Newspunch

Did a former CIA agent confess on his deathbed that he infected reggae legend Bob Marley with cancer? No, that's not true: There is no record of a now-deceased CIA agent named Bill Oxley, beyond a story published in 2017 and later deleted by the publisher, who explained to Lead Stories it was unpublished in a purge of unreliable conspiracy…

Did Jim Carrey say that Hollywood elites eat whole babies for Christmas and that the more they suffer, the better they taste? No that's not true. This story originated on a website that was notorious for publishing questionable stories and has since rebranded. The 2017 story was erased from the websites, and the publisher has provided a retraction stating there…

Did Mel Gibson say that Hollywood is controlled by "parasites" who are involved in child sacrifice and pedophilia? No, there is nothing to substantiate the old claim that Gibson said it while on a promotional tour in 2017. The actor's spokesman told Lead Stories, "I can assure you that he never said such a thing ... he never stated that…

Did leaked IRS tax returns show George Soros wired $1.7 million to Antifa? No, that's not true: The Open Society Foundations, created by Soros, has made several large donations to The Center for Community Change, but that group is not affiliated with Antifa. The tax documents were not leaked since they are widely-available public records. The claim originated in a…

Did President Trump order the military prison at Guantanamo Bay to prepare for "high level" prisoners? No, that's not true: The original publisher of the story posted in 2018 determined it was an "unreliable conspiracy" theory and retracted it. In the two years after the claim was first made, there have no arrests of American politicians as was predicted. The…

Did Bill Gates admit in a CNN interview that vaccinations are intended to reduce the world's population? No, that's not true: The Microsoft founder was talking to CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta in 2013 about his investment in delivering child vaccinations to third world countries with the goal of saving lives. Gates said that reducing population growth is one of the…

Did the U.S. Supreme Court rule that illegal aliens have no due process rights in America? No, that's not true: It is a twisted conclusion based on ancient court decisions -- made in 1856, 1892, 1896, 1950, and 1972 -- that mostly involved the rights of foreigners who sought entry into the United States through legal means and were not…

Was the U.S. State Department connected to a child trafficking operation with Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy accused sex trafficker who died in federal jail in August 2019, by a shared aircraft registration number? No, that's not true: The false claim is based on a single entry in the personal flight log of an Epstein pilot. The August 6, 2002 entry…

Did an entertainment lawyer say that Poltergeist child star Heather O'Rourke was killed by a Hollywood pedophile ring? No, that's not true: It is a false claim based on a "blind item" entry on a gossip site that acknowledges its content could be fictional. The purported circumstances of the alleged actress murder given in the story do not match the…

Did Julia Roberts say Michelle Obama isn't fit to clean Melania Trump's toilet'? No, that's not true: the story was put out by a site once notorious for taking existing news reports and spicing them up with some invented facts to get a more spectacular headline. The site has since removed the story after being called out by fact checkers…