Does a real video show a man claiming to be a former student of Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico? No, that's not true: Zyon Lewis, the man supposedly depicted in the video, told Lead Stories in a phone interview that it was not him. An online tool also concluded that the videos were more than 99% likely to be AI-generated and that the voice was AI-generated as well.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) by the @Zyon_Lewis_5 account on X on Oct. 20, 2026. It read:
I was sexually assaulted by my language arts teacher James Talarico. It happened in 2012 at Rhodes Middle school in San Antonio
This is what a screenshot of the video in the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @Zyon_Lewis_5 on X.)
The video is embedded below:
I was sexually assaulted by my language arts teacher James Talarico. It happened in 2012 at Rhodes Middle school in San Antonio https://t.co/DyRNB6QsZ1
-- Zyon Lewis (@Zyon_Lewis_5) October 20, 2026
Talarico taught English and Language Arts at Rhodes Middle School (archived here) in San Antonio from 2011 to 2013.
In an Oct. 21, 2026, phone interview with Lead Stories, Lewis said he had seen the video:
I've looked at it, and it's not me. The video is very much AI, very bad AI.
Lead Stories then asked Lewis if Talarico had ever sexually abused him:
No, not at all. Not even close. He was he was my teacher in sixth grade. That would be 2011, 2012. But he was a great teacher. Never messed with me. Never was weird any kind of way towards me or any other student that I've ever seen.
Lewis said he figures someone took "pictures and posts" from his Facebook account (archived here) "and then made an AI video."
Video analysis
Lead Stories ran each video in the post through the Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection tool.
Hive concluded that the first video (archived here) was 99.1% "Likely to be AI-Generated Image":
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Hive concluded that the second video (archived here) was 99.8% "Likely to be AI-Generated Image":
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Other indicators that the videos were created using AI include unnatural lip and facial movements that do not fully match the audio, while the man's body and the background remain unusually still. His blinking, eye movements and facial expressions also appear artificial, and the voice has a synthetic, monotone quality.
News searches
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) and found no matching reports about the claim from established news outlets using the search terms: "James Talarico," "former student" and "video."
Lead Stories reached out to the Talarico campaign but did not receive an immediate response.
Other fact checks
This claim was also investigated by NewsGuard (archived here).
