Category: Fact Check

A Manhattan jury is likely to soon deliver a verdict in the case against former President Donald Trump, a decision that will have implications for the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in an alleged scheme to cover up a hush money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election in the Manhattan case. It’s the first and possibly only trial of four to be completed before November’s election.

The trial could end with a jury acquittal, a guilty verdict on all or some counts, or a hung jury. It’s hard to predict how long the jury will deliberate — it  could come back within hours or it could take several days or even weeks to decide. 

Here’s what we know about what could happen next.

If Trump is convicted, when would sentencing occur?

Legal experts said sentencing could come months after a guilty verdict is announced. Any sentence imposed could be stayed pending an appeal.

How would an appeal of a guilty verdict play out?

Trump is all but certain to appeal if he is convicted. That process would probably extend beyond Election Day. 

After a conviction, Trump would have 30 days to state in writing that he will appeal. He would have months more to file his actual appeal, said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, criminal defense attorney and former executive chief of the trial division and chief assistant district attorney at the Manhattan District attorney’s office. Once the appeal is filed, it would still take additional months before the appeals court hears oral arguments and potentially months more before the court renders a decision. 

It would not be unusual for the process to take a year or more, experts said.

How rare is a hung jury — that is, a jury that cannot come to a unanimous verdict?

A hung jury is not unheard of, but it would be far from the norm, experts said.

“Convictions are the most common result, statistically, and then acquittals would be the next most common, with hung juries in a distant last place,” said Matthew J. Galluzzo, who worked as a Manhattan prosecutor before District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s tenure and is now in private practice. Galluzzo said he’s had more than 30 trials in his career but only one hung jury.

He added, however, that the statistics probably go out the window for a case involving a former president.

“Trump’s case is very unusual,” Galluzzo said. “I think a hung jury in this case is more likely than statistics might suggest.”

If there is a hung jury, how long would it take for the prosecution to decide whether to retry the case?

It could range from a few days to a few weeks, Galluzzo said.

If the prosecution determines that the jury split was 11-1 for conviction, it “might decide to retry the case quickly. If it’s a more even split, say 6-6 or 7-5, it could take weeks before they decide what to do,” Galluzzo said.

Bill Otis, the former head of the appellate division of the U.S. attorney’s office for Virginia’s Eastern District, said Bragg would very likely retry the case if the jury hangs. 

“He’s basically staked his career and his political future on this case,” Otis said.

Would a typical defendant facing the charges Trump is facing likely receive a jail sentence if convicted?

An analysis by Norman L. Eisen, who was a counsel for Donald Trump’s first impeachment and trial, calculated that during Bragg’s first year in office, Bragg’s team alone filed 166 felony counts for falsifying business records against 34 people or companies. Eisen found that approximately 1 in 10 cases in which the most serious charge was falsifying business records in the first degree resulted in some term of imprisonment. But he cautioned that other charges may have tipped the scales toward incarceration in some of those prior sentences.

Judge Juan Merchan’s potential decision on sentencing in the Manhattan case is anyone’s guess. Working in Trump’s favor is that he doesn’t have prior convictions and the charges are a low-level nonviolent felony, legal experts said. Working against Trump is that he has been held in contempt multiple times for breaching a gag order.

“If he had just been silent throughout the trial, I would think there would have been no realistic probability of a jail sentence,” Galluzzo said of Trump. “But he has said things publicly that I think really create the possibility of incarceration.”

If Trump is convicted, what is the likelihood of facing jail or prison?

The Secret Service, which handles former presidents’ security, has been planning for the possibility of Trump’s incarceration for gag order violations or a postconviction sentence, The New York Times, CBS and ABC have reported.

“For all settings around the world, the U.S. Secret Service studies locations and develops comprehensive and layered protective models that incorporate state of the art technology, protective intelligence and advanced security tactics to safeguard those we protect,” Special Agent Joe Routh told PolitiFact. “In order to maintain operational security, we do not comment on specific protective operations.”

Can Trump still run for president if convicted?

Yes. The U.S. Constitution upholds the principle that voters decide who shall represent them, and its qualifications are limited to natural-born citizenship, age (35 by Inauguration Day) and residency in the United States (14 years).

Convicted felons have run for president in the past. Lyndon LaRouche was convicted in 1988 of tax and mail fraud conspiracy and ran for president multiple times between 1976 and 2004. Eugene Debs was convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 for an anti-war speech, then ran for president under the Socialist Party banner from a federal prison in Alabama in 1920. 

Will Trump lose his voting rights if convicted?

That’s unlikely. 

Trump is a registered voter in Palm Beach County. The Florida Department of State website states that “a felony conviction in another state makes a person ineligible to vote in Florida only if the conviction would make the person ineligible to vote in the state where the person was convicted.” 

New York law passed a law in 2021 that restores voting rights for people convicted of felonies upon their release from prison. Voters don’t lose their right to vote unless they are in prison serving a sentence for a felony conviction. People whose prison sentences are stayed pending appeal do not lose their voting rights. 

What’s the status of the other criminal cases against Trump?

It’s unlikely that the other criminal cases will go to trial before Election Day.

The federal election inference case has been paused because of Trump’s claims of presidential immunity. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on that case by early July.

The Supreme Court decision would not affect the New York case because much of the alleged conduct occurred before Trump was president.

The federal classified documents case was to trial in May. But the judge postponed the date amid legal motions she has yet to rule on and she did not set a new date.

In Georgia, an appeals court agreed May 8 to review a lower court ruling that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue to prosecute Trump. That decision makes it less likely the case will reach trial before November.

RELATED: Read all of PolitiFact’s coverage on Donald Trump indictments

As the jury in the Manhattan trial of former President Donald Trump headed toward deliberation May 29, Judge Juan Merchan gave jurors their instructions.

Once the instructions filtered onto social media, however, they were distorted. 

“Judge Merchan has instructed the jury they do not need to have a UNANIMOUS verdict in order to convict former President Donald J. Trump,” former Fox News writer and producer Kyle Becker wrote May 29 on X.

“This is insane,” the conservative End Wokeness X account posted a few minutes later to its 2.5 million followers. “New York Judge Merchan just told jurors that they DO NOT have to unanimously agree on what crime Trump is guilty of.”

Other social media posts, including from Trump-aligned political strategist Steve Bannon, also claimed the jury verdict did not have to be unanimous. The posts echoed a statement Trump made May 26 on Truth Social that said Merchan imparted “FAKE options for the jury to choose from, without requiring them to be unanimous, which is completely UNAMERICAN AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL.”

Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The posts are inaccurate. If the jury decides to convict, Merchan told them, jurors must agree unanimously on two things: that Trump falsified business records and that he did so intending to commit a separate crime.

Juror unanimity is not necessary on what separate crime Trump intended to commit. Merchan cited three possible crimes: violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act; the falsification of other business records; and a violation of tax laws.

Jurors “all need to agree on the verdict, but they can get to that result through different paths and reasoning,” said Cheryl G. Bader, a Fordham University associate clinical law professor.

Duncan P. Levin, a Brooklyn, New York-based lawyer with Levin & Associates PLLC, called the social media spin on Marchan’s instructions “absurd.”

“It has to be unanimous on the elements of the crime,” namely that Trump “caused business records to be filed (and) intended to conceal election by unlawful means,” Levin said. But it doesn’t have to be unanimous on the means, he said. 

“That is not unusual at all. (It’s) very standard,” Levin said. “Someone can be convicted of murder even if the jurors disagree about the type of murder weapon.”

Merchan’s instructions were clear: a guilty or not guilty verdict must be unanimous

In his instructions, Merchan told jurors that any verdict must be unanimous.

“Your verdict, on each count you consider, whether guilty or not guilty, must be unanimous; that is, each and every juror must agree to it,” Merchan said. “To reach a unanimous verdict you must deliberate with the other jurors.”

That’s standard in criminal law: The New York jury handbook says that in a criminal case, “a finding that the defendant is guilty or not guilty must be by unanimous vote of the jury.”

But Merchan offered caveats about what aspects of a jury’s decision could diverge.

Merchan said, “In order to find the defendant guilty, however, you need not be unanimous on whether the defendant committed the crime personally, or by acting in concert with another, or both.”

He also said, “Although you must conclude unanimously that the defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, you need not be unanimous as to what those unlawful means were.”

Neama Rahmani, a former prosecutor who co-founded the firm West Coast Trial Lawyers, said, “The verdict has to be unanimous, but the jurors don’t have to agree on the other crime that the false business records furthered or covered up.” 

Bill Otis, former head of the Appellate Division of the U.S. attorney’s office for Virginia’s Eastern District and Special Counsel to former President George H.W. Bush, said that although this split structure for jury decisions is common, he understands why Trump allies express concern about it. Otis said the parts of this case that do not require the jury’s unanimity are unusually central to the question of Trump’s guilt.

For this reason, Otis said, it could become a ripe issue for an appeals court to consider, if Trump is convicted.

Our ruling

Social media posts said Merchan told jurors the verdict in Trump’s trial does not need to be unanimous.

That’s not what Merchan said. To convict, the jurors must agree unanimously on two things: that Trump falsified business records, and that he did so intending to commit a separate crime. “Your verdict, on each count you consider, whether guilty or not guilty, must be unanimous,” Merchan said. 

The social media posts conflated this requirement with other aspects of the deliberations that don’t require unanimity — notably, which specific crime the jurors believe Trump tried to commit by falsifying business records. The judge said jurors would need to believe only that at least one of three cited crimes could be the one furthered by the records falsification. 

We rate this statement False.

RELATED: Read all of PolitiFact’s coverage on Donald Trump indictments

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s five-year term as the country’s leader expired May 20. Yet he remains in power as elections scheduled for spring were not held.

One social media user, who was critical of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent Ukraine visit, said Blinken, during his trip, “announced that they were going to suspend elections in Ukraine.”

This 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.)

The post is wrong. PolitiFact examined transcripts of all Blinken’s public remarks in Ukraine during his May 14-15 visit and found no announcements about Ukrainian elections.

In a May 14 speech, Blinken referred to Ukraine’s elections, saying the U.S. is working with Ukraine to shore up election infrastructure so when Ukrainians agree that conditions allow, “all Ukrainians, including those displaced by Russia’s aggression — can exercise their right to vote” and “have confidence that the voting process is free, fair, secure.”

Elections to replace Zelenskyy would have taken place in March — two months before Blinken’s visit — but the country did not hold elections because martial law has been in effect there since Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia invaded. Parliamentary elections that would have been held in October also didn’t happen. 

Ukrainian law, in Article 19, prohibits elections under martial law.

Zelenskyy in a Nov. 6, 2023, video address translated into English on a Ukrainian government website, said, “In wartime, when there are so many challenges, it is absolutely irresponsible to throw the topic of elections into society in a lighthearted and playful way.”

He also said: “Now is the time of defense, the time of the battle that determines the fate of the state and people, not the time of manipulations, which only Russia expects from Ukraine. I believe that now is not the right time for elections.”

All political parties in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s Parliament, signed a joint statement in November agreeing that parliamentary and presidential elections should take place after the war and martial law had ended.

A State Department spokesperson told PolitiFact that Ukraine is in this position because of Russia’s invasion. The spokesperson said Russia occupies nearly 20% of Ukraine’s territory and tens of millions of citizens have been displaced.

An Instagram post’s claim that Blinken announced on a recent visit that Ukraine was suspending its elections ignores that the elections would have already taken place in March and that Zelenskyy announced in November they would not take place because of martial law.

Blinken made no such announcement about Ukraine’s elections. He referred to them only in a speech in which he said the U.S. is helping Ukraine shore up its election infrastructure. The goal, Blinken said, is to enable  all Ukrainians, even those displaced by war, to vote and be confident the process is fair and secure when conditions allow for elections. The claim is False.

The Earth is not flat, and that is a fact roundly agreed upon by scientists. But a video on Facebook claims to show otherwise.

Text posted with the May 20 Facebook video said: “Compilation footage of 120,000k+ ft high altitude balloon shows a completely flat horizon proving the flat Earth and completely destroying the globe theory.”

The video showed clips of clouds, oceans and rivers and what appears to be a flat line where Earth meets sky.

The Facebook 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, Threads, and Instagram.)

The Earth is not flat. Humans have known this for more than 2,000 years, and since then, scientists have improved our understanding of the Earth’s shape, including by collecting pictorial evidence from space that shows the planet is round. 

So, what does this video show? Flat-Earth theorists often use selected images from high-altitude videos to show a flat horizon. But even at lower altitudes than claimed in the video, Earth’s curvature is visible. For example, passengers in the retired supersonic Concorde plane, which could travel up to 60,000 feet, could see the Earth’s curvature. The curvature is sometimes visible at 35,000 feet, but that requires views devoid of clouds and a wide field of view, which most passenger airplane windows don’t have.

Photos taken from the International Space Station, which orbits the Earth at an average altitude of about 250 miles (much higher than the balloons in the Facebook video), also show the Earth is round.

 “Even though our planet is a sphere, it is not a perfect sphere,” according to NASA. “Because of the force caused when Earth rotates, the North and South Poles are slightly flat. Earth’s rotation, wobbly motion and other forces are making the planet change shape very slowly, but it is still round.”

Additionally, other planets are also round in shape. “Through the use of high-powered telescopes, we’ve been able to examine planets both in our solar system and beyond, and all of them are spherical in shape,” researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said.

PolitiFact previously debunked similar claims about the flat-Earth theory.

We rate the claim that this footage shows the Earth is flat Pants on Fire!

RELATED: Outer space is real, the Earth is round and many photographs prove it

An Israeli airstrike ignited a fire in an encampment where displaced Gazans were sheltering, killing 45 Palestinians. Many public figures condemned the May 26 attack, but “Vampire Diaries” actress Candice King was not one of them, as social media users claimed. 

A May 27 X post shared a video of a woman expressing outrage. “What the hell is wrong with you? I’m not talking about the Israeli government, I’m talking about you guys who are still silent,” the woman says. 

She continues, “There were just rumors of babies being beheaded by Hamas. No one saw pictures. …The world went crazy. But there are photos and pictures of beheaded babies in Rafah. The beheaded babies should draw the line for us all.” 

A video of a man holding a decapitated baby during the Rafah tent attack went viral online.

The video was shared with the caption, “(Actress) Candice King calls out Rafah massacre and beheaded babies.” 

The post received a community note, saying the woman in the video is not the American actress. 

The woman in the video is a South African social media influencer who is also named Candice King. She shared the video on her Instagram account May 26. She has advocated for Palestinian human rights since she visited the West Bank in 2016.

Actress Candice King’s official Instagram account does not currently have any posts about the Rafah attack or the Israel-Hamas war. 

Quds News Network, a Palestinian news platform, also shared the video on X. The organization later issued a correction, saying the woman was not actress Candice King.

We rate the claim that actress Candice King “call(ed) out Rafah massacre and beheaded babies” False. 

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, drew headlines and social media chatter for a feisty exchange with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., about personal appearances. But in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” she focused less on looks and more on books.

On May 19, Crockett mentioned President Joe Biden’s commencement speech at Morehouse College, a historically Black college in Atlanta, and discussed the administration’s efforts on loan debt relief.

“When you start looking at student debt relief, it has disproportionately positively impacted Black folk,” Crockett told host Jake Tapper. “We’re talking about over $137 billion for over 4 million people. That means that there (are) at least 4 million people that now can hopefully start to get at that wealth gap.”

Crockett’s spokesperson, Chloe Kessock, told PolitiFact that the congresswoman was referring to overall student debt. “She didn’t mean to imply that relief was just for Black Americans — that’s the overall number for all student debt relief,” Kessok wrote in an email. “Her point was that there is a disproportionate benefit for Black Americans.”

Kessock pointed to reports finding that Black students typically graduate with more student debt than other racial groups. 

The Biden administration, through a series of initiatives, has canceled billions in student debt for millions of borrowers, but the numbers Crockett cited represent all borrowers, not just Black Americans. Overall, student debt in the U.S. was about $1.6 trillion as of March 31, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data reported.

Data on the demographics of student loan holders isn’t complete, and it’s not yet known how many Black Americans have had their debts lessened or canceled through Biden’s initiatives. The data that does exist, however, shows Black Americans are more likely to take on student loans than their white peers and hold more debt years after graduation, experts said.

Biden’s student loan forgiveness initiatives

After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Biden’s sweeping student loan forgiveness plan in 2023, which would have eliminated about $400 billion in student loans, the administration embarked on an incremental approach to debt forgiveness.

That approach — which includes fixes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Income-Driven Repayment programs, and a new income-driven plan called Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE — has canceled about $153 billion for 4.3 million borrowers as of April, according to the White House and the U.S. Education Department.

Crockett’s $137 million figure comes from the administration’s debt cancellation announcement in February.

In April, Biden also announced his Plan B on debt relief. The plan includes making borrowers eligible for loan forgiveness if they owe more than their original balance due to interest, affecting around 25 million Americans, if finalized as proposed. 

The plan’s other parts would cancel student debt for borrowers experiencing hardship in their daily lives that prevents them from paying back their loans, and would provide relief for borrowers who attended institutions or programs that closed or “failed to provide students with sufficient financial value.” 

The White House maintains that the debt relief plans particularly help Black students. 

“These plans would not only help create more financial stability for millions of working and middle class families, they would also help address the disproportionate debt burden on communities of color and advance racial equity,” the White House said in a fact sheet. “Not only are Black students more likely to take on student loans than their white peers, but they also end up holding nearly twice as much debt as their white peers four years after graduation.”

Biden announced another round of student debt forgiveness May 22 to provide relief for about 160,000 borrowers. The Education Department announced the cancellation of $7.7 billion in student loans for people who received Public Service Loan Forgiveness, such as teachers, nurses and law enforcement officials. The relief also applies to some borrowers who signed up for the SAVE plan.

How student debt affects Black Americans

Racial wealth disparity creates financial challenges even before borrowing occurs; a 6-to-1 wage gap means that the average Black American has about 17 cents for every dollar the average white American has, according to an NPR report.

As a result, Black students need to borrow more and have more trouble repaying than others due to several reasons, including lower incomes and lower wealth than other groups, said Sandy Baum, a nonresident senior fellow at the Urban Institute’s Center on Education Data and Policy.

There are other factors, too, Baum said.

“Black students are more likely than others to go to for-profit institutions, which are more expensive and have less financial aid. More Black students are older when they enroll and older students can borrow more from the federal government,” Baum said. “They also graduate at lower rates (and) their families are less likely to be able to help them with loan payments or other needs.”

The Education Data Initiative, an independent research group studying U.S. higher education, found that among bachelor’s degree holders, Black students are the most likely to borrow federal loans at 76%. The organization estimated in May 2024 that 71% of Black students take out loans compared with 56% of white students. 

Meanwhile, in November 2016, the Education Department reported that Black college graduates student debt exceeds white graduates student debt on average by $25,000, citing numbers from the Brookings Institution think tank. Brookings also found that 48% of all Black graduates owe more on their federal undergraduate loans four years after earning bachelor’s degrees, compared with 17% of white graduates.

James Kvaal, U.S. undersecretary of education, acknowledged the racial disparities in the student loan program in an April interview with TheGrio, a news organization focused on the African American community. “Students of color are more likely to borrow larger amounts and are more likely to struggle to repay,” Kvaal told the outlet. “Most Black borrowers owe more 10 years out of school than they originally borrowed because of interest outstripping payments.”

Experts in economics and education policy told PolitiFact that data on the demographics of student loan holders in the U.S. isn’t complete and that, so far, it’s unknown how many Black Americans have had their debts lessened or canceled through Biden’s initiatives.

Judith Scott-Clayton, professor of economics and an education research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, said the data the administration uses for student loan data analysis doesn’t contain information on borrower race, but said that will change in the future because of new questions on the FAFSA, the application for federal student aid.

“In any case, I do think it is plausible that borrowers of color have benefited disproportionately from the administration’s existing cancellation efforts, relative to borrowers as a whole,” she said.

RELATED: Biden administration continues to make progress on student loan forgiveness promis

Among Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, the social media platform X, and his other ventures, entrepreneur Elon Musk’s companies span various industries. 

A May 19 Facebook post claims Musk had expanded his portfolio to include a company that produces television programs. 

“Elon Musk Fires Entire Cast of ‘The View’ After Acquiring ABC,” it read. 

In a comment underneath the post, the Facebook user had shared a link to a May 19 blog post titled, “Elon Musk Shakes Up Television with Daring Acquisition and Dismissal.” 

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.)

(Screenshot from Facebook.)

“The View” is an ABC daytime talk show hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, Sara Haines, Alyssa Farah Griffin and Ana Navarro. 

We searched Google and reviewed the hosts’ recent posts on social media and found no evidence they’d recently been fired from “The View.” The Walt Disney Co. owns ABC, the company behind “The View,” according to its website. 

On May 14, the talk show hosts attended Disney Upfront, an annual event where the company shares its future program plans with advertisers.

PolitiFact found no reputable news reports supporting claims that Musk acquired ABC. 

If Musk had purchased ABC, it would have made headlines. In 1995, Disney’s multibillion dollar deal to purchase then-Capital Cities/ABC drew attention from both news organizations and the U.S. Justice Department. 

We contacted a spokesperson for “The View” and The Walt Disney Co. and received no response. 

Absent evidence that Musk bought ABC and fired the hosts of “The View,” we rate this claim False.

The misinformation machine has been busily producing false claims concerning Beyoncé and her new album, “Cowboy Carter.” 

We previously debunked claims that she was banned from the Grand Ole Opry and that her husband Jay-Z bribed country radio stations to play her songs.

Neither claim was true, nor is another that Beyoncé “offered Kid Rock millions to join him on stage at a few of his shows.” 

“He turned her down,” a May 20 Facebook post said before purportedly quoting Kid Rock. “‘She wants to use my name to add credibility to hers,’ he said, ‘I told her and her husband to shove it.’”

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.)

This claim originated on a self-described satire account. 

America’s Last Line of Defense, which describes itself as the flagship of a “network of trollery,” posted the claim May 5 on Facebook. 

Plus, Kid Rock is an unlikely Beyoncé ally. In February 2015, for example, he criticized her music, fame and body, according to a Rolling Stone story. 

“He’s ‘flabbergasted’ by Beyoncé worship,” Rolling Stone reported that year.

In an interview with the magazine published in May 2024, he reportedly used racial slurs. 

We rate claims Beyoncé offered Kid Rock millions to appear together on stage Pants on Fire!

 

The NFL season is on hiatus until August, but that hasn’t stopped the spread of misinformation about referees supposedly booting players from the field for kneeling during the national anthem. 

“Anthem kneeling in the NFL: Referees flex their authority, eject five players,” a May 20 Facebook post said. “The league sends a clear message!”

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 post has a link to a blog post titled: “The NFL’s stand on anthem kneeling sparks controversy.” 

But the post appears to be plagiarized from the self-described satire site The Dunning-Kruger Times, which is part of what America’s Last Line of Defense calls its “network of trollery.” 

The story, which was shared on America’s Last Line of Defense’s Facebook page in November 2023, describes the supposed ejection of “right guard Joe Barron,” a “notorious kneeler.”

But this is a character who appears regularly in fake news stories. In other posts on The Dunning-Kruger Times site, he’s an attorney, Dominion Voting Systems CEO, Levi’s CEO, Walt Disney Co. chairman, New York Jets head coach, and the host of an ESPN show called “Sports Talk with Joe Barron,” among other purported titles. 

We rate claims that NFL refs ejected players for kneeling during the anthem False.