Was former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recorded in a 2021 videotaped deposition saying that Vice President Mike Pence and several others conspired in an attempt to remove President Donald Trump from office? No, that's not true: The recording is actually of a different person, Ryan Dark White, a failed U.S. Senate candidate who also used the name Jon McGreevy. A written transcript of the deposition clearly shows White making those comments.
The claim appeared in a post on X (archived here) on November 16, 2024. It included a screenshot and audio from a TikTok account whose headline read:
Audio Recording of the Interrogation of James Clapper.
Here's what the post looked like at the time of writing.
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Nov 21 17:43:49 2024 UTC)
Clapper served as Director of National Intelligence (archived here) under President Barack Obama from 2010-17.
Lead Stories listened to the purported "Audio Recording of the Interrogation of James Clapper," in which "Clapper" supposedly details a wide-ranging conspiracy during Trump's first term to remove him from office.
But records show the man speaking is not Clapper.
On January 9, 2021, Ryan Dark White gave a deposition in a civil case involving attorney Lin Wood (archived here). The now-retired Wood posted the entire written transcript of that deposition on his Telegram channel (archived here).
Here is the first page of that transcript:
(Source: Lin Wood Telegram Channel screenshot taken on Thu Nov 21 15:31:30 2024 UTC)
The transcript of White's deposition matches what the X post claimed "Clapper" was supposedly saying.
Notice this portion of the audio recording from the X post at the :08 mark mentioning former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Pence, and others:
That particular group was Rod, VP Pence, Paul Ryan. That was the core of that group. Rod was in there, but that was the core of it. It was an attempt, where Rod was the brilliant legal mind behind it, to remove President Trump under the 25th Amendment.
Here is Page 5 of the transcript from White's deposition:
(Source: Lin Wood Telegram Channel screenshot taken on Thu Nov 21 18:52:48 2024 UTC)
White, who also used the name Jon McGreevy, failed to win a Senate seat in Maryland and died in 2023 (archived here). Shortly before that, the sheriff of Harford County, Maryland, posted a video on Facebook (archived here) explaining how White was charged with filing a false police report in an unrelated issue. The sheriff also said White wrote a letter of apology, saying "it was imperative that Mr. White be held responsible for his purposeful actions and his widely false claims and accusations."
To see more fact checks on claims involving Donald Trump, click here.
