Barack Obama

Has no one surrounding Barack Obama ever been indicted? No, that's not true: Former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig was indicted last year on charges related to work he did for the Ukrainian government after he had left the Obama administration. A federal jury found him not guilty. The claim appeared in a meme (archived here) on Facebook on…

Did the U.S. Postal Service go bankrupt under Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush? No, that's not true. While the United States Postal Service has racked up a large debt, the federal mail carrier did not go into bankruptcy, a USPS spokesman told Lead Stories. "'Bankruptcy' is not applied to us in the same way as other companies," he…

Does a "leaked" Jeffrey Esptein flight log show a list of celebrities, including Beyonce, Chrissy Teigen and Barack Obama, having flown on his plane nicknamed "Lolita Express?" No, that's not true. A list of 125 people circulating on social media claims A-list celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Sheen, Steven Spielberg, Madonna and politicians were on Epstein's flight logs and went…

Did Joe Biden leak the identities of SEAL Team 6 members? No, that's not true: Though he publicly praised the SEALs for the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, he did not identify members of the elite unit by name. The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on March 4, 2020. It read: Today would be a good day…

Were 2 million women and children held captive under The Getty Museum in Los Angeles last year? No, that's not true. "These claims are fictitious and dangerous and of course we refute them," Lisa Lapin, vice president of communications, J. Paul Getty Trust, told Lead Stories. A claim has gone viral that the museum has a secret "underground pedophile lair…

Does a photo show Barack Obama with his hand inside his young daughter's pants? No, that's not true: The photograph of Obama with his arm around his daughter taken by a journalist in 2007 was digitally altered. The original shows Obama's hand above his daughter's waist. The claim appeared as a meme in a post (archived here) shared on Facebook…

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_,…

Do flight logs show that former President Bill Clinton visited Jeffrey Epstein's "pedo-island" but the media ignored it? No, that's not true: There are no flight logs that document Bill Clinton -- the only former U.S. president named in the logs -- as landing at Jeffrey Epstein's Caribbean island. Yes, an Epstein victim did tell this to Lead Stories editor-in-chief…

Does this photo show former President Bill Clinton, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, and others at Rep. John Lewis' funeral on July 30, 2020, without face masks? No, that's not true: This is an old photo taken at the funeral for Jesse Jackson's mother, Helen Burns Jackson, in 2015. The claim originated in a post (archived here) where it…

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…