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Does the image in this tweet document Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska on what appears to be a private jet after she spent "€40000 on a shopping trip in Paris"? No, that's not true: The image is a digital manipulation that puts her face on a selfie posted by a bitcoin promoter in August of 2022 on his Twitter feed.…

Was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hanged at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba? No, that's not true: The claim was reported on a website well-known for making up stories about public figures. The site has a disclaimer warning readers not to take its content too seriously, as the site contains "humor, parody, and satire." The claim appeared in an…

Did President Joe Biden put his hand on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's buttocks while pausing for a photo op during Zelenskyy's December 2022 visit to the United States? No, that's not true: The original image was posted to Twitter by Jill Biden and shows both Jill Biden's and Joe Biden's hands on Zelenskyy's back. The image was digitally edited and…

Did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy say the word "butthole" when giving President Joe Biden a medal at the White House? No, that's not true: Zelenskyy was saying "Pavlo," the name of the Ukrainian Army military captain who sent his merit award to Biden. The video that claims Zelenskyy gave Biden a "butthole" award does not reflect what the Ukrainian leader…

Do records in an FBI file indicate that John F Kennedy Jr. wrote a letter in 1994 to then-Sen. Joe Biden calling him a traitor and also saying, "You must die"? No, that's not true: The FBI did investigate a threat letter sent from Worcester, Massachusetts, to Biden in Washington, D.C., on August 26, 1994, that was signed "John F.…

Were the FBI payments to Twitter, documented in what's known as Part 7 of the "Twitter Files", compensation for censoring? No, that's not true: The evidence provided shows the payments were reimbursement for costs associated with the company's work responding to information requests from the FBI. Claims that the FBI was paying for content moderation are false, according to a…

Does a video of a congressional hearing show a Democratic congresswoman from California saying she believes pedophilia is an identity and not a crime? No, that's not true: Katie Porter's remarks were about the use of false narratives on social media that label LGBTQ individuals as pedophiles because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. The claim appeared in a…

Did Michelle Obama's doctor go on the record about the former first lady using a urinal during the 2008 presidential campaign, thereby proving that she is a man? No, that's not true: The article making this claim originated in 2017 on a now-defunct satirical website called America's Last Line of Defense. Clearly marked disclaimers on the original website, run by…

Is the new Er blood group due to a genetic variation caused by COVID-19 mRNA vaccines or vaccine injury? No, that's not true: An expert from the United Kingdom's National Institute for Health and Care Research told Lead Stories that the blood type has been recognized in research for decades. The claim appeared in a video on Instagram on December…

Did a Facebook video reveal that Elon Musk leaked information that proves President Joe Biden is "mortally sick"? No, that's not true: This video has a clickbait title and does not say Musk has inside information that Biden is ill. There are also no news articles about Musk revealing information about Biden's health. The claim appeared on Facebook on December…

Did a 20-year-old woman from Kansas die shortly after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine? No, that's not true: Although Regan Lewis did experience cardiac arrest and die shortly after receiving a vaccine, Regan's mother Connie Lewis clarified that the vaccine was not for COVID after mistakenly saying so previously. There is also no confirmation that Regan's cardiac arrest and subsequent death…

Is stiff person syndrome, the disease Celine Dion announced in December 2022 that she was diagnosed with, included in a list of adverse reactions reported after vaccination with the Comirnaty (Pfizer-BioNTech) mRNA COVID-19 vaccine? No, that's not true: Stiff person syndrome was included in the appendix of an April 2021 Pfizer report as part of a "list of adverse events…

Does a sudden decrease in the displayed vote tally for U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker during Fox News coverage of Georgia's December 6, 2022, runoff election prove that voter fraud occurred? No, that's not true: Human error by the Associated Press (AP), the news organization that provides voting data for multiple networks, including Fox News, was responsible for the change…

Did Elon Musk tweet that Democrats paid former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey millions of dollars to block or delete the pages of people who posted about Hunter Biden's laptop during the 2020 election? No, that's not true: Lead Stories could find no evidence that Musk wrote the tweet nor any credible news reporting on its claims. The claim appeared in…

Were ZIP codes for 31,000 mail-in ballots changed before they were sent out, quietly changed back when they were returned as undeliverable and then fraudulently used to vote in Arizona? No, that's not true: The secretary of state's office told Lead Stories the claims were incorrect and baseless. An election expert said they had never heard of a situation involving…

Is a blank-page insert in some mRNA COVID-19 vaccine packaging the only resource for providing doctors and pharmacists with the vaccine information they need to ensure a patient's informed consent to vaccination? No, that's not true: COVID-19 mRNA vaccine information is publicly available at the manufacturers' websites (here and here), as well as published online by the U.S. Food and…

Does a "secret" CDC report reveal that at least 1.1 million Americans have "Died Suddenly" since the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out? Does a separate government report from the United Kingdom prove the vaccines are to blame? No, that's not true: There's no evidence to connect COVID vaccinations to the deaths. Simply because these people received COVID shots and later died doesn't…

Did Arizona drag out midterm election ballot-counting for a week so that the tally would award the governor's race to Katie Hobbs -- the Democrat in charge of all state elections -- despite voters going "red in every other category"? No, that's not true: election results showed several other races in Arizona -- known for split-ticket ballots -- went blue…

Did Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs' office contact Twitter to have posts removed to censor political opponents? No, that's not true: Hobbs' office asked the Center for Internet Security in 2021 to alert Twitter about an account that was making false claims about the state's voter information database. The tweets that were flagged had nothing to do with the…

If Arizonans voted primarily for Republican candidates in the November 8, 2022, election, but a Democrat still won the race for governor, was the election rigged? No, that's not true: Election data from past years show ticket-splitting is common in Arizona. An Arizona pollster with two decades experience tracking election data told Lead Stories it is not unusual for the…