Category: Fact Check

A recent Facebook post suggests an inappropriate image of first lady Jill Biden is circulating online, calling her the “worst first lady ever.”

“Nasty photo of Jill Biden LEAKS,” the March 9 post says. 

It was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

A link in the post’s comments leads to a Jan. 21 blog post describing what it calls a viral photo of Biden. But there is no mention of a “leaked” and “nasty” photo of the first lady. 

Rather, the blog post describes recent photos and video taken of Biden at a public event at Hunter High School in West Valley City, Utah, where she spoke Jan. 16.

Fox News was among the news outlets to report on “the rather unfortunate placement of ‘Hunter High’ signs during her remarks, which called to mind her son Hunter Biden’s struggle with drug addiction.” 

Claims that a supposed nasty photo of Biden was leaked are False.

 

There is ample evidence that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was a target of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, but none that she was responsible for the event during which five people died. 

A March 3 Facebook post said, “The face behind Jan. 6, 2021” with a black-and-white image of Pelosi, the California Democrat who was House speaker during the attack. The image appears to be the same one in a PBS “Frontline” video about how Pelosi responded as the Jan. 6 events unfolded.

This Facebook post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

PolitiFact has debunked many claims about Pelosi and Jan. 6:

Some claims stemmed from the release of footage showing Pelosi speaking that day with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and then-Vice President Mike Pence. The claims falsely said that a “camera crew” following Pelosi around that day proved Jan. 6 was staged. 

But Pelosi was not followed by a “camera crew;” the footage was taken by her daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, a documentary filmmaker who routinely shot videos of her mother at the Capitol using a small, handheld camera that she always carries. 

Multiple news organizations have also confirmed this, including Fox News, which reported that Alexandra Pelosi has filmed her mother at the Capitol for decades. 

Several news reports documented how Pelosi was a target for those who stormed the Capitol. Video footage shows some rioters saying, “Where are you, Nancy? We’re looking for you,” before entering and looting her office. 

In the three years since the Capitol attack, PolitiFact has fact-checked numerous false claims about the attack. Fabrications about the attack were named PolitiFact’s 2021 Lie of the Year. The insurrection was a real event that has resulted in at least 1,265 individuals charged, with 718 guilty pleas and 467 people serving jail time for their roles in the attack as of January 2024.

We rate the claim that Pelosi is responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol False.

 

An old artificial intelligence-generated photo of former President Donald Trump is making the rounds again as the 2024 presidential election intensifies. 

A March 6 Facebook post claimed “America stands with Trump” and included what appeared to be a photo of Trump walking on a street lined with flags, leading a crowd that has massed behind him. 

This Facebook post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The image was initially shared April 4, 2023, on X by Trump’s son, Eric Trump, who wrote, “One of a kind!” The image is not authentic and was generated by artificial intelligence.  

When Eric Trump originally shared the image, it included a watermark from the Twitter account Brick Suit, a social media figure who wears a brick-patterned suit at the Trump rallies he frequently attends.. The Facebook post resharing the image did not include the watermark.

The image has clues that it was generated by artificial intelligence. For example, the faces and hands of the people in the background behind Trump are significantly distorted. 

Other AI-generated fake photos of Trump have circulated in recent years, including a widely shared mug shot after he surrendered Aug. 24, 2023, at the Fulton County jail in Georgia following his indictment on racketeering and conspiracy charges. 

We rate the claim that a photo shows Trump on a New York City street lined with American flags with a crowd behind him Pants on Fire!  

During his 2024 State of the Union address, President Joe Biden referred frequently to his “predecessor,” who happens to be the expected Republican nominee trying to deny him reelection this year.

Without using Donald Trump’s name, Biden focused part of his March 7 speech on his many contrasts with his presidential predecessor, which Biden said extended to management of the nation’s finances.

Trump’s administration “added more to the national debt than any presidential term in American history,” Biden said. “Check the numbers, folks.”

We did.

Experts say it’s hard to draw a straight line between any president and the debt accrued on their watch. But beyond that, there are different ways to view the numbers, and some of them are not favorable to Biden’s assertion. 

Biden left out that the debt under his watch is on pace to exceed Trump’s one-term debt accumulation by the end of his current term, Jan. 20, 2025. During his first three years, Biden already accumulated $6.32 trillion in debt. For his final year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected a deficit of $1.582 trillion. Add those two figures together and you get $7.902 trillion as Biden’s four-year total.

Treasury Department data shows the gross federal debt rose by about $7.8 trillion on Trump’s watch. 

President Barack Obama during his two presidential terms oversaw a debt increase of more than $9.5 trillion, which exceeds Trump’s total. 

But the White House told PolitiFact that Biden used “any presidential term” to refer to single, four-year terms, and the figure during Trump’s four-year term was higher than any previous four-year presidential term.

That backward-looking distinction is notable. 

So far, debt under Biden’s watch has risen by a little less than $6.7 trillion. That’s smaller than Trump’s total — but again, Biden is on pace to exceed Trump’s mark by the time his term ends.

Another way to analyze this debt is more favorable to Biden, though the White House did not offer it as justification after PolitiFact inquired.

The day after Biden’s speech, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington-based group that studies fiscal policy, wrote that Trump had signed legislation or executive orders that added $8.4 trillion of new borrowing over 10 years, about half of it in pandemic relief.

The group said this was more than any prior president in dollar terms, and also more than Biden. The group said it had not recently updated its estimate for Biden but said that it was “significantly smaller” than Trump’s amount.

Why president-to-president comparisons are hard

However, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s method highlights a challenge of assigning debt to any president. 

Using the group’s method, much of the debt allocated to Trump will not show up in the federal ledger until years after he left office in 2021. This reality gets even trickier once mandatory payments are considered.

Much of the current federal debt stems from mandatory payments, such as those for Social Security and Medicare. These began spiking when the baby boom generation started drawing heavily from these programs around 2010. 

Generations of politicians in both parties approved and modified these programs long before Trump took office.

“It is always challenging to figure out how much spending was on whose watch,” Steve Ellis, president of the federal budget-watching nonprofit group Taxpayers for Common Sense, told PolitiFact for a related 2023 fact-check.

Trump’s biggest single federal debt spikes came from the initial rounds of coronavirus relief legislation in 2020. Trump signed them, but they passed with broad bipartisan support.

“Everyone, including me, said it was worth it, and without it, things would have been worse,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum, told PolitiFact in 2023. “So, (it’s) not fair to blame Trump exclusively for something everyone thought was needed.”

Our ruling

Biden said the Trump administration “added more to the national debt than any presidential term in American history.”

Trump did accumulate more debt during his term than any previous president’s single term, and also more than Biden has accumulated so far in his tenure. But Biden’s tenure isn’t over yet.

Projections say that Biden’s four-year term debt will exceed the total debt accumulated under Trump. Also, assigning debt to a particular president can be misleading because so much of it traces back to decades-old, bipartisan legislation that set the parameters for Social Security and Medicare.

The statement is partially accurate but needs additional context, so we rate it Half True.

 Los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC, por sus siglas en inglés), dieron nuevas recomendaciones para el COVID-19 que se alinean con los consejos de salud pública para la gripe y otras enfermedades respiratorias. Haciendo que escépticos en redes sociales digan que ellos siempre tuvieron la razón.

“Al CDC sólo le tomó 4 AÑOS estar de acuerdo con ‘teóricos de la conspiración’ que dijeron en 2020 que: COVID es más o menos como la GRIPE”, dice la publicación en Facebook del 2 de marzo. “Ya es oficial”.

También encontramos otra publicación que dice una afirmación similar y llama a los médicos del mundo a despertar sobre “la verdad de COVID-19”. 

La publicación fue marcada como parte del esfuerzo de Meta para combatir las noticias falsas y la desinformación en su plataforma. (Lea más sobre nuestra colaboración con Meta, propietaria de Facebook e Instagram).

Pero estas declaraciones llegan a una conclusión errónea sobre los cambios y lo que esto dice de los primeros días de la pandemia, la cual resultó en la muerte de más de 1 millón de personas en los Estados Unidos y más de 7 millones globalmente, dijeron expertos a PolitiFact. 

¿Qué cambio en las directrices ?

Los CDC cambiaron sus directrices de COVID-19 para alinearlas con otros virus respiratorios como influenza (gripe) y el virus respiratorio sincitial, o VRS. Las personas con COVID-19 ya no tienen que aislarse por cinco días antes de volver a la oficina o a la escuela, como los CDC lo habían recomendado previamente. 

En vez, los CDC dijeron que las personas enfermas con COVID-19, o la gripe y otros virus respiratorios, deben quedarse en casa y lejos de otros hasta que sus síntomas hayan mejorado y no tengan fiebre — sin el uso de medicinas que bajan la fiebre — por al menos 24 horas. 

Las personas también están alentadas a tomar pasos adicionales durante los siguientes cinco días para evitar esparcir el virus, como distanciamiento social, usando una mascarilla o mejorando la calidad del aire abriendo las ventanas o usando un filtro purificador, dijeron los CDC.

Esos son importantes para proteger a los más vulnerables al COVID-19, como personas de 65 años o más y aquellos con un sistema inmunológico débil, dijeron los CDC. 

Los CDC realmente están diciendo, “‘Aquí hay tres opciones sobre qué hacer durante el periodo de cinco días cuando puedes seguir estando infeccioso,’” dijo la Dra. Céline Gounder, una especialista en enfermedades infecciosas y editora general en el KFF Health News.  

Los CDC también recomiendan que las personas estén al día con sus vacunas, practiquen una buena higiene y tomen pasos para tener un aire limpio, utilizando purificadores de aire. 

Esta nueva directriz no aplica a los lugares de atención médica o a patógenos como el sarampión que pueden tener medidas específicas de confinamiento, dijeron los CDC.  

¿Por qué cambiaron las directrices ? 

Los CDC dijeron en un comunicado el 1 de marzo que las nuevas directrices tienen el propósito de traer un enfoque unificado a virus respiratorios comunes que tienen rutas similares de transmisión y síntomas. Los cambios harían las directrices más fáciles de seguir y ayudarían a proteger aquellos con más riesgo, dijo la agencia. 

El cambio es posible ya que hay muchas menos hospitalizaciones y muertes hoy en día asociadas con COVID-19, y hay más herramientas disponibles para tratarlas, como vacunas y tratamientos. 

Estamos en una posición diferente y tenemos datos y evidencia que muestran que nuestras herramientas están funcionando para protegernos contra COVID-19, dijo la directora de los CDC, Dr. Mandy Cohen en una publicación del 4 de marzo en X anunciando las nuevas directrices. 

Las admisiones semanales al hospital por COVID-19 bajaron más del 75% este invierno, y las muertes bajaron a más del 90% comparado con enero de 2022, el punto más alto de la primera ola ómicron del virus, dijeron los CDC. 

“Vimos estas disminuciones aun cuando nuestros datos de aguas residuales mostraban que teníamos altos niveles de enfermedad viral circulando esta temporada”, dijo Cohen en su video en X.

Más del 98% de la población estadounidense tiene algún grado de inmunidad contra COVID-19, a través de vacunas, infecciones previas o ambos, dijeron los CDC. Al mismo tiempo, vacunas y tratamientos como la droga antiviral Paxlovid están disponibles, las cuales no estaban al comienzo de la pandemia. 

Algunos estados, como California y Oregon, ya habían puesto directrices de aislamiento similares antes del cambio de los CDC. 

Gounder dijo que la mayoría de personas que están enfermas no están haciéndose pruebas y no saben si tienen COVID-19, la influenza o un virus común de resfriado. Así que la meta del cambio de los CDC es para “alinear las directrices alrededor de todas ellas para que ni siquiera tengas que hacerte una prueba para saber qué hacer”.

¿Significa eso que el COVID-19 debía ser tratado como la gripe desde el principio?

No, los expertos le dijeron a PolitiFact. Solo significa que estamos en un mejor lugar del que estábamos al principio de la pandemia, cuando estábamos aprendiendo sobre la marcha del nuevo coronavirus. 

“Los CDC están comparando la mortalidad de COVID-19 con la influenza ahora, pero ese no era el caso al principio de la pandemia”, dijo la Dra. Monica Gandhi, una profesora médica y experta en enfermedades infecciosas de la University of California, San Francisco. “El COVID fue mucho más mortal que la influenza hasta que llegamos a esparcir inmunidad en la población”.

Eso no significa que el COVID-19 fue como la gripe en 2020, dijo Gandhi.

 “SARS-CoV-2 golpeó a una población no inmune en todo el planeta al mismo tiempo, desafortunadamente llevando a altas tasas de mortalidad”, dijo Gandhi.

La Dra. Leana Wen, una médico de emergencia y profesora asociada adjunta en la George Washington University, dijo que las políticas públicas deben evolucionar cuando la ciencia — y los hechos — cambian. 

La perspectiva de alguien sufriendo de la gripe es mucho más diferente hoy, y las medidas de salud pública también han evolucionado. Antes de que existieran las vacunas para la gripe o antibióticos, la pandemia de la influenza de 1918 se esparció mundialmente y mató al menos 50 millones de personas, incluyendo alrededor de 675,000 en los Estados Unidos. Al igual que con el COVID-19, los esfuerzos de control de la salud pública en torno al brote inicial de la gripe estaban limitados en gran medida al distanciamiento social y las cuarentenas.

Oficiales de salud usaron apropiadamente medidas de mitigación específicas para COVID-19 durante 2020 y 2021 cuando no había esperanza de que la enfermedad fuera contenida o eliminada, dijo Wen. 

“Las circunstancias han cambiado”, dijo Wen, señalando a vacunas disponibles, tratamientos y la alta exposición de la población al virus, y las subvariantes menos letales de ómicron. “Ahora está claro que no es posible que COVID sea eliminado. Como resultado, ahora es apropiado considerar COVID en la misma categoría con otros patógenos respiratorios graves como la influenza”.

Gounder dijo que la declaración de que las directrices de los CDC le dio la razón a las personas que dijeron que debíamos haber tratado al COVID-19 como la gripe desde el principio es “evidentemente falsa”, agregando que aunque las muertes han bajado de sus altos niveles, COVID-19 sigue siendo el virus respiratorio más común en los Estados Unidos, y el que tiene más probabilidades de llevar a los adultos al hospital.

Nuestro veredicto

Una publicación en Facebook dice que las nuevas directrices de COVID-19 de los CDC significan que “al CDC sólo le tomó 4 AÑOS estar de acuerdo con ‘teóricos de la conspiración’ que dijeron en 2020 que: COVID es más o menos como la GRIPE”.

Pero esta declaración ignora lo que sabían los oficiales de salud pública sobre el virus que causó COVID-19 durante el principio de la pandemia. También desestima que las vacunas, tratamientos y la inmunidad natural hayan disminuido la amenaza de COVID-19, llevando a muchas menos muertes y hospitalizaciones. 

Calificamos esta publicación como Falsa. 

Una versión de este artículo fue escrito originalmente en inglés y traducido por María Briceño.

Read a version of this article in English.

Lea más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.

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Debido a limitaciones técnicas, partes de nuestra página web aparecen en inglés. Estamos trabajando en mejorar la presentación.

During a recent campaign rally, former President Donald Trump amplified a growing argument among some Republicans that foreigners are taking jobs away from native-born Americans.

On March 9 in Rome, Georgia, Trump said, “Unions should endorse Trump because I am closing our border good and tight. … In February alone, nearly 1 million jobs held by native-born Americans disappeared. Think of that. You lost 1 million jobs. Black people. That’s who lost the jobs. Hispanic people. That’s who lost the jobs.”

However, this is wrong on several levels, including that economists consider Trump’s statistic to be cherry-picked and all but meaningless.

Trump’s campaign did not answer an inquiry for this fact-check.

How credible is the statistic Trump used?

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics every month publishes the “employment level for the native-born” and calculates a monthly companion employment level statistic for the foreign-born.

The native-born employment statistic emerges from the same monthly survey that asks households about who is working, who is unemployed but looking for work and who is not currently looking for work. This survey is used to calculate the widely tracked unemployment rate. 

Although the household survey also produces a raw number for people who are currently employed, economists consider this number inferior to the one from a different federal survey that asks businesses about the workers they employ. Also, the household survey has a significantly higher margin of error because it’s much smaller than the survey of businesses.  

Of the two surveys, only the household survey asks demographic questions, including whether the worker is native-born or foreign-born. But that doesn’t mean the overall employment numbers in the household survey are precise.

For instance, in February, the month Trump referred to, the household survey found that the nation lost 184,000 jobs. By contrast, the survey of business establishments found that employment had increased by 275,000 jobs, which was broadly in line with monthly job gains over the past few years.

“It’s a terrible measure of employment,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum said of the household survey. “We don’t know what we’re really learning.”

Beyond this, Trump’s 1 million figure is exaggerated. 

The household survey statistic shows that in February, the employment level for native-born Americans fell by 494,000, not 1 million. 

Seasonal differences also undercut Trump’s statistic

One problem with using the household survey’s employment figure is that the number bounces around because it’s not “seasonally adjusted” — that is, regular, seasonal differences in hiring patterns aren’t smoothed out. (The establishment survey, by contrast, offers a seasonally adjusted number.)

A recurring pattern in the native-born and foreign born employment data is that employment usually falls during the year’s first two months. One reason is that workers hired for the year-end holiday season leave their jobs. Another is that construction projects slow during winter’s depths. 

Since 2008, the household survey’s data shows that two-thirds of the time, January and February collectively produced a job loss for native-born workers. In most cases, these losses ranged from 500,000 to 2 million. So, a native-born job loss of about 500,000, such as the one in February, is not unprecedented.

Losing the forest for the trees

Focusing on one month also overlooks the broader trend that native-born employment has been robust on President Joe Biden’s watch. 

The native-born employment level has declined for each of the last three months, but the increase during Biden’s tenure has been substantial nevertheless. Since Biden’s 2021 inauguration, native-born employment has risen by about 6.2 million jobs.

Also, years when Biden was president account for two of the five instances since 2008 when native-born employment bucked the historical trend and rose in January and February. (We did not include 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the labor market.)

“Anyone who makes a big deal out of the monthly changes in the household survey is basically telling you that they don’t understand the data,” said Dean Baker, co-founder of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. 

Our ruling

Trump said, “In February alone, nearly 1 million jobs held by native-born Americans disappeared.”

Trump is wrong on the number — it was closer to 500,000 that month. But other things also make Trump’s statistic problematic.

Economists say the survey Trump used for measuring raw changes in employment isn’t the most accurate. It’s common for this metric to show a large decline in jobs during the first two months of the year, because the statistic is not adjusted for regular seasonal cycles of employment.

Also, focusing on one month obscures the overall trend line under Biden: an increase of 6.2 million jobs for native-born Americans since his inauguration.

We rate the statement False.

Princess Kate had not been seen in public for weeks when Kensington Palace marked the United Kingdom’s Mother’s Day by releasing a photo of the princess of Wales surrounded by her three smiling children.

“Thank you for your kind wishes and continued support over the last two months. Wishing everyone a Happy Mother’s Day. C,” read the March 10 post that accompanied the image on the prince and princess of Wales’ X account.

The Associated Press withdrew the image hours later and issued a “kill order” for it, asking clients to remove it from their platforms over concerns it had been manipulated “by the source.” Other news agencies including Getty, Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Britain’s national news agency, PA, soon followed suit.

The palace announced in January that the princess was undergoing a “planned abdominal surgery” that required a two-week hospital stay and a pause in her royal duties until Easter. She hasn’t been seen in public since Christmas. Scant information about the surgery and the long recovery period fueled frantic conspiracy theories about Middleton’s whereabouts, and whether the procedure was more serious. 

The new image sent the rumor mill into overdrive. 

In a March 11 post on the Kensington X account, a message signed by Kate apologized for the doctored photo, saying that “like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing.”

“I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day. C,” the post said.

The photo was credited to her husband, William, prince of Wales and heir to the throne, and the palace said the photo was taken earlier in the week in Windsor, where the family lives. A palace official told The New York Times that Kate made minor adjustments and reiterated that, although William had taken the photo, Kate edited it.

Forensic image experts pointed to several inconsistencies in the image, including details where sleeves and zippers don’t line up. They agreed it doesn’t look like an AI-generated image, but was subject to more rudimentary photo editing.

“It looks to me like it is a composite image that may have been taken from multiple photos — a common technique used to get the best versions of individual subjects,” said Cole Whitecotton, senior professional research assistant for the National Center for Media Forensics at the University of Colorado, Denver. “Many new phones automatically do stuff like this for things like red-eye removal, making sure subjects aren’t blinking, etc. Nothing we have seen in the image seems like particularly malicious edits. Clearly, not much time was put into the edits as you can see the clear traces left behind.”

Digital forensic researchers at the University of Colorado, Denver, pointed out inconsistencies in the image of Princess Kate with her children. (Courtesy of the University of Colorado, Denver)

Mounir Ibrahim, executive vice president of TruePic, which creates tools to verify the authenticity of online content, said it appears that the photo was edited with a tool like Adobe Creative Cloud and looks like a “cheap fake,” which is usually done with rudimentary editing like cropping, filtering and taking existing pictures and placing them into images, he said.

“You can add in generative fill into an existing cheap fake, so it’s not impossible that pieces of this photo are synthetic, like the background or color,” he said. “But this does not appear to be a completely synthetic image; it seems as though pieces of an old image were used or recycled.”

One royal photographer told the BBC that editing photos isn’t an unusual practice in royal photography, but said the press’s withdrawal of the image “was definitely new.”

The AP said there was no suggestion that the image was fake, but the agency retracted it because it didn’t meet its photo standards, which state that images must be accurate and not altered. The news organization said its editors determined after further inspection that the image showed an “inconsistency in the alignment of Princess Charlotte’s left hand with the sleeve of her sweater.”

Minor editing, such as cropping and color adjustments, are acceptable when necessary for clear reproduction, but should “maintain the authentic nature of the photograph,” the news organization wrote in a March 11 article explaining the decision.

“Changes in density, contrast, color and saturation levels that substantially alter the original scene are not acceptable,” the story said. “Backgrounds should not be digitally blurred or eliminated by burning down or by aggressive toning. The removal of ‘red eye’ from photographs is not permissible.”

How to spot manipulated images

Knowing how these technologies work and having a healthy amount of skepticism is important when looking at any information online.

“It is good to question sources (and) look deeper into multimedia that is shared with you,” Whitecotton said. “Having an understanding of how digital technologies work, understanding how the pipeline of content creation works, how these images are being made and put out into the world, etc.”

Editing tools can sometimes leave traces, experts said, so taking the time to zoom in and see if anything appears unusual can reveal whether content is doctored. In this case, internet users zeroed in on Princess Charlotte’s sleeve, which has a portion missing.

 

Unnatural skin tones, or blurred-out features are other indications that an image may be fake or altered. In the royal family’s photo, Catherine’s right hand appears blurry, while her face and left hand are in focus. Experts also recommend examining shadows, reflections and perspective lines to spot irregularities. If a pattern doesn’t intersect at the right place, that could be a tell-tale sign that it’s altered.

Courtesy of the University of Colorado, Denver

As generative AI and other digital editing tools become more sophisticated, experts said it will be more difficult to spot fake or manipulated content. 

The news industry, photo specialists and tech platforms are trying new things in response, including infrastructure like content credentials — icons or watermarks on content that would provide a kind of “digital nutrition label.” This would tell people where and when the content was created, what tools were used to make it, whether generative AI was used and any edits made along the way. As more platforms and tools adopt this, experts believe it has the potential to become a reliable standard.

Jevin West, associate professor and co-founder at the University of Washington’s Information School and co-director of its DataLab, said the response has extended to “the hardware level.” 

Camera companies are starting to equip cameras with the ability to create digital watermarks. West said these initiatives are helpful and can “start to set some norms to producing images and stories that have public relevance and interest.”

Although this is positive progress, West said, he warned people to be watchful, especially in an election year. 

“This is a big year. We need to bring public attention to it and consumers should remain extra vigilant,” he said. “There are really consequential decisions happening around the world, all at a time when AI is rising and becoming more sophisticated and making it harder to tell what’s real or not.”

RELATED: How to detect deepfake videos like a fact-checker 

Testifying before Congress, former Special Counsel Robert Hur defended his February report detailing Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, saying it neither exonerated nor disparaged the current president. House Judiciary Committee members compared and contrasted Biden’s case with former President Donald Trump’s classified documents investigation.    

In his report, Hur concluded that criminal charges were not warranted but criticized Biden’s practices in handling sensitive documents. Hur wrote that his investigation found evidence that Biden had “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” as a private citizen after serving as vice president.

During the March 12 hearing in Washington, Democratic lawmakers said Biden cooperated with investigators whereas Trump tried to thwart them. Republican lawmakers countered that Biden was treated differently from Trump. 

“But then you apply this senile cooperator theory, that because Joe Biden cooperated and the elevator didn’t go to the top floor, you don’t think you get a conviction,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. said.

Hur defended his report’s characterization of Biden’s faulty memory. “I could not make that determination without assessing the president’s state of mind,” he said. 

The release of the transcript of interviews between Hur’s team and Biden also shed new light on an exchange about Biden’s deceased son, Beau Biden.

We fact-checked a few claims made by lawmakers that were missing context or misleading.

Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif.: “Here’s the problem: Donald Trump is being prosecuted for exactly the same act that you’ve documented that Joe Biden committed.”

This is misleading. 

Trump was indicted in June 2023 on about three dozen counts, including willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice and making false statements. 

“Trump’s indictment alleges a pattern of deliberate and willful behavior and lying to federal investigators that Hur does not find in the Biden investigation,” Joan Meyer, who has worked as a federal and local level prosecutor and is now a partner at the law firm Thompson Hine LLP, told PolitiFact. 

Hur’s report drew several distinctions between his Biden investigation and Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump’s handling of classified documents. 

Hur wrote in his report that Trump’s case had “several material distinctions” from Biden’s, including that Biden cooperated with the investigation while Trump thwarted federal efforts to retrieve documents. 

Biden “turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview, and in other ways cooperated with the investigation,” Hur wrote. 

Biden’s lawyers discovered the documents Nov. 2, 2022, and notified the National Archives and Records Administration the same day.

Hur wrote that according to Trump’s indictment, the former president “not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.: “The Hur report represents the complete and total exoneration of President Biden.”

Multiple former prosecutors told us that prosecutors typically recommend for or against prosecution but do not “exonerate.” 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary says exonerate “implies a complete clearance from an accusation or charge and from any attendant suspicion of blame or guilt.” 

Hur didn’t use the word “exonerate” in his report, and he pointed that out during his testimony. “That is not a word I use in the report and that’s not part of my task as a prosecutor,” Hur said after U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., repeated the term.   

“Hur’s report finds insufficient evidence to prosecute President Biden because the evidence he generated is not likely to secure a criminal conviction,” Meyer said. “That is the standard that federal prosecutors use to determine whether to charge. Declining to charge is not the same as exonerating a defendant. Prosecutors only determine if the weight of the evidence supports prosecution and conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Florida, agreed that prosecutors do not typically describe a decision not to bring charges as an “exoneration.”

He said a prosecutor might use the term “exonerate” when there is a determination of innocence through evidence such as DNA, rather than simply a decision not to prosecute.

Nadler’s mention of “exoneration” was a reference to Trump, who said Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report “exonerated” Trump of colluding with Russia to tip the 2016 presidential election in his favor. Mueller said the report hadn’t done so.

Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa.: “Your report on Page 208 says that Mr. Biden couldn’t come up with the date, the year, of his son Beau Biden’s death, when in fact in the transcript it shows that you asked him the month. And you know what he said Mr. Hur? He said, ‘Oh, God, May 30.’ Would you like to correct the record? His memory was pretty firm on the month and the day.”

The transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden didn’t show Hur asking what month Beau Biden died. But Biden did identify the month and day unprompted.

Hur asked Biden about where he kept papers related to a book in progress and a cancer research initiative. Biden responded with a story that started with him asking Hur whether the time frame in question was “2017, 2018, that area?”

Hur said yes. Biden answered, “Remember, in this time frame, my son is — either been deployed or is dying,” and discussed his thinking about running for president. Then Biden said, “And, and so what was happening, though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th.”

Two other people in the room, one named and one unnamed in the transcript, entered the conversation, saying, “2015.”

Biden: “Was it 2015 he had died?”

An unidentified male speaker said, “It was May of 2015.” 

Biden: “It was 2015.”

Hur wrote in his report that Joe Biden “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.” 

Biden later recounted this conversation at a Feb. 8 press conference and said the special counsel asked him a question about Beau’s death, even though the transcript shows that is not how Beau Biden’s name came up during the interview.

“I know there’s some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business,” Biden said.

Hur’s lawyer, William Burck, said Dean’s “implication was that he had asked Biden when his son died. The transcript speaks for itself. Hur did not ask him that.”

PolitiFact Staff Writers Maria Ramirez Uribe and Ian McKinney contributed to this report.

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A proposed amendment to Canada’s criminal code regarding hate speech has some social media users claiming it would ban Christianity or allow Christians to be jailed for quoting the Bible.

“Canada is passing a bill to essentially ban the idea of Christianity,” read a March 5 Instagram post’s caption. The post shared a screenshot of an X post that said, “Canada is the new North Korea. Bill proposes to jail Christians who quote the Bible in public and to jail pastors who preach against certain sins as guilty of hate crimes.”

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

The Instagram post didn’t specifically say what it was referring to, but the X post it shared linked to an article on a conservative website that made the accusations about Bill C-367 in Canada. We found other social media posts making similar claims.

Bill C-367 was filed in November by Yves-François Blanchet, the leader of Canada’s Bloc Québécois party. 

The bill does not mention Christianity or any other religion. It seeks to remove religious exemptions as a defense for inciting hatred, antisemitism, or violence, its author said. It doesn’t ban Christianity and wouldn’t lead to arrests for simply quoting the Bible. Under the bill’s terms, someone might be arrested if they are quoting the Bible while inciting violence and vilifying a group, but quoting the Bible is not in itself an offense, experts told PolitiFact.

(Instagram screenshot)

What is Bill C-367

The bill sought to amend Canada’s criminal code in a section about hate propaganda. It proposed two changes to the code.

• First, it proposed repealing paragraph 319(3)(b) of the code, which said a person can’t  be convicted of an offense for the willful promotion of hatred “if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text.”

• Second, it proposed repealing paragraph 319(3.1)(b), which said a person can’t be convicted for the willful promotion of antisemitism “if, in good faith, they expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text.”

In a Nov. 28 Canadian Parliament debate, Blanchet told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau the bill was in response to threats against the Jewish community.

“Mr. Speaker, gunfire has been heard in Montreal over the past few days. Windows have been broken, and graffiti has been directed specifically against the Jewish community,” Blanchet said. “There are fears that these actions were in some way encouraged by an exception in the Criminal code that allows hate speech and the incitement of violence.”

Blanchet’s proposal does not refer to Christianity but critics argue that the changes could lead to charges against a Christian who made statements opposing the LGBTQ+ community.

Joanie Riopel, the press secretary for Bloc Québécois, which Blanchet leads, told PolitiFact that in the context of the war between Israel and Hamas, hate speech, violence and antisemitism have increased in Quebec and Canada. Riopel cited a religious preacher in Montreal calling for the death of “Zionists” at a pro-Palestinian rally.

Because of this, Bloc Québécois proposed Bill C-367, “the only purpose of which is to remove religious exemptions for public incitement to hatred, wilful promotion of hatred and wilful promotion of antisemitism,” Riopel said.

The code as it stands “allow anyone to hide behind religion in the context of public incitement to hatred,” Riopel said.

The bill has yet to make it past the first of three required readings in the House in Commons. If passed there, it would also need to make it through three readings in the Senate.

In February, Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, another Bloc Québécois member, offered a similar bill in the House of Commons, Bill C-373. It also has not moved past its initial reading there, but because of parliamentary rules, would be debated before C-367. The debate on the second reading of C-373 should happen before June 30, Riopel said.

What experts say

The proposed bill would not mean banning Christianity, said Richard Moon, a University of Windsor law professor who researches religious freedom and freedom of expression.

“The Criminal Code hate speech ban extends only to speech that vilifies the members of a particular group — racial, religious, etc. The speech must be extreme, for example, describing the group members as subhuman or as inherently dangerous,” Moon said. “I’m not sure what a Christian might say that would be so extreme.”

Moon said a Christian simply saying that homosexuality is sinful wouldn’t be considered hate speech, but saying gays are pedophiles might.

“But that is not, as far as I know, the view of any Christian group, or at least any mainstream group,” Moon said.

Emmett Macfarlane, a University of Waterloo political science professor who studies online hate speech and free expression, called the claims about Bill C-367 “mostly nonsense.”

“The exemptions that the bill would remove from the law would not change the very high threshold that must be met before any expression is deemed to be the wilful promotion of hatred or the wilful promotion of antisemitism,” said Macfarlane, who added that there is a very high bar in Canada’s hate speech law and few charges have been brought forward.

Striking religious exemptions from the law wouldn’t prevent people quoting Bible passages or other texts generally, Macfarlane said.

“An individual would almost certainly have to be incorporating additional extreme and incendiary speech in their expression to run afoul of the law, with or without the exemptions,” he said.

Our ruling

An Instagram post claimed that Canada is passing a bill to “essentially ban the idea of Christianity.”

But the bill neither mentions Christianity, nor seeks to ban any religion. In response to antisemitic rhetoric during the Israel-Hamas war, its author proposed amending Canada’s criminal code regarding hate speech to remove religion as a defense for public incitement to hatred or antisemitism. The bill has not progressed in the House of Commons and is not close to being a law.

Experts said simply quoting from a religious text such as the Bible wouldn’t result in hate speech charges, unless it was accompanied by extreme, explicit language. We rate the claim False.

Actor Mel Gibson is regularly cast as QAnon folk hero on social media, sometimes starring in misinformation about high-profile people participating in a child sex trafficking cabal. 

One March 5 Instagram post, for example, claims Gibson recently released a video linking British royalty, a former president and a media mogul participating in satanic rituals on the former island of Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender.

“BREAKING: MEL GIBSON JUST RELEASED A VIDEO THAT SHOWS THE S@ T@N1C RITUALS WHICH TOOK PLACE ON JEFFREY EPSTEIN’S ISLAND!,” the post says. “THE VIDEO WAS RECORDED IN 2010 AND IT FEATURES PRINCE ANDREW, BILL GATES, OPRAH, BARRACK OBAMA AND MANY MORE!” (Obama’s first name is spelled “Barack.”)

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Gibson’s representatives didn’t immediately respond to PolitiFact’s questions about the post. We found no evidence to support the claim, including credible news reports or statements from Gibson. 

A New York judge recently unsealed documents in a court case related to Epstein, renewing claims about an alleged list connecting celebrities and politicians to the late, disgraced financier.

But searching through Epstein’s flight logs and address book, news reports, and newly unsealed documents from the case against Epstein’s former girlfriend and associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, we found no evidence that former President Barack Obama was linked to Epstein. 

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, meanwhile, did appear in Epstein’s flight logs, as did Prince Andrew, a member of the British royal family. One of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, also filed a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in 2021, accusing him of sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress while she was a minor. Prince Andrew denied these allegations, and he and Giuffre settled in 2022.

We rate claims that Gibson released a video that shows satanic rituals on Epstein’s island False.