Is DOGE conducting congressional audits of Rep. Jamie Raskin, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren because of recent surges in their personal wealth? No, that's not true: The meme making the claim is from a satirical Facebook page whose creator's self-proclaimed goal is to trick conservatives into liking and sharing made-up content. The wealth estimates for the politicians are not based on fact.
The meme originated in a post (archived here) on February 24, 2025, on a Facebook page named "America's Last Line Of Defense." Meme's text read:
DOGE Congressional Audits Schedule for This Week:
Jamie Raskin: Entered Congress $40k in debt, now has a $36 million stock portfolioJasmine Crockett: Lived on welfare before Congress, now owns a $25 million Manhattan penthouse
Elizabeth Warren: Net worth has increased by $105 million in 8 years
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Sun Mar 2 15:25:57 2025 UTC)
This meme is just one of a series of similar posts by the ALLOD network, which began earlier in February with the claim that "DOGE forwarded the names of 163 members of Congress to the IRS for 'Immediate Audit' and that 156 of them were Democrats. Lead Stories flagged that claim with a fact check titled "Fact Check: Claim DOGE Forwarded Names Of 163 Members Of Congress To IRS Originated On Satire Page."
Despite knowing the origins of the claim, Lead Stories looked at available information about the finances of Raskin, Crockett, and Warren.
Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, has a net worth of anywhere between $2,185,941 and $5,809,999, according to his 2023 congressional financial disclosures. Raskin's net worth in 2018 was estimated at $4,162,036 by Open Secrets.
Crockett, a Texas Democrat, has a modest net worth of between $46,997 and $29,999, according to her most recent congressional disclosures. Contrary to the meme, she was not on welfare before 2022, when she was elected to Congress. She was a civil rights attorney, public defender, and state representative.
Warren's wealth was estimated in 2018 to be $7,977,513 by Open Secrets. The Massachusetts senator has also posted all of her personal tax returns for the past 16 years online. These do not show income that supports the claim that her net worth grew to $108 million over the past 8 years.
According to the page transparency tab of the ALLOD page, it was run by "Busta Troll," which is the nickname of Christopher Blair.
Christopher Blair is a self-professed liberal from Maine who for years has run networks of websites set up to troll conservatives with made-up news items in order to get them to share his posts. A 2018 BBC profile called Blair "the Godfather of fake news," describing him as "one of the world's most prolific writers of disinformation."
His websites usually have multiple satire disclaimers and the stories very often contain obvious hints they are not real, like category names indicating they are fiction, links to "sources" that instead go to funny or offensive images, or an "S for Satire" logo added to the images used as illustration. Another telltale sign is the name "Art Tubolls" (anagram for "Busta Troll") for characters in the stories. Blair also frequently pays homage to two of his friends who passed away by using their names ("Joe Barron" and "Sandy Batt") in stories.
Blair's stories have been widely copied by spammy, foreign website networks trying to make a buck by spamming American conservatives with clickbait headlines.
Here you can find some of the many, many stories from Blair's websites debunked by Lead Stories over the years.
