Fake News: Missing Vegas Security Guard NOT On Clinton Foundation Payroll

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk

Famous fake/satire website Freedum Junkshun posted an article titled "UPDATE: Missing Vegas Security Guard On Clinton Foundation Payroll" which opened:

Something fishy is going on. The unarmed security guard who allegedly distracted Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock, sustaining a wound to his leg, has completely disappeared. Gone. Vanished.

It then cites an article from the Chicago Tribune and quotes a conspiracy website named Wakeup World to set the stage for this paragraph which is the only bit of the text that is related to the claim in the headline:

Then there's this tidbit from Fox News. It's two sentences, but they're very interesting sentences:

Until last month, Campos worked a second job at the Clinton Foundation's Las Vegas office where he had been providing security services for more than five years.

He resigned suddenly just before the attacks.

A quick Google search (archived here) proves that these sentences don't appear on any Fox News website but only in the article itself.

missingguard.jpg

In addition to that Freedum Junkshun carries a satire disclaimer at the bottom of the page which reads:

We believe that there is nothing more precious than the mind of an aging conservative. Here we gather a boatload of bullhonkey, works of pure satirical fiction, to give the fist-shakers of the world a reason to hate. Reality is often in the eye of the beholder. You won't find any of it here.

Join the fun in the comments on our Facebook page where you too can watch David Hasselhoff running over someone's poodle magically transformed into a crime against humanity by Barack Obama or yet another murder the Clintons got away with.

So we would take the claim about Campos being on the Clinton Foundation Payroll with a very big grain of salt since there is no actual proof for it. The people behind the site are probably just trying to make some money off the people who believe and share conspiracy theories by coming up with a new piece of 'info' that nobody else supposedly has.

The owner and main writer of the site is self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has made it his full time job to troll gullible conservatives and Trump supporters into liking and sharing his articles. He runs several other websites such as asamericanasapplepie.org, ourlandofthefree.com and nunadisbereel.com (formerly thelastlineofdefense.org). Sometimes he is also known under his nickname "Busta Troll". He has at least one accomplice who writes under the pen names "Freedom", "Captain Jellypants", "Butch Mannington" or "Captain Buck Atlantis".

Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites who often omit the satire disclaimer and any other hints the stories are fake. Blair has tried to get these sites shut down in the past but new ones keep cropping up.

If you see one of his stories on a site that does not contain a satire disclaimer, assume it is fake news. If you do see the satire disclaimer it is of course also fake news.

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  Maarten Schenk

Maarten Schenk is the co-founder and COO/CTO of Lead Stories and an expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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