CLAIM: A video shows Sen. Dianne Feinstein returning to the U.S. Capitol in a hearse on Wednesday following her two-and-a-half-month absence due to illness.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: Altered video. The video was edited to add in the hearse. In the original footage, Feinstein can be seen getting out of a silver Lexus sedan.
THE FACTS: The 89-year-old California Democrat, who was briefly hospitalized with shingles in early March, returned to the Senate for an afternoon vote on Wednesday. Social media users began spreading the doctored clip online in the hours that followed.
In the footage, Feinstein appears to be helped out of a traditional black hearse and into a wheelchair by aides before she is greeted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“Breaking News: Dianne Feinstein Dropped off at the Capitol by a hearse,” reads one tweet that was shared hundreds of times.
Others used the video as proof that Feinstein is too old to continue her congressional duties. “If you have to show up in a hearse to your job in the senate, it’s time for you to go,” another tweet states.
But Feinstein did not actually show up to the Capitol in a hearse. The video circulating on social media matches footage tweeted by CNN’s chief congressional correspondent on Wednesday. In that footage, Feinstein emerges from a Lexus LS 460 with a California license plate.
The Lexus is also visible in other photos and video from Feinstein’s return. Even in the edited clip, the silver sedan can be seen through the phones of multiple reporters who are filming the scene, rather than the hearse that has been edited into the clip.
Feinstein is using a wheelchair to get around the Capitol as she continues to recover from side effects of the shingles virus and said in a statement that she will work a reduced schedule, the AP reported. While she had returned to Washington on Tuesday, she missed a vote that evening and two votes on Wednesday morning before returning for the afternoon vote to confirm a Department of Education nominee.
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
