Did The Daily Mail report that Sen. Lindsey Graham is a pedophile who "plied boys with drugs and sexually assaulted them" and breached parole after his release from jail? No, that's not true: An account on X plastered a photo of Graham onto an authentic Mail article about an Australian politician to make it look like Graham was the subject of the story. The account @DecentraliseP describes itself as a source of "mockery, memes & satire."
The post about Graham originated in a November 22, 2024, post on X (archived here) under the title "It's over for Lindsey Graham." The screenshot above two photos of Graham read:
Paedophile politician, 62, who plied boys with drugs and sexually assaulted them is accused of breaching parole just four weeks after walking free from jail
This is how the X post appeared at the time this was written:
(Source: X.com screenshot taken on Wed Nov 27 22:15:00 2024 UTC)
The original article was about Milton Orkopoulos of New South Wales, a previous Australian labor minister convicted of child sex abuse. It appeared January 20, 2020, (archived here) and included a photo of Orkopoulos:
(Source: MailOnline.com screenshot taken on Wed Nov 27 22:31:00 2024 UTC)
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Sen. Lindsey Graham can be found here and fact checks of claims about the Daily Mail here.
