Did the U.S. military arrest "several Deep Staters" who attended President Joe Biden's state dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron on December 1, 2022? No, that's not true: The U.S. military is not allowed to arrest civilians. This claim comes from Real Raw News, a website that regularly produces fabricated headlines and articles.
The claim appeared in an article published by Real Raw News on December 3, 2022, titled "Inside Biden's Billion Dollar, Drunken Gala Dinner" (archived here). It opened:
Thursday night's liberal lollapalooza at Tyler Perry Studios' 'White House' was a farrago of drunkenness, paranoia, chicanery, pomposity, and alcohol-fueled rage toward Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
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Inside Biden's Billion Dollar, Drunken Gala Dinner | Real Raw News
The article does not give a list of the people who were "apprehended." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the only named person among the supposed arrestees. On December 6, 2022, Lead Stories debunked Real Raw News' allegation about her arrest.
Under the Posse Comitatus Act, passed in 1878, the U.S. military cannot arrest civilians "except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress." As a search of Congress.gov shows, no Act of Congress has been passed for the miitary to arrest "Deep Staters."
In a December 5, 2022, email to Lead Stories about another Real Raw News claim that "Special Forces and Army Rangers arrested Deep Staters" after the Macron dinner, the deputy director of the U.S. Special Operations Command Communication Office, Kenneth McGraw told Lead Stories:
This report is totally false. US Special Operations Command and its subordinate units - like the Rangers and Special Forces - are not law enforcement organizations and not have the authority to arrest anyone, especially U.S. citizens.
A drug also featured in Real Raw News' claims about the state dinner. The very end of the December 3 article mentions Biden getting a "shot or infusion" of adrenochrome during the dinner. Adrenochrome is a chemical compound linked to adrenaline. The claim that the wealthy and famous take adrenochrome from children for nutrients is part of the QAnon conspiracy theory. More Lead Stories fact checks about adrenochrome can be found here.
Real Raw News has a long history of publishing false claims in mock news stories, many of them about convictions and executions of various public figures at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. For example, the site reported former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was hanged (she wasn't); former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta was executed (he wasn't); and that "the military" convicted former Attorney General William Barr on charges of treason (it didn't).
The website for Real Raw News includes a disclaimer that warns readers not to take its content too seriously. Specifically, it says:
Information on this website is for informational and educational and entertainment purposes. This website contains humor, parody, and satire. We have included this disclaimer for our protection, on the advice on legal counsel.
(Source: RealRawNews.com screenshot taken Tue Aug 3 16:39:48 UTC 2021)
Lead Stories has covered claims published by Real Raw News in the past. Previous Lead Stories fact checks of Real Raw News items can be found here.
