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,…
Was a Secret Service agent standing with Donald Trump after he was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024, also standing close to Charlie Kirk when he was fatally shot in Orem, Utah, on September 10, 2025? No, that's not true: The male Secret Service agent holding Trump's left arm as Trump raised his right fist in the air…
Did a CIA document in the unsealed JFK assassination files name British actress Penelope Keith as the lone killer? No, that's not true: The purported investigative document naming Keith as the "lone shooter" cites her work in the BBC TV comedy series "The Good Life," which did not start airing until 1975, at least 10 years after the investigation ended.…
Did the Central Intelligence Agency in 1978 only request to black out mentions of Israel when journalists and historians sought to read documents about investigations into President John F. Kennedy's assassination? No, that's not true: The CIA wanted other things to be redacted, too, as seen in other files from the JFK collection. According to the agency's website, it generally…
Is Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro being charged with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler on July 13, 2024? No, that's not true: The district attorney of Butler County told Lead Stories that Shapiro "HAS NOT been charged with anything connected to the assassination attempt." The DA added: "I do not believe the Governor was at all involved in…
Does a genuine U.S. government document show that Rafael Cruz, Sen. Ted Cruz's father, was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? No, that's not true: The document is fake. The real record contains a report from Swiss police regarding Lee Harvey Oswald's plan to study at a school in Switzerland. The document appeared in a post (archived…
Did President-elect Donald Trump release a statement ordering the Dallas police to prepare to make an arrest over John F. Kennedy's assassination? No, that's not true: The image that mimics a Trump/Vance Transition press release is fake. A search of Trump's Truth Social account did not find any matching statement. There are no credible news reports of him ordering the…
Did Secret Service personnel grin widely, showing their teeth, while escorting former President Trump to safety after the assassination attempt at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024, as a social media post claims? No, that's not true: A tool created to detect ai-generated images found substantial evidence the image had been remade with generative ai systems.…
Does a declassified "CIA document" prove that the intelligence agency knows "how the world is going to end"? No, that's not true: The "document" is an excerpt from a book, "The Adam and Eve Story: The History of Cataclysms." It was not written by the CIA, but by the writer Chan Thomas. An online book database shows that it has…
Did the driver for John F. Kennedy, Secret Service Agent William Greer, turn around and shoot the former president when JFK was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963? No, that's not true: A video posted on social media that makes this claim provides no supporting evidence beyond its grainy images. There also is no proof elsewhere that Greer played a…
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