President Donald Trump or former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden? No, that's not true: Nearly identical stories mentioning those and other names were published by a…
Is Rob Reiner's name on the "Epstein List"? No, that's not true: An image that lists 165 celebrities and politicians, including Reiner, who purportedly visited "Epstein Island" is fake. The actual Epstein flight logs obtained by Lead Stories and the archive of Jeffrey Epstein emails and text messages released by a congressional committee contain no references to Reiner. There is…
Did Barack Obama, Donald Trump or Marco Rubio "just cut the ribbon on a $150 million free education and health campus, entirely funded "by his own pocket", without a single tax dollar."? No, none of them did: The made-up stories are among dozens cranked out by Vietnam-based publishers building traffic on Facebook with stories attractive to fans of Obama, Trump…
Did Barack Obama say that he wants to return to the White House in 2028 as president through "legal avenues" or as a "proxy candidate"? No, that's not true: Contrary to the posts citing his "exclusive interview on a major news network" on December 7, 2025, the former president did not talk to any TV stations on that day. He…
Is a video claiming that "all of our food is 3D-printed" or contains bioengineered ingredients to be taken seriously? No, that's not true: A TikTok video sent out a confusing message conflating bioengineered food and 3D-printed foods. Both are real things but they don't mean the same thing. The TikTok creator who made the claims as she reviewed food products…
Did CNN refuse to talk about a viral video showing missile strikes on a "runner" near a church during the Obama administration? No, that's not true: The footage is from the video game "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare", which was released in 2007, well before Obama became President in 2009. CNN did write about the game at the time.…
Does Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani have a plan to require all New York students to learn Arabic numerals? No, that's not true: Viral posts making that claim are satirical in nature because Arabic numerals are already widely used everywhere in New York and the rest of the United States. The joke plays on the ignorance of certain audiences not knowing "Arabic…
Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
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