Was a C-17 aircraft loaded with supplies for Hurricane Helene victims but never delivered just to give Vice President Kamala Harris a photo opportunity? No, that's not true: The plane Harris took photos with had maintenance issues and didn't take off, according to the North Carolina National Guard. The supplies were flown to Asheville, North Carolina, on a different plane the next day.
The claim appeared in a post on X (archived here) on October 11, 2024. The caption, in part, read:
You Don't Hate The Kamala Harris Admin Enough
Kamala Harris National Guard loaded up supplies on a carbo plane for Hurricane Helene victims
The plane was only used in a photo op. The supplies were never sent.
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Oct 14 17:13:11 2024 UTC)
The rest of the caption quoted the video that was also in the post. The video shows three men, one of whom says they received Instagram direct messages from different "commanders" about how a cargo aircraft (C-17) was loaded with supplies for Hurricane Helene victims in North Carolina for a photo opportunity for Harris, but was allegedly never sent to the hurricane victims.
Lt. Col. Ellis Parks, the public affairs director for the North Carolina National Guard, told Lead Stories on an October 15, 2024, phone call that the claim was not true:
On October 5th, Cargo 197 was loaded with commodities from FEMA headed for Asheville. Vice President Harris took photos and videos with the commodities. Before it took off, the crew discovered that there were some maintenance issues. The supplies were then moved to Cargo 062, but that flight also happened to have maintenance issues. The next day, maintenance issues on both planes were fixed, Cargo 197 flew to Germany and Cargo 062 went to Asheville.
Parks confirmed in an October 15, 2024, email that both Cargo 197 and 062 were C-17 planes.
Lead Stories searched for recent news stories mentioning "C-17 plane" and "Kamala Harris" and "Hurricane Helene" and "photo op" on Google News (archived here). We found no credible sources that would confirm the claim, just another fact check and copies of the claim repeated on some websites.
Snopes had reviewed the same claim at the time of writing.
More Lead Stories fact checks of claims concerning Hurricane Helene are here.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims surrounding Kamala Harris are here. More Lead Stories fact checks of claims about the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
