Posts from the anonymous online forum 4Chan have been spreading the false claim that Secret Service officials prevented an agent named “Jonathan Willis” from shooting former President Donald Trump’s attempted assassin. The Secret Service has no employee by that name, and the claim is “categorically false,” the agency said.
The actions of the Secret Service at the Pennsylvania rally where former President Donald Trump was wounded in an assassination attempt are under review. But social media posts show an altered photo to falsely claim agents were smiling while moving Trump to safety. The original Associated Press photo shows the agents weren’t smiling.
A TV ad from a super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump features a clip of President Joe Biden only saying “nobody is going to be deported,” falsely suggesting that Biden promised his administration would never deport anyone who entered the U.S. illegally.
A claim on social media misrepresents the number of people who have registered to vote in three states in 2024 and suggests the new voters are immigrants in the country illegally. There have been 194,000 newly registered voters in those states — not 2 million — and there’s no evidence they are immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
The federal indictment against former President Donald Trump, concerning his efforts to remain in office despite losing the election, details actions Trump and his co-conspirators allegedly took to get state officials to change legitimate electoral votes. The indictment says the pressure campaign involved knowingly making false claims of voter fraud — many of which we’ve written about before.
Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman has been hospitalized since Feb. 15 for treatment of depression, an aftereffect of a stroke. Social media posts use two photos of Fetterman — taken years apart — to falsely claim the Democrats are using a body double for Fetterman. Differences in the photos are due to camera focal lengths and lenses, experts said.
Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman checked into a hospital on Feb. 15 to be treated for clinical depression following his recent stroke. Social media posts falsely claim that Fetterman is “brain dead” and that he hasn’t been seen in public. Fetterman has been shown working from the hospital in a March 6 tweet shared by his chief of staff.
Social media posts falsely suggest there was fraud in the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race, citing a TV graphic that showed Republican State Sen. Doug Mastriano with nearly 500,000 more votes than Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro, but Mastriano trailing 41.6% to 56.6%. The graphic showed inaccurate numbers that were quickly corrected on air.
Dominion voting machines have had no issues reading ballots filled out with Sharpie pens. But an Instagram video spread the false claim that ballots filled out with Sharpies could not be counted by voting machines in Pennsylvania’s 2022 election. A Pennsylvania Department of State spokesperson said the claim is “disinformation.”
Even before the polls opened on Election Day, a potentially significant legal battle erupted in Pennsylvania over whether to count mail-in ballots with an incorrect or missing date on the outside envelope.