9/11

Steve Brusk is the Assignments Manager at Lead Stories, assigning stories to writers and coordinating fact checking research. He worked on the National Desk and in Washington for CNN for twenty years. He was part of the network coverage of five presidential campaigns, the White House, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. He was an assignment editor in Cleveland, Houston and Columbus,…

Is singer Tina Turner dying from stomach cancer and rejection of a kidney? No, there are no reliable reports that she is deathly ill. Turner did struggle with intestinal cancer and she underwent a kidney transplant in the past decade, but there is no evidence she is currently suffering from those issues. The claim appeared in a Facebook post of…

Did government contractors play a role in carrying out a "coup against President Trump" as claimed in the "ShadowGate" video? No, that's not true: There's zero evidence to support the claim, a variation on the oft-debunked myth that Trump is fighting a deep state. A "whistleblower" exaggerated his role in developing a program that he falsely claimed was then used…

Did President Trump post a tweet suggesting "child lifes matter" should be painted on the streets of Hollywood? No, that's not true: The message was published on a fake Trump Twitter account, a fact missed by some who believed it was a sign that the president was signalling belief in the QAnon Pizzagate conspiracy theory. The bogus account unsername @realDonalTrump_,…

Were 409,152 indictments for "child pedophilia" and trafficking offenses "coming to the surface" in July, 2020? No, that's not true: This claim is unsupported by facts. Much of evidence presented by a website that promotes QAnon conspiracy theories involves non-criminal cases -- not indictments -- including some that are decades old. A database that purportedly lists the "non-sealed" indictments is…

Is adrenochrome harvested from the adrenal glands of living children so its LSD-like qualities can be used in satanic rituals by royalty, politicians, celebrities, the rich and elite? No, that's not true: There is no scientific evidence that adrenochrome, which can be purchased in a pure form for as little as $1.34 per gram from lab supply companies, has any…

Did the NIH admit 5G can actually create coronavirus within human cells? No, that's not true. The site Infowars.com claimed the National Institutes of Health admitted that 5G technology can create coronavirus within human cells based on a "study" that has been taken down for being "obviously wrong" and "probably misleading," the site that originally published it told Lead Stories.…

Was JFK Jr. spotted at the Fourth of July celebration at Mount Rushmore on July 3, 2020? No, that's not true: John F. Kennedy Jr. died in plane crash in 1999, which makes it a certainty that the son of the 35th president of the United States did not attend the Mount Rushmore speech of the 45th, President Donald Trump.…

Is the COVID-19 pandemic a conspiracy manufactured by "Deep State Democrats" and the "mass media" to disrupt, even rig, the upcoming presidential election in a bid to topple Donald Trump? And did the coronavirus provide the perfect cover for the mass racial justice protests since the death of George Floyd after being knelt on for nearly nine minutes by a…

Is a contract laying out a restrictive morality code and other rules for female teachers in 1923 a real document? No, it's a fake that has been showing up for years in various forms all over the internet. Most recently, a version of this phony contract appeared in a post on June 20, 2020, by a Facebook page named "Education…