Qanon

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…

Was the COVID-19 pandemic pre-planned with help from billionaire Bill Gates and have the illnesses associated with it been spread by 5G technology? No, that's not true: The claims made in the "Covid-19 Genocide of 2020" video are a rehash of conspiracy myths previously debunked by Lead Stories and other fact checkers. The claims originated in a video of an…

Did Facebook ban this "President Trump campaign ad"? No, that's not true. It goes without saying that videos playing on a platform proclaiming they are banned by that platform have not been banned. Those behind such posts use them as a way to profit from online traffic. This example is not A Trump 2020 campaign ad. It does not carry…

Abbie Richards, a climate science student in the Netherlands, was looking with bewilderment at the state of her home country of the United States. So many conspiracy theories echoing, particularly ahead of the election. Struggling to wrangle all of them for a paper, she made a chart naming some 100 conspiracies dominating the social media world to, she hoped, make…

Does a disturbing video show children rescued from being trafficked and is it evidence of a huge market for kidnapped children? No, that's not true. A video showing suspected family members of ISIS fighters trying to escape from a Syrian refugee camp is being falsely used by QAnon promoters to support their claim that children are being kidnapped and trafficked…

Did the Republican Party make a last-minute substitution, replacing Vice President Mike Pence on the ballot with John F. Kennedy Jr.? No, that's not possible: Kennedy, his wife and sister-in-law died when the small plane he was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts in July 1999. QAnon followers believe Kennedy, Jr. faked his own death (and…

Are human traffickers putting zip ties on cars to distract the car owners and then abduct them? No, that's not true: There is no concrete evidence to substantiate these claims. Multiple police departments, fact checking sites, and nonprofits have refuted and debunked the claims. The claim appeared in a post (archived here) where it was published by the Facebook user…

Did Joe Biden hold an event and nobody showed up, or were there more Trump supporters than Biden's? No, neither of those claims is true. Video and photos of a campaign Democratic nominee Biden held in Ohio show him standing on a stage with no people in front of him. That's because the event was a drive-in rally with people…

Does a photo in a social meme show Fox News anchor Chris Wallace and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein together? No, that's not true: The implication is that Wallace, who is the target of social media attacks after he moderated the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, visited Epstein's private island. This is a photo…

Was New York state Assembly Bill A99, sponsored by Assemblyman Nick Perry, drawn up to take advantage of the pandemic, with the purported aim of allowing state officials to remove infected residents -- namely children -- from their homes and keep them in detention facilities indefinitely? And is the pandemic "fake" and is COVID-19 made-up? No, none of that is…