Do X posts by the account @DocNetyoutube provide screenshots of authentic emails to prove a former student has alleged Tim Walz sexually abused him at a 1995 Indigo Girls concert? No, that's not true: There's strong evidence the screenshots are counterfeit such as inconsistencies in date formats which also don't match the one actually used by Proton, the email provider the emails allegedly came from. The social media posts also do not offer evidence to permit independent verification that the "now grown man" who supposedly made the allegation even exists.
The claim appeared in a series of posts (first post archived here) published on X, formerly Twitter, on October 13, 2024. The caption of the first post said:
Tim Walz Post Number 1
On August 1, 2024, I received my first communication from the now grown man who claims to have information by Tim Walz.
I had initially received a DM from the person. I gave the person my email address to send me the information. This was the initial email. Please note, this was BEFORE Tim Walz was selected, as you can see, I, like many others was sure Shapiro was going to be the pick. This was our initial communication. The first few posts will be rather boring, they are just meant to set up and show the timelines. But for me to build this case, it is important that I show every single detail, even the mundane and the boring.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Oct 14 18:58:38 2024 UTC)
Three additional posts (here, here and here) from the same thread were also published on the same date (archived here, here and here).
The posts provided no additional evidence to support an assertion that the Minnesota governor sexually abused a student at an Indigo Girls concert in Nebraska in 1995, as stated in "Tim Walz Post 4," nor any evidence that the person allegedly making these claims even exists. The post is included below:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Oct 14 22:40:15 2024 UTC)
Irregularities
The purported emails from the supposed individual, allegedly a sexual assault victim, show signs of being fabricated. One of the images in the first post suggests it was sent via Proton, an email platform with end-to-end encryption. However, the visible headers of the alleged emails not only fail to match each other but also fail to match Proton's format.
In the five redacted headers stacked below, the red ovals highlight the domain name for Proton email. The green triangle indicates a zero in front of a single-digit date, which is not present in the other three single-digit dates. Additionally, the blue rectangle highlights a missing comma between the day and date, which is present in the other headers that show the day/date line.
All are evidence that the alleged emails were created by someone, not generated by the email system, which would do so uniformly:
(Source: X screenshots taken on Mon Oct 14 2024 UTC)
Proton
The Proton website (archived here) provides an example of what its email header looks like in a model email from Eric Norbert to Kristen Novak. It's included below:
(Source: Proton screenshot taken on Mon Oct 14 21:33:29 2024 UTC)
The day/date format in the header doesn't match the ones included in the social media posts alleging Walz is accused of sex abuse, which strongly suggests the pictured emails are a fabrication: The blue arrows in the illustration below point to the lines showing the day and date lines. Those in the social media posts don't match the format shown on the Proton website:
(Source: X and Proton screenshots taken on Mon Oct 14 2024 UTC)
The formatting for the day/date line in Proton emails includes several distinctions. The date is an ordinal number, not a cardinal number as in the social media posts. Also, there's no comma after the year. Finally, the time is designated with a 24-hour clock, not a 12-hour clock with a.m./p.m. and a time zone.
Read more
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning Tim Walz are here and the 2024 election are here.
