Did the parents of Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse shot to death by ICE agents in Minneapolis, say their son quit his hospital job months earlier and showed "unusual behavior"? No, that's not true: A statement released by Pretti's parents referenced his work as an ICU nurse at a Veterans Administration hospital, but it did not say that he had…
Did Karoline Leavitt dismiss various celebrities, saying "complex social policy" was "out of their league" and dismissing them as just a singer, musician, actor or comedian? No, that's not true: The claim about a televised confrontation in a TV studio was made about at least 26 different people in posts published on dozens of fake Facebook fan pages aimed at…
Did TV host Johnny Carson comfort dying woman Barbara Martinez while taping the March 17, 1983, episode of NBC's Tonight Show? No, that's not true: Social media posts about it did not include the actual recording of the purported event, sharing an AI-generated image instead. Lead Stories found no credible sources ever mentioning the supposed dance, and the Library of…
Did Travis Kelce, Jelly Roll, Bruce Springsteen, Caitlin Clark and a 12 other celebrities say that President Trump was "a vicious old bastard draining America's soul after the Born-in-America Act"? No, that's not true: The claim that at least 17 different sports stars and entertainers made that identical statement was made up by a Vietnamese-based spam factory that uses artificial…
Did Tom Hanks broadcast a program in 2026 about Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse and trafficking of Virginia Giuffre titled "Finding The Light?" No, that's not true: There has been no broadcast schedule and no real news report that such a show aired and attracted an audience of millions. There is no public record of Hanks or anyone else promoting a…
Did singer Beyoncé Knowles announce she would be covering the expenses of Renee Good's children until they were adults? No, that's not true: The viral video apparently showing that was labeled as AI generated by the TikTok account that posted it. Beyoncé's actual social media accounts and those of her charitable foundation have not made any mention of the Minneapolis…
Did Johnny Depp, Eminem, Cher, Paul McCartney or any other celebrity tell Donald Trump "You're tearing families apart ... Shame on you" at a live town hall meeting on immigration? No, that's not true: Nearly identical stories mentioning those and more than 40 other celebrities were published by a network of foreign websites and Facebook pages. There were no news…
Did Barbra Streisand just announce a massive donation while accepting a "Lifetime Achievement Award" at a Los Angeles gala in front of various tech titans, billionaires and powerful people? No, that's not true: The exact same story, often accompanied by an image or a mention of Mark Zuckerberg, has been posted about dozens of celebrities by a network of sites…
Did the FBI discover a secret tunnel under Rob Reiner's Brentwood mansion? No, that's not true: There is no credible information to support this claim. The day after Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were murdered, clickbait videos began to surface on YouTube claiming the FBI found a tunnel under their home. Some of these videos had titles identical to…
Did Cher tell Karoline Leavitt to "sit down, baby girl" after reading out her bio on MSNBC? No, that's not true: The viral story about the singer reacting to a supposed rant from Leavitt about "out-of-touch celebrities who think they can lecture America" originated on a network of websites and Facebook pages run from Vietnam. It contained verifiably false details.…
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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