Latest Stories By Daniel Funke

After rioters interrupted the Electoral College vote count, rumors swirled online and in the halls of Congress. One popular narrative: left-wing activists — not supporters of Donald Trump — were behind the insurrection. Since Jan. 6, we’ve fact-checked several claims that blame antifa, short for anti-facist, for the breach of the U.S. Capitol Building. Republican lawmakers, […]

Facebook and Instagram posts are spreading false claims that President Donald Trump is set to impose martial law ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration. Many of them allude to QAnon, a baseless conspiracy theory that’s banned on the platforms. On Jan. 6, Trump fans stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress counted electoral votes from the 2020 […]

In a video viewed tens of thousands of times on Facebook, a retired Air Force officer makes a slew of inaccurate and baseless claims about everything from the Capitol insurrection to the coronavirus pandemic. The video, one of hundreds we found on Facebook, shows former Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney speaking to a group of eight […]

In a violent scene like no other in American history, a sprawling crowd of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and halted congressional proceedings, wearing and waving Trump-branded paraphernalia and flags as they sought to overturn the election. Lawmakers were evacuated as the rioters overwhelmed Capitol Police and bashed through the building’s doors […]

In 2020, PolitiFact fact-checked hundreds of false and misleading claims on social media. Their variety reflects a year filled with crises, both real and fabricated.  There were fake tweets about stay-at-home orders and misinformation about face masks. Out-of-context videos and conspiracy theories constructed a false narrative about widespread election fraud. Fake accounts and viral rumors […]

Federal health officials say clinical trials show that both coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are safe and more than 90% effective at preventing coronavirus infections.  That hasn’t stopped groups from portraying the vaccines as dangerous, the product of corruption, or part of a government plot to track citizens. We have fact-checked unproven or innaccurate claims […]

A Florida taxi driver and his wife had seen enough conspiracy theories online to believe the virus was overblown, maybe even a hoax. So no masks for them. Then they got sick. She died. A college lecturer had trouble refilling her lupus drug after the president promoted it as a treatment for the new disease. […]

Joe Biden is president-elect of the United States. But in Facebook groups, conservative media and the Trump White House, the battle for the presidency is far from over. Since Election Day, PolitiFact has fact-checked more than 80 misleading or false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election. Federal agencies, state election officials and technology […]

Joe Biden is president-elect of the United States. But President Donald Trump and his supporters aren’t giving up the race. Trump has brought a barrage of legal challenges contesting vote totals in several key swing states. He has repeatedly made unfounded assertions of victory and allegations that widespread voter fraud affected the outcome of the […]

In his first public remarks since falsely saying he won re-election hours after the polls closed, President Donald Trump lashed out at ballot-counting efforts in several states, alleging with no evidence that the system was stacked against him in multiple ways. “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal […]

Since Election Day, social media users on nearly every major platform have spread rumors of discarded ballots, mysterious new votes and sudden halts in the vote-counting process to raise doubts about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s gains in battleground states. Many of the rumors found a home in the social media accounts of President Donald […]

An unprecedented level of mail-in and early voting in this year’s presidential election may also create an unprecedented level of misinformation. As of Nov. 2, Americans had already cast nearly 100 million ballots — more than 70% of the total votes counted in 2016, according to data from the U.S. Elections Project. An influx of […]