Fact Check: Protesters Did NOT Chant 'Lock Her Up' At Speaker Nancy Pelosi At 2017 Press Conference

Fact Check

  • by: Marlo Lee
Fact Check: Protesters Did NOT Chant 'Lock Her Up' At Speaker Nancy Pelosi At 2017 Press Conference False Audio

Did protesters shout "Lock her up!" when confronting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the Congress floor? No, that's not true: This interaction took place between pro-immigration protesters and Pelosi at a press conference in San Francisco on September 18, 2017. The audio heard in this Facebook video is from somewhere else. The original audio from this day had protesters chanting phrases like, "You're a liar!" "Shut down ICE!" and "We demand to be heard ... we are not your bargaining chip!"

The claim appeared in a Facebook post on June 2, 2022. The video opened with chants of:

'Lock her up! Lock her up!'

The video was captioned, "๐๐‘๐„๐€๐Š๐ˆ๐๐† - ๐€๐ง๐ ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐๐‘๐Ž๐“๐„๐’๐“๐„๐‘๐’ ๐’๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ฆ๐ฌ Nancy Pelosi, ๐‡๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ข๐š๐ญ๐ž๐ฌ her on Congress Floor." This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:

Screen Shot 2022-06-03 at 10.45.23 AM.png

Facebook screenshot(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Jun 3 14:44:31 2022 UTC)

The protest took place at a September 18, 2017, press conference in San Francisco, Pelosi's home district. Pro-immigrant activists interrupted the news conference to "object to the framework of an agreement that would preserve the Dream Act while increasing border security," according to NBC News. A Bay Area NBC News article notes that protesters were heard yelling multiple chants, such as, "We are immigrant youth, undocumented and unafraid!" "You're a liar!" and "Shut down ICE!" ICE stands for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Here is footage taken by NBC's Bay Area news team of activists chanting many things, but "Lock her up!" is not one of the chants heard.

Here is more footage posted by Sam Brock, a correspondent for NBC News, of activists shouting, "We demand to be heard ... we are not your bargaining chip."

We have emailed Pelosi's team and will update this story with any relevant information if we receive a response.

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Marlo Lee is a fact checker at Lead Stories. She is a graduate of Howard University with a B.S. in Biology. Her interest in fact checking started in college, when she realized how important it became in American politics. She lives in Maryland.

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