Stopped Counting

Do U.S. student loans cost the government over $60 billion more to service than those loans bring in during the year? No, that's not true: According to experts, the cost of servicing student loans is a much smaller figure than $60 billion, which means it could not result in a $60 billion difference compared to how much those loans bring…

Was 2010 census data used to cast fraudulent votes of dead voters and those who had changed addresses in a nationwide hack of the 2020 election? No, that's not true. By law, 2010 census data at the individual name level will not be available until 2082, and the U.S. Census Bureau and cybersecurity agencies say there has been no data…

Does Michael Flynn's interview with Alex Jones include only factual statements about the 2020 election? No, that's not true: The interview repeats disproven allegations of foreign interference, that thousands of dead people voted in Pennsylvania and that Donald Trump won up to 400 Electoral College votes. All are demonstrably false. Flynn's interview (archived here) with Jones -- a well-known conspiracy…

Does an advertising video titled "The Plot To Steal America" contain hard evidence of election fraud? No, that's not true: the 18-minute pitch contains allegations based on video clips purporting to show "evidence" but several of these clips do not actually show what is being claimed. The announcer repeats 11 already-debunked claims in the opening five minutes, then tells viewers…

Did a "pipe break" on Election Day force evacuation of the Fulton County, Georgia, vote-counting center at the same time that "totes full of ballots" were "dumped"? No, that's not true. A pipe leak in Atlanta's State Farm Arena happened "around 6 a.m." on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, and delayed the start of absentee ballot counting for about two hours,…

Does a nine-point list of election "peculiarities" contain only true statements? No, it doesn't: The list relies on falsehoods and unproven theories. Chief among them are claims that swing states stopped counting ballots on election night, that record numbers of dead people voted and that low absentee ballot rejection rates suggest something nefarious is afoot. None is true, election officials…

Did Michigan add 138,000 votes and none of them were for Trump and was there a 4 a.m. ballot dump in Wisconsin? No, that's not true. Lead Stories and other news outlets have debunked similar claims by showing records of a Michigan clerical error that got exaggerated. Wisconsin officials said vote-counting records do not show a "ballot dump," only updates…

Did Joe Biden's first wife run a stop sign before she was killed in a car accident? No, that's not true. Neilia Biden and their children Naomi, Beau and Hunter, were in a car accident on December 18, 1972. She did not run a stop sign but "pulled from a stop sign" when a tractor-trailer crashed into her car in…

Did the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention make 30,000 COVID-19 deaths disappear "just like that," proving the American people were lied to as part of some social experiment? No, that's not true: On May 2, the CDC reported their latest count, with more than 64,000 people in the United States having died from the novel coronavirus, an increase…

Editor's Note by Lead Stories Editor-in-Chief Alan Duke: Three days after a virtual apocalypse wiped out hundreds of fake people used to run a foreign pro-Trump network on Facebook, we found signs of life among a few dozen surviving profiles. Their creators in Vietnam appeared to be revising their identities and assigning them new duties to support a handful of…