Category: Fact Check

After a May mass shooting at a shopping mall in Allen, Texas, a comedian raised a familiar claim about gun violence in the U.S. 

Bryan Callen, a podcast host, said that the U.S. is No. 3 among 193 countries in gun violence, but if not including “the five cities with the most gun violence” — which he named as Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and St. Louis — it would significantly change the rank.

“If you were to take them out of the equation, we would not be the third, we would be the 189th. That’s pretty significant,” Callen said.

A Feb. 1 Instagram video reshared Callen’s comments, first made on a May 2023 podcast episode. 

(Screenshot from Instagram)

The Instagram video 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 193 countries that Callan mentions match the number of United Nations member states. We found no worldwide gun violence ranking with that number of countries.

The claim is similar to a meme that has been circulating since at least 2015 that we rated Pants on Fire! 

Subtracting the total number of firearm homicides across the five cities mentioned would reduce the 2022 U.S. gun homicide rate from 5.0 deaths per 100,000 people to 4.5 per 100,000. That means it wouldn’t reduce the rate enough for the U.S. to be on the lowest end of a global gun violence ranking.

PolitiFact contacted Callen for comment but did not hear back.

Where the U.S. ranks for firearm homicides 

There are many ways to measure gun violence rates across countries, so the U.S. ranking varies. Most criminologists use the number of shootings-per-100,000-people metric to account for differences in population size.

The 2019 Global Burden Disease study includes the most recent and complete worldwide data on gun violence rates, and the number of countries and territories it includes is most similar to the number in Callen’s claim. In the study of 204 countries and territories, the U.S. ranked third for overall number of deaths caused by physical violence by firearm, behind Brazil and Mexico. When filtering by the rate per 100,000 people, the U.S. ranked 32nd.

In the 2019 study, the U.S. gun homicide rate was 3.96 deaths per 100,000 people. Three years later, in 2022, when the COVID-19 pandemic had driven up violent crimes, including homicides, the FBI reported that the U.S. gun homicide rate was 5.0 deaths per 100,000. 

If subtracting gun homicides in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and St. Louis from the 2022 data, the U.S. gun homicide rate would decrease to 4.5 deaths per 100,000 people. 

Gun homicide data for 2022 for all countries is not yet available. But based on 2022 data about 43 countries collected by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime — which did not include the U.S. —  a U.S. gun homicide rate of 4.5 per 100,000 people would put the country in 13th place, higher than 31 other countries, if it were included. That means the U.S. would not rank at the very bottom of a global list, as the Instagram post claims. 

Another dataset supports that conclusion. A 2021 report by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluations said the U.S. ranked seventh out of 65 high-income countries and territories for the rate of firearm homicides per 100,000 people.

By comparison, other high-income countries have extremely low gun homicide rates per 100,000 people, including Singapore (0.01), Korea (0.02) and the United Kingdom (0.04). The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluations report shows that all but 14 of the 65 high-income countries have firearm homicide rates lower than 1.0.

“Plenty of researchers have parsed the data and concluded that the U.S. homicide rate is a gross outlier among high-income countries and even much poorer countries and this shows up overwhelmingly in firearm homicide rates,” Daniel Webster, distinguished research scholar for the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, wrote in an email to PolitiFact.

Even among datasets from the same year, there are differences. The 2019 Global Burden of Disease study estimated 13,001 deaths in the U.S. from physical violence by firearm, and the FBI reported 10,258 firearm homicides the same year. The FBI figures come from crime data voluntarily reported by participating law enforcement agencies nationwide, and the Global Burden of Disease figures come from more than 280,000 data sources including hospitals, governments, surveys and other worldwide databases. 

Subtracting the five cities from the data

Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group, analyzed the FBI’s 2022 gun violence data and found that 20 cities, including the five mentioned in the Instagram post, accounted for 50% of U.S. gun homicides. 

The FBI reported 16,800 fatal gun homicides in the U.S. in 2022, which translates to a national rate of 5.0 deaths per 100,000 people. 

The number of firearm homicides in those five cities totaled 1,816 in 2022. Subtracting that total from the overall count would lower the national firearm homicide rate from 5.0 deaths per 100,000 people to 4.5 per 100,000 people.

Each of the five cities listed in the Instagram video had firearm homicide rates higher than the national rate:

• St. Louis: 66.7 per 100,000 people (highest rate among more than 500 U.S. cities)

• Detroit: 44 per 100,000 (fourth highest rate)

• Philadelphia: 30.8 per 100,000 (13th highest rate)

• Chicago: 19.7 per 100,000 (27th highest rate)

• Los Angeles: 7.7 per 100,000 (134th highest rate)

Two of the cities cited are in states with looser gun restrictions

In the Instagram video, Callan said the five cities he cites have “the strictest gun controls.” The best available data is state level rather than city level, and it shows that two of the five cities are in states with looser gun restrictions. 

Everytown ranks states’ gun law strength by assigning points based on policies’ impact. States get more points for what Everytown considers to be foundational laws, including those requiring background checks and/or purchase permits; concealed carry permits; secure storage or child access prevention; “extreme risk” or laws limiting access to guns for people in crisis; and for having no “shoot first” laws, also called “stand your ground.” 

Everytown ranked all states, with No. 1 having the toughest gun restrictions. Here’s how the states ranked where the five cities named in the Instagram video are located:

• California (ranked first): Five of five foundational laws.

• Illinois (ranked third): Five of five foundational laws.

• Pennsylvania (ranked 17th): Two of five foundational laws.

• Michigan (ranked 20th): Four of five foundational laws.

• Missouri (ranked 38th out of 50): Zero foundational laws.

Everytown’s analysis found that Illinois is bordered by states with much weaker gun laws, such as Indiana, and that many guns recovered in Illinois were purchased out of state.

“We could also point to New York, which has even tighter gun (regulations) and a gun homicide rate less than the national average,” said Philip Cook, Duke University public policy studies professor.

Our ruling

An Instagram post claimed that if you removed gun-related homicides in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and St. Louis, the U.S. would rank 189th out of 193 countries in gun violence.

Based on 2022 FBI data, removing the firearm homicides from those five cities would decrease the U.S. firearm homicide rate from 5.0 deaths per 100,000 people to 4.5 per 100,000. 

There is no complete global gun homicide data for 2022 yet, but based on 2022 data from 43 countries — which did not include the U.S. — a U.S. rate of 4.5 deaths per 100,000 people would put the U.S. in 13th place, higher than 31 other countries, if it were included. That means the U.S. would not rank at the very bottom of a global list. 

A 2021 report also showed the U.S. ranked seventh out of 65 high-income countries and territories for the rate of firearm homicides per 100,000 people. The countries at the bottom of the list have extremely low gun homicide rates, including Singapore (0.01), Korea (0.02) and the United Kingdom (0.04).

The burden of proof is on the speaker, and the available evidence does not support this claim.

We rate it False.

RELATED: Is the United States third in murders and are outlier cities to blame? No.

RELATED: Is 95% of gun violence occurring in ‘inner cities’? No

A map claiming to show levels of gun violence across the United States says that states with more guns have lower levels of gun violence. But data shows that states with more gun ownership have higher rates of firearm deaths. 

Instagram users shared an image of the map with text that read, “97% of all guns are in the red territory. 97% of all gun violence is blue.” 

Portions of the map appeared to be divided by counties, with most of the blue regions where 97% of gun violence is allegedly occuring in areas of Democratic-led states such as California, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Vermont, Virginia and Washington

(Screenshot from Instagram)

The red regions, which purport to show where “97% of all guns are,” were largely in Republican states such as Mississippi, Louisiana, Alaska, Arkansas and Tennessee. But some blue-marked counties were in Republican states such as Texas and Florida.

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.)

We could not find the map’s source. And the graphic did not cite what statistics were used to create the map. 

David Hemenway, director of Harvard University’s Injury Control Research Center and a firearm injury prevention expert, said there is no data on the number of firearms in each county, as the map suggests. 

Because most states do not require gun owners to register their firearms, firearm registrations do not signal how many guns are in each state, reports Giffords Law Center, a nonprofit promoting gun safety legislation created by former Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz., after she was shot during a 2011 mass shooting.  

Charles Branas, director of Columbia University’s Center for Injury Science and Prevention and a member of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium, said because there is no data collected on county-based gun ownership across the U.S., researchers will use gun manufacturing data and gun-related suicide rates as proxies for gathering region-specific gun ownership data. 

The map also does not specify the type of gun violence. Branas said gun deaths are separated into three basic categories: homicide, accidental death and suicide. 

The Gun Violence Archive collects data on firearm injuries and fatalities. Its database shows that in 2024, there have so far been 18 firearm injuries and eight firearm deaths in Massachusetts and 151 gun injuries and 98 gun deaths in Louisiana. Massachusetts has a population of more than 7 million people, and Louisiana has a population of more than 4.5 million people according to U.S. Census data. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which publishes the most reliable statistics on gun deaths, shows that in 2022 Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico and Alabama were the states with the highest firearm death rates, and Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Jersey and New York had the lowest gun death rates. 

Those statistics show the map’s claims are reversed, with states that it purports to have the lowest levels of gun violence having the highest levels of gun deaths.

Branas said the map shared on social media “doesn’t coincide with anything else we’ve seen.” A report on U.S. gun violence in 2021 by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions found that states with the highest gun death rates “tend to be states in the South or Mountain West, with weaker gun laws and higher levels of gun ownership, while gun death rates are lower in the Northeast, where gun violence prevention laws are stronger.” 

Cass Crifasi, co-director of Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, echoed Branas’ assessment: “There is no evidence to support the claim that more guns equals less violence,” Crifasi told PolitiFact. “In fact, the opposite is true. In places with higher levels of gun ownership, we see higher rates of gun deaths.”

Crifasi said several factors contribute to gun violence, with the biggest being easy access to guns. Gun violence is more prevalent in areas with social vulnerability, she said. 

Hemenway pointed to multiple studies, some of which he authored, that show U.S. households with guns have a higher likelihood of homicides, accidental gun deaths and suicides than U.S. households without guns. 

The map also appeared to show that regions with large populations have higher gun violence. PolitiFact previously found that if only gun homicides are examined, big cities do account for a disproportionate amount of gun deaths. 

But Branas said there are more gun suicides than there are gun homicides annually in the U.S. “In the past 20 years there’s been such a growth in suicides, that the risk in our small towns of gun death broadly, mostly driven by gun suicides, is now higher than the risk of gun death in our big cities,” Branas said.

A Harvard’s School of Public Health report looked state-by-state at the median percentage of households with guns and rates of suicides. It found that the three states with the highest gun prevalence, Wyoming, Montana and Alaska, were also in the top four states with the highest suidice rates. The report also found that the nine states with the lowest gun prevalance also had the lowest suicide rates. 

None of the experts that PolitiFact consulted with had seen the data to which the map on Instagram referred. 

We asked 97Percent, a nonprofit that connects gun owners and researchers to reduce gun deaths, to ask if it was familiar with the image and claim. Spokesperson Stephanie Cunnane said 97Percent had no connection to the map and called the graphic misleading, partly because it identifies Hawaii and Massachusetts as having high levels of gun violence although those states have the nation’s lowest gun violence rates.

We rate the claim that states that have 97% of guns are the states with the least amount of gun violence False. 

Where there’s smoke, there may be fire … or conspiracy theories. At least there were after a massive fire at a Texas chicken farm resurfaced a long-running notion that anonymous forces are destroying farms and food production facilities to limit the food supply.

“Here we go again,” read the sticker text on a Feb. 21 Instagram video that showed a chicken farm up in flames. “Chicken farm in Texas with 12 million chickens destroyed by fire.”

The post’s caption said, “Over the past two years, someone has destroyed hundreds of chicken, beef, egg, and dairy production facilities. I don’t know who is doing it but it is far from random. Is one reason that food is getting much more expensive in the US.”

The caption named a number of possible villains, from “big pharma companies wanting to make you sick” to “weird globalist climate people.”

The video came from a Feb. 17 Instagram post from MicstagesUK, a British news and entertainment website. We found numerous social media posts sharing the video or making similar claims.

PolitiFact has debunked multiple similar claims since 2022 and found that authorities did not deem most fires suspicious; most of the fires were likely accidental, caused by electrical or mechanical failures.

A Jan. 29 fire at Feather Crest Farms outside of Bryan, Texas, destroyed two chicken houses, including one full of chickens, news outlets reported. As with previous fires we’ve investigated, there was nothing intentional about the fire, authorities said.

(Instagram screenshot)

Authorities have not yet determined the chicken farm fire’s cause, but the Brazos County Sheriff’s Office determined it was a “noncriminal accident,” according to news reports.

Deputy Chris Searles told KBTX-TV that, “Somebody didn’t throw a match into the pile or anything. Sometimes it’s just we cannot figure out exactly what happened.”

Sam Krouse, CEO of MPS Egg Farms, which owns Feather Crest Farms, confirmed to PolitiFact in an email that authorities determined the fire was accidental, and said the cause is still under investigation.

Krouse said the company is not disclosing the number of chickens killed, “but it is far less than 12 million.”

That number “reflects our total number of laying hens nationwide, not the number in the one barn impacted by the fire,” he said.

Although how many chickens died in the fire is unclear, similar fires in recent years have killed tens of thousands of chickens. A 2022 fire that destroyed one chicken house at a Lebanon, Pennsylvania, farm killed about 250,000 chickens. A 2023 fire in a Bozrah, Connecticut, chicken coop killed about 100,000 chickens.

Fires at chicken farms and food processing plants are common. A 2022 National Fire Protection Association report found that from 2014 to 2018, there were about 930 structure fires annually at livestock or poultry storage facilities, which includes barns, stockyards and animal pens. Heating equipment or electrical equipment malfunctions were those fires’ leading causes, the report said.

Birgitte Messerschmidt, the association’s research director, told PolitiFact in 2022 that fires at food production sites are “nothing out of the ordinary.” 

Animal Welfare Institute data shows that in 2023, more than 480,000 animals were killed in barn fires. That total includes about 300,000 chickens killed in fires at farms in Connecticut and Delaware. In 2020, 1.6 million animals died in barn fires, the institute said.

So far this year, more than 31,000 farm animals have died in fires, the institute said. Its data counted 10,000 chickens killed in the Texas fire but noted that the number is believed to be much higher.

The institute’s 2022 report on barn fires said “improper use of or malfunctioning heating devices and other electrical malfunctions” were suspected or determined to be what caused most of the fires.

Our ruling

An Instagram post claimed a Texas farm fire that killed 12 million chickens was part of a larger conspiracy to attack the nation’s food supply. The number of chickens killed, although undisclosed, was far fewer, said the farm’s CEO. And authorities have ruled the fire a “noncriminal accident.” 

The claim is False.

Some social media posts claim Disney World is changing its theme park bathrooms to be more inclusive. But don’t get flushed — this claim originated on a satirical website.

A Feb. 25 Instagram reel’s narrator said, “Disney World is adding urinals to the women’s restrooms.”

The video showed footage of the entrance to Disney World’s Rapunzel-themed restroom, followed by footage of a bathroom with urinals.

The video claims to quote a Disney spokesperson who said, “Adding urinals to the women’s restrooms provides a safer and more inclusive atmosphere for everyone.”

Commenters on the Instagram post said, “Yet another reason to BOYCOTT DISNEY,” and “Making a large amount of people uncomfortable to make a small amount of people comfortable is insane.”

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.)

(Screengrab from Instagram)

Walt Disney Co. spokesperson Melissa Britt told PolitiFact this claim is “not accurate.”

At the end of the Instagram video, the narrator says to visit “mousetrapnews.com” for more information. What the narrator doesn’t say is that Mouse Trap News describes itself as “the world’s best satire and parody site” and says it writes “fake stories” about Disney.

The same video in the Instagram post was shared on Mouse Trap News’ TikTok and Instagram accounts. The satirical website also wrote a Feb. 8 story about the supposed bathroom change.

We rate the claim that “Disney World is adding urinals to the women’s restrooms” Pants on Fire!

Five years ago, Dr. Mezmet Oz wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed, urging social media companies to crack down on fake videos featuring celebrities pitching medical cures.

If a new Instagram video featuring the celebrity TV doctor with a blackened eye is any indication, his fight continues.

A Feb. 26 Instagram post claimed Oz, also a former Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, was attacked on his TV show because of his diabetes breakthrough. It shows a group of unidentified men scuffling on a TV set before cutting to Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who said, “An attempt on Dr. Oz’s life, live.”

“The doctor sues pharmaceutical companies over a cheap diabetes remedy. He came to talk about a new innovative remedy that can cure diabetes in three days. Who is against this medical advancement and why?” Ingraham said in the video. The video then cut to Oz, with a black eye, talking about the “pharmaceutical mafia” being against his “medical breakthrough.”

The Instagram 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.)

There is no evidence Oz has promoted a diabetes breakthrough, and the video has telltale signs of a deepfake. The fight seen in the beginning of the video was not from Oz’s show. 

(Instagram screenshot)

Using reverse-image searches of screenshots from the Instagram video, we found Oz didn’t get a black eye from a fight on his TV set. The fight scene seen in the Instagram video is from a 2022 Ukrainian talk show. Yuriy Butusov, a journalist, punched Nestor Shufrych, a pro-Russian politician, onstage during filming of “Freedom of Speech,” a few days before Russia invaded Ukraine, according to news reports.

We also found a video of Oz on his show, wearing the same clothes and making the same hand gestures seen in the Instagram video. He has no black eye in the video, and no fisticuffs broke out onstage during his interview with Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist and author.

Oz is listed as a global adviser for iHerb, a company that sells health and wellness products. On a list of conditions the company offers “help with” on its website, diabetes is not listed. Nor could we find evidence Oz has pitched a diabetes cure on his social media accounts; he has warned followers about fake ads featuring his likeness.

In his 2019 Wall Street Journal article, Oz referenced a Facebook ad featuring, “Dr. Oz’s diabetes breakthrough.” “Friends and viewers wanted to know if it was legit,” he wrote. “It wasn’t.” PolitiFact has debunked numerous social media posts that claim to show Oz endorsing medical products, such as gummies.

The video claiming to show that Oz was attacked onstage because he was promoting a breakthrough diabetes cure is False.

With one arrest, some politicians and pundits speculated that the evidence that President Joe Biden accepted a bribe disappeared. But did it?

Tuning into cable news networks, the answer depended on which channel you consulted. 

On MSNBC, FBI informant Alexander Smirnov’s indictment was characterized as a “spectacular embarrassment” to Republicans’ continuing effort to impeach Biden. 

“The special counsel, Republican appointee, leading the case against Hunter Biden, who was appointed by Donald Trump now says that that guy — this informant they hung their entire claim on about the bribe — he lied,” Chris Hayes, host of “All In,” said Feb. 15.

On Feb. 16, Fox News host Sean Hannity said the informant’s indictment made Democrats “giddy,” with Biden and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., calling for the impeachment inquiry to be dropped. 

“There’s a lot to unpack here,” Hannity said. He described the FBI informant’s story as “a very, very small part of what is a large body of evidence” supporting the impeachment inquiry and said. “None of this negates the fact that Joe Biden lied about his knowledge of his son’s business dealings.”

House Republicans have spent years investigating the Biden family’s business dealings and, in 2023, formally launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden. Throughout the investigation, Republicans have characterized Smirnov’s allegations that Biden accepted a $5 million bribe as vice president as central to the impeachment effort. As of Feb. 23, their investigation has produced no evidence that Biden engaged in wrongdoing or accepted a bribe. 

Who is this informant, and what does it mean for Republicans’ impeachment case? Here’s what we know:

Who is Alexander Smirnov?

Alexander Smirnov became an FBI “confidential human source,” or FBI informant, in 2010, according to the indictment. Court filings have revealed little about Smirnov, 43: He previously lived in California and he has lived in Las Vegas since 2022. It is unclear where Smirnov was born. 

Smirnov was repeatedly told he must provide truthful information to the FBI, but he “provided false derogatory information to the FBI” about Biden and his son Hunter, the indictment said. 

In June 2020, Smirnov claimed that in 2015 or 2016, executives at Burisma — a Ukrainian energy company that once employed Hunter Biden — said they paid $5 million each to Joe Biden and Hunter when Joe Biden was still vice president so that Joe Biden would remove then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin and end a Shokin-led criminal investigation into Burisma.

In June, Republicans and Democrats reviewed a redacted form with Smirnov’s allegations and said the FBI had described him as “highly credible.” At the time, the FBI made clear the allegations were unverified. 

These bribery allegations were a central part of House Republicans’ continuing impeachment case against Biden. 

What does the indictment accuse Smirnov of?

Smirnov’s bribery claims “were fabrications,” according to the indictment. Smirnov was indicted on one count of making a false statement to a government agent and one count of falsifying records in a federal investigation, when Smirnov knowingly caused the creation of a false entry on an FBI 1023 form used to document his bribery allegations. 

The indictment said Smirnov had contact with Burisma executives in 2017, after Biden’s vice presidency ended and after Shokin — who was widely considered corrupt and ineffective — was fired in February 2016. 

“In other words, when (Biden) had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when (Shokin) was no longer in office,” the indictment said. 

Prosecutors said Smirnov “transformed his routine and unextraordinary business” with Burisma executives “into bribery allegations against Public Official 1, the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against Public Official 1 and his candidacy.”

In the indictment, Biden is referred to only as “Public Official 1” and his son Hunter is described as “Business Person 1.” 

As they asked the court to keep Smirnov detained Feb. 20, prosecutors said Smirnov has “extensive foreign ties, including, most troublingly and by his own account, contact with foreign intelligence services, including Russian intelligence agencies, and has had such contacts recently.”

Special Counsel David Weiss, a Trump appointee, brought the charges against Smirnov, who, if convicted, could face 25 years in prison. 

What is Hunter Biden’s link to Burisma? 

Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board in 2014. At the time, his father, then the vice president, publicly represented U.S. policy in Ukraine. 

Hunter, a lawyer and businessman, had no particular expertise in energy or Ukraine. His Burisma ties were public knowledge in 2014 and have been scrutinized for years. 

Hunter left Burisma’s board in 2019, when Biden launched his campaign for president.

Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, talks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 13, 2023. (AP)

Were Smirnov’s allegations crucial to impeachment? 

Smirnov’s allegations that Biden accepted a $5 million bribe while vice president were a key element of Republicans’ Biden investigation. 

In May, House Republicans subpoenaed the FBI for the record — called an FD-1023 form — that documented Smirnov’s allegations against Biden. FBI agents use FD-1023 forms to record unverified reporting from confidential human sources.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the House Oversight Committee that has been investigating the Biden family’s business dealings, told Fox News’ Jesse Watters that the form was “a very crucial piece of our investigation.”

House Republicans, from left, Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Jason Smith make a statement to reporters about their impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden at the Capitol in Washington, Dec. 5, 2023. (AP)

In response, Christopher Dunham, an FBI official, wrote that a 1023 form does not “validate the information, establish its credibility, or weigh it against other information known or developed by the FBI.”

“The mere existence of such a document would establish little beyond the fact that a confidential human source provided information and the FBI recorded it,” Dunham wrote. 

After Republicans threatened to hold the FBI director in criminal contempt of Congress, the agency in June allowed lawmakers to privately review Smirnov’s statements in the 1023 form. Smirnov’s identity was then unknown. In July, against the FBI’s wishes, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, obtained and released the form.

When Republicans announced a formal impeachment inquiry into Biden in September, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy listed Smirnov’s claims among the “serious and credible allegations” against Biden. 

“Even a trusted FBI informant has alleged a bribe to the Biden family,” McCarthy said. He also said that eyewitnesses have testified that Biden, as vice president, “joined on multiple phone calls and had multiple interactions” that were lucrative for Hunter Biden and Hunter’s associates. McCarthy also cited foreign payments to Biden family members and associates as cause for alarm. 

The evidence Republicans have provided so far, including during the impeachment inquiry, has not proved Biden engaged in wrongdoing, however.

A convoluted maze of financial records released by House Republicans shows that Biden family members and associates received $20 million in payments from sources with ties to foreign countries. About $5 million of that went to Hunter Biden and other Biden family members, with the rest going to Biden family business associates. 

The bank records show no evidence that any payments went to Joe Biden, who was vice president when some of the payments occurred. 

In January, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, an Oversight Committee member, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that the 1023 form documenting Smirnov’s statements was the “most corroborating evidence” Republicans had supporting allegations that Biden accepted a multimillion-dollar bribe.

(Internet Archive)

The response to Smirnov’s indictment

After Smirnov’s indictment, Comer said in a statement to PolitiFact that the impeachment inquiry “is not reliant” on Smirnov’s claims. Jordan also walked back his earlier statement. 

Genesse Ivonne Moreno entered a Houston megachurch on Super Bowl Sunday and began firing an AR-style rifle at worshippers, police said. Investigators were still piecing together details from the violent scene — celebrity pastor Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church — when social media claims focused on the shooter’s gender.

“The Lakewood Church shooter was transgender,” the popular Libs of TikTok X account posted Feb. 12. “He went by the name ‘Genesse’ and previously ‘Jeffrey.’” The post included what appeared to be part of a criminal record listing numerous aliases, some of which were male names. The post has 1.2 million views as of Feb 22. 

(Screenshot of X post)

Some users on X claimed Moreno, 36, was a trans woman, others claimed she was a trans man. Fox News included the detail in a headline, writing in a story that the shooter was “born as a man.” (Fox News has since changed the headline and story).

A day after the Feb. 11 attack, the Houston Police Department acknowledged reports that Moreno had used the alias Jeffery Escalante, but Cmdr. Christopher Hassig, who leads the police department’s homicide division, said in a press conference that “through all of our investigation to this point … she has been identified this entire time as female … so we are identifying her as Genesse Moreno, Hispanic female.”

Hassig also said there was a sticker on the weapon that said “Palestine” and police uncovered  “anti-semitic writings” during their investigation.

Moreno died at the scene after exchanging gunfire with two off-duty police officers. Two other people were injured, including Moreno’s 7-year-old son, The Associated Press reported. 

The claim that Moreno was transgender prompted a flurry of posts from conservative influencers stating that this incident signaled that the LGBTQ+ movement was transforming youth into violent terrorists.

“One thing is VERY clear: the modern LGBTQIA+ movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists, and it’s only getting worse,” conservative influencer Benny Johnson wrote on X on Feb. 12.   

Libs of TikTok described a “trans terrorist epidemic” and wrote on X that “the LGBTQ movement is turning activists into violent extremists.”

A year ago, we examined similar claims following a deadly shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee, school. Extremism and domestic terrorism experts told PolitiFact they knew of no widespread threats of growing radicalization or violence from the trans population.

A year later, the experts’ views remain the same.

No evidence the LGBTQ+ movement is turning youth into terrorists 

Experts said data shows far-right extremism — not LGBTQ+ violence — is increasing and outpaces terrorism from other perpetrators.

In 2020, the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a nonprofit policy research organization, analyzed 893 terrorist incidents (attempted and foiled) from 1994 to 2020 and found that “right-wing attacks and plots accounted for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States,” in that period. In 2019, they accounted for almost two-thirds of all incidents, researchers said.

The report defined “right-wing terrorism” as “the use or threat of violence by sub-national or non-state entities whose goals may include racial or ethnic supremacy; opposition to government authority; anger at women … and outrage against certain policies, such as abortion.”

In 2021, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence reported that “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and “militia violent extremists” present the most lethal threat. People who are racially or ethnically motivated, it found, are “most likely to conduct mass-casualty attacks against civilians” and militia violent extremists typically target law enforcement and government personnel. 

A database maintained by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a University of Maryland research center, tracked 3,203 violent and nonviolent extremists from 1948 to 2021 and found they are most often male, young, single and motivated by “far-right” ideologies.

Experts don’t have the same concerns about LGBTQ+ “radicalization.”

“Is there a serious threat by (transgender people) in terms of violence?” said Victor Asal, a University at Albany political science professor. “If you compare it to extremist right wingers and all sorts of other extremists, I think the answer is very easy. And the answer is no.”

Adam Lankford, a University of Alabama criminology professor, said although many kinds of violent extremism were discussed during a working group he attended at the FBI’s law enforcement training academy, “there was no concern raised about crimes committed by people based on their gender identity.”

Asal said there have been a few examples of violent trans activism. “But compared to other organizations, and more importantly, compared to other groups, this is infinitesimal,” he said. 

Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, said violence against LGBTQ+ people is a greater worry. 

“The closest thing that there is to a threat involving the LGBT community is the deeply concerning spike in threats targeting that community,” Lewis said.

In May 2023, ABC News reported the Department of Homeland Security warned law enforcement agencies that threats of violence against the LGBTQ+ community were increasing. DHS’ website says that “these threats are increasingly tied to hate groups and domestic violent extremists.” 

Ideological groups that tend to engage in violence frequently promote anti-LGBTQ+ views, said Mia Bloom, a communications professor and extremism expert at Georgia State University: “That’s the one thing that all the groups have in common.”

The Williams Institute, a public policy research group on sexual orientation and gender identity topics at the University of California, Los Angeles, found in 2021 that transgender people are four times likelier to be victims of violent crime than people whose gender aligns with the gender assigned to them at birth. In 2022, the institute found that LGBTQ+ people are nine times likelier than non-LGBTQ+ people to be victims of violent hate crimes, which include those “motivated by bias,” that involve hate language or symbols, or “some confirmation by police as evidence that the incident was a hate crime.” 

Do trans shooters perpetrate a disproportionate number of mass shootings?

“Per capita violent trans extremists have to have become the most violent group of people anywhere in the world,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote in a post sharing the Libs of TikTok post about Moreno. “The amount of shootings they have completed or attempted likely pales in comparison to any other radical group based on how small a group they are. Can’t be close!”

As evidence of a pattern,  Several social media users posted a list of shootings since 2018 that they claim were committed by people who identified as transgender or nonbinary.

“Colorado Springs shooter: nonbinary (Colorado, 2022) 

Nashville school shooter: trans (Tennessee, 2023)

Aberdeen shooter: trans (Maryland, 2018)

Denver school shooter: trans (Colorado, 2019)

Iowa school shooter: trans/genderfluid (Iowa, 2024)

Lakewood Church shooter: trans (Texas, 2024)

The modern LGBTQ+ movement is radicalizing our youth into becoming violent extremists.” posted Libs of TikTok on Feb. 12. State names and years were added by PolitiFact for context.
 

In four of the six cases cited, the perpetrators died in the attack. Determining shooters’ gender identity after they die often involves piecing together clues from social media accounts or conversations the shooters had with friends and family.

PolitiFact could not independently confirm that all six shooters identified as transgender or nonbinary. The two who are still alive have confirmed their transgender and nonbinary identities. Two of the four who died following the shootings were transgender, police or friends have said. 

A third suspect who is now dead has been linked to social media posts and accounts with LGBTQ+ flag emojis, he/they pronouns, and the hashtag “genderfluid.” And police are identifying Moreno as female.

But experts cautioned that the larger context of gun violence and shootings show this list is misleading.

There is no standard for defining and tracking gun violence. Some analyses base it on how many people die during an incident; others include the number of people injured; some track gun violence incidents that unfolded in public. Most databases do not track whether shooters were transgender. 

The Gun Violence Archive, which collects data on mass shootings in which four or more people were shot and/or killed in a single event, counted 3,399 mass shootings from 2018 to Feb. 15, 2024. The earliest incident in the six shootings social media users cited happened in September 2018 in Aberdeen, Maryland — three people were killed by a 26-year-old whose family members and friends said struggled with mental illness and identified as transgender.

Even if all six shooters identified as transgender, that is six out of 3,399 incidents, or 0.17%. Survey data from 2022 estimates transgender adults compose about 0.5% to 1.6% of the nation’s adult population. 

This is an imperfect calculation. Not all six shootings listed by X users would qualify as a mass shooting under the Gun Violence Archive’s definition because, in the Lakewood Church shooting, fewer than four people were shot. And there may be more mass shooters who would identify as transgender that social media users haven’t cited.

A narrower way to analyze this would be to look at the number of active shooter incidents, in which one or more people are engaged in killing or trying to kill people in a populated area. This way of tracking focuses on location and intent rather than injuries or fatalities. The FBI, which tracks these incidents annually, said there were 206 active shooter incidents from 2018 to 2022, 2023 data has not yet been released.

If you take the three of the six shootings that happened from 2018 to 2022 and compare them with active shooting incidents tracked by the FBI, they would make up 1.46% of all incidents. 

An epidemiological analysis of active and public mass shooters Lankford and others conducted in 2021 found that public mass shooters are most often young and male. Not all mass shooters are motivated by extremist ideology, but they are likelier to be single, unemployed and have previous military experience than the general population, the study said. 

“To start worrying that somebody who’s trans is going to do mass shootings,” said Laura Dugan, a human security and sociology professor at Ohio State University, “that’s just not a concern, given the vast number of people who are not trans who do mass shootings.”

Migrants crossing into the United States from the southern border get many headlines, but there has also been an increase in crossings at the U.S.-Canada border. 

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who represents a geographically large district in the North Country and Adirondack Park, said on Fox News that the number of illegal crossings is many times higher than it has been in the past. 

“We’ve seen an 800% increase in the Swanton sector, which is the part of the northern border that I represent, in illegal crossings,” Stefanik said Jan 28 on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.”   

We wondered if there has been an increase of 800% in illegal crossings. 

The Swanton sector includes an estimated 24,000 square miles and includes northeastern counties in New York, three counties in New Hampshire and all of Vermont. It is responsible for 295 miles of the U.S.-Canada border, over land and water. 

Year-over-year increases in illegal crossings have been steady since the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, 2020, rising from just 365 that year to 1,065 in the next fiscal year, which ended in September 2022. In fiscal year 2023, the number of people encountered at the border jumped to 6,925, representing the largest year-over-year increase so far. However, if current trends continue, 2024 will outpace the jump in 2023. In the first three months of fiscal year 2024, there have been 2,607 crossings, compared with 1,147 during the same period last year. 

Within this data, there are different time periods in which to calculate the increase, all yielding different results. 

Stefanik could have seen a U.S. Customs and Border Protection news release from February 2023, which stated that there had been an approximate 846% increase in encounters and apprehensions between Oct. 1, 2022, and Jan. 31, 2023, compared with the same period in fiscal year 2022.  

In November, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Chief Patrol Agent Robert N. Garcia of the Swanton sector posted on X that there had been a 550% increase in apprehensions between fiscal year 2022 and 2023, and that the migrants came from 79 countries. Garcia posted in August that apprehensions in just over 10 months exceeded the previous nine years combined.

Experts we spoke with found that the increases, while large for the northern border, are small when compared to other places on the northern border, or the southern border, which has many more crossings. 

“Percentages can look really big, but the numbers themselves can be quite small,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Buffalo Field Office, which operates ports of entry in Erie and Niagara counties, has many more encounters, 84,429 in fiscal year 2023, or 12 times more than the Swanton sector. “Encounters” are people seeking admission who are not authorized to do so. 

Along the entire southern border during 2023, there were more than 6,700 encounters per day on average, or 2.48 million total. 

Immigration experts caution that the number of encounters at a border is not the same thing as the number of people who tried to cross, because the same person could try to cross more than once. But Stefanik said crossings, not people. 

Are these illegal crossings? Any crossing of the border without prior authorization is an illegal entry, but people have a right to ask for asylum, saying they have a fear of returning to their home country, Putzel-Kavanaugh said. These asylum seekers are released with a charge that they entered illegally. When they ask for asylum, they can defend their charge with the reasons why they are seeking asylum. 

Experts attributed the higher migration at the U.S.-Canada border with an increase in migration around the world, Canada’s decision in 2016 to permit Mexicans to fly there without stringent visa requirements, and a subsequent southern movement of these migrants. 

Last spring, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security requested that Canada reimpose the visa restrictions, but Canada has not done that, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration advocacy organization. 

Data from the Swanton sector show that the top two countries of origin for migrants crossing there are Mexico and India. 

Stefanik’s office did not return a request for comment. 

Our ruling

Stefanik claimed that there has been at some point an 800% increase in illegal crossings in the Swanton sector of the U.S.-Canada border. 

Stefanik did not say which time period she was talking about. The increases in unauthorized crossings vary depending on the time period, but there have been increases exceeding 800% at the border. The actual numbers of encounters remain very low compared with crossings at the southern border. 

The crossings are illegal, but people seeking asylum can use their status as an asylum seeker as a defense for crossing illegally. 

We rate Stefanik’s claim True.