Did a federal judge in June 2025 give the green light to a $350 million class-action lawsuit against Rep. Nancy Pelosi by 500 January 6th defendants? No, that's not true: The story originated on a Facebook page with a satire disclaimer. A search of news archives showed that the rumor was not even inadvertently accurate.
The claim appeared in a June 29, 2025, post on Facebook (archived here), which contained the following text:
A federal judge has given the green light to a class action lawsuit against Nancy Pelosi by more than 500 patriots who spent time in jail over January 6th.
The suit alleges that Pelosi set the whole thing up and lured peaceful protesters off the streets, later calling them "violent insurrectionists."
The class is suing for $350 million in punitive damages, which would bankrupt Pelosi.
"The accusations are serious. If she's found liable, she probably should lose everything."
This is what its looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot)
The rumor was false. The page that published the memes, "America's Last Line of Defense", is part of a network of pages and websites which describe their output as satirical.
"America's Last Line of Defense" features the following disclaimer:
Nothing on this page is real.
The website associated with the page, Dunning-Kruger Times, contains the following disclaimer:
Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined.
Despite originating as self-described satire, the story was shared widely in earnest, without "satire" disclaimers, in the ensuing days.
In order to ensure that the rumor was not even inadvertently accurate, Lead Stories searched Google News and Yahoo! News for the phrases "Pelosi", "January 6", "lawsuit", "350", but found no relevant entries.
