Category: Fact Checking

On Feb. 25, 2026, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., alleged on social media that U.S. Capitol Police arrested her guest, Aliya Rahman, at President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. Rahman is a disabled U.S. citizen who made headlines a month prior after federal immigration officers dragged her from her car in Minneapolis while she was reportedly trying to get to a doctor’s appointment. 

Omar said Rahman “stood up silently in the gallery during the president’s speech for a short period of time, part of which other guests were also standing. For that, she was forcibly removed, despite warning officers about her injured shoulders and ultimately charged with ‘Unlawful Conduct.’” 

“The heavy-handed response to a peaceful guest sends a chilling message about the state of our democracy,” Omar wrote in an X post. “I am calling for a full explanation of why this arrest occurred.”

My guest, Aliya Rahman, stood up silently in the gallery during the president’s speech for a short period of time, part of which other guests were also standing. For that, she was forcibly removed, despite warning officers about her injured shoulders and ultimately charged with…

— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) February 25, 2026

Posts spreading Omar’s allegations spread on social media, including via Facebook (screenshotted), Reddit and Threads. Snopes readers searched our website for information on whether Rahman was arrested. 

U.S. Capitol Police and Rahman’s legal counsel both confirmed via email that the agency’s officers arrested Rahman. As such, we have rated this claim as true. 

The statement from U.S. Capitol Police said law enforcement arrested Rahman for failing to abide by the event’s rules against demonstrating: 

All State of the Union tickets clearly explain that demonstrating is prohibited. At approximately 10:07 p.m., a person in the House Gallery started demonstrating during the State of the Union Address. The guest was told to sit down, but refused to obey our lawful orders. It is illegal to disrupt the Congress and demonstrate in the Congressional Buildings, so 43-year-old Aliya M. Rahman of Minneapolis, MN, was arrested for D.C. Code §10-503.16 – Unlawful Conduct, Disruption of Congress.

In an emailed statement, Rahman’s lead attorney, Alexa Van Brunt of the MacArthur Justice Center, said Rahman was “targeted.” 

“There is nothing unlawful about standing in silence and this is a blatant abuse of power. She was not disruptive or disrespectful. She was not holding a sign, making gestures, or wearing protest gear,” said Van Brunt’s statement, which we received from Jasmine Razeghi, a spokesperson for the MacArthur Justice Center. 

Van Brunt said Rahman was released just before 4 a.m. the day after her arrest. 

U.S. Capitol Police did not immediately return an inquiry as to whether any footage exists of the arrest, and we found no evidence of such footage published by reputable news outlets. As such, we cannot confirm what, exactly, Rahman was doing at the time of her arrest. Credible pictures of the arrest from photojournalism database Getty Images do not show her holding any signage. Other people stood at various points of Trump’s State of the Union address — and not just to clap (see the woman in red at 18:38 and 1:11:24 for examples). 

Some online posts also claimed the officers injured Rahman. While Omar said Rahman was “taken to George Washington University Hospital for treatment,” Omar did not allege that Rahman experienced any injuries. Razeghi said in an email that Rahman went to the hospital “for examination after being roughly handled by arresting Capitol Police officers.” 

“She received lidocaine for pain relief since her shoulders were already injured from a previous assault by federal law enforcement in Minneapolis in January,” Razeghi wrote. 

Razeghi declined to share Rahman’s medical records, stating that she would like to keep them “private at this time.” This meant that we cannot independently fact-check whether Rahman was injured or the extent of any potential injuries. 

Rahman identified herself as a disabled person with autism and a traumatic brain injury during her Feb. 3 testimony (transcript) to Congress about her Jan. 13 encounter with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. 

The incident in Rahman’s words 

In a Feb. 25 interview with reporter Amy Goodman for progressive news program “Democracy Now!,” Rahman said that prior to her arrest, she stood up “at the moment that I heard this man say some of the most racist things I have heard come out of any leader’s mouth about the people of my city, and continue to trash talk my state of Minnesota and glorify [the Department of Homeland Security], the people who did this to me and who are being allowed to roam free on the streets.” (see 3:49). 

Rahman also described the incident during her interview in detail, starting at 2:09: 

I was not just removed and arrested. I was removed so physically, that two other attendees upstairs attempted to intervene in officers pulling on my shoulders after I told them I have a torn rotator cuff tendon and multiple cartilage tears in both of my shoulders. That is what happened in the audio you just played. That is why I cannot lift my arms normally. 

Two women in the gallery — and thank you to the woman in the white shirt with the red writing who said, ‘I need you to take your hands off of her and just let her walk with her cane.’ 

They did not do that and only when their own sergeant intervened in a back stairwell of that building to say, ‘Stop. We need to get her medical care and a wheelchair,’ did they stop tugging on me while, again, I was saying ‘disabled.’ 

Amy, would you like to know why I was removed and arrested? The sergeant of arms told me it’s because I was standing up. Silently. No buttons, no facial expressions, no gestures, no signs. Not one sound. Standing up. 

There are only two things you can do at the State of the Union and they are sit down and stand up. All kinds of people were standing up all night. Me too. 

The full interview is available below.

In February 2026, a video circulating on social media sites such as Instagram and TikTok claimed to show U.S. women’s ice hockey team captain Hilary Knight declining an invitation to the White House from U.S. President Donald Trump.

Knight’s supposed response spread widely, and Snopes readers wrote in asking if the video was real. We found it was generated with artificial intelligence, and have rated this claim as a fake.

In the video, Knight supposedly claimed the team’s refusal was about more than scheduling conflicts (the reason reportedly given by the team for declining). “It’s about not accepting that the gold medal we earned with blood and sweat is being used as a tool for politicians to avoid trouble,” the voice, supposedly Knight’s, said.

But there were several discrepancies between that video and a Feb. 25 interview Knight gave “SportsCenter”. In the social media video, Knight spoke with strange pauses (or a lack thereof) and inflections that were not present in her interview on SportsCenter. The voices in the two videos also simply did not sound the same. This, and the poor overdubbing that was supposed to convince viewers that Knight was actually speaking the words, cemented the conclusion that the social media video was constructed with AI tools. 

The video appeared after the end of the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. During the Winter Games, both the U.S. men’s and women’s hockey teams beat Canada 2-1 in overtime to win the gold medal. After the men’s victory, the team was videoed celebrating the win in their locker room with FBI Director Kash Patel, who called Trump.

During the phone call, Trump invited the men’s team to the White House and to his State of the Union address on Feb. 24, but warned he would “have to” bring the women’s team too, adding he would “probably would be impeached” if he did not, to laughter from the men’s team. 

The video left a sour taste in some mouths, and people waited to see whether the women’s team would respond and accept the invitation. They declined, according to ESPN, with a statement saying the team was “sincerely grateful for the invitation” but could not attend due to scheduling conflicts.

In Knight’s real SportsCenter interview, she called the president’s words a “distasteful joke” that resulted in the women’s on-ice victories being overshadowed. “We’re really focused on celebrating all great things that have come out of the Olympics,” she said. 

A rumor that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Department of Justice would visit each household that watched the long-running trivia show “Jeopardy!” instead of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech spread online in late February 2026.

For example, a post to Threads (archived) featured an image of Bondi speaking at a White House podium with a Fox New chyron that said: BONDI: “WE WILL VISIT EACH HOUSE WE KNOW WATCHED ‘JEOPARDY’ INSTEAD OF THE STATE OF THE UNION.

(Threads user @ednawalker7)

Snopes readers searched the site to find out whether Bondi really made that statement.

However, Bondi did not say this. It originated from the Facebook page of James Schlarmann, a satirist and comedian. The Schlarmann’s original Facebook post and the Threads post above — which includes the watermark he includes on his satirical images — so we have rated this claim as labeled satire.

Schlarmann posted the image with the quote to Facebook (archived) the day after Trump’s State of the Union address. The about page of Schlarmann’s Facebook profile included the description “comedian and poltical satirist.”

Snopes sent Schlarmann a message requesting comment. Schlarmann responded by confirming he created the image, saying that “anyone who made the wise choice to watch [“Jeopardy!” host] Ken Jennings instead of Donald Trump can rest easy…for now.”

Searches for the quote on Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing and Yahoo found no credible evidence that Bondi said the government would visit the homes of people who watched “Jeopardy!” over the State of the Union. If the U.S. Attorney General really declared government officials will go to people’s homes because they didn’t watch the president’s speech, major news outlets such as The Associated Press and Reuters would have covered it. There was no reporting on Bondi saying such a thing on Fox News’ website, even though the image included a Fox News logo.

The screenshot of Bondi used in the post was from a Feb. 6, 2026, news conference, during which Bondi spoke of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and the arrest of a third suspect in the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, that took place in 2012. Everyone in the screenshot is wearing the same clothing they wore during that news conference.

Snopes has previously debunked other rumors that originated from satirical Schlarmann posts people believed to be real, including a February 2026 post using the same image that claimed Bondi ordered people to stop sending ‘coupons for Depends’ to White House and a January 2026 post that claimed she said “Jesus Christ would never have stormed a church” in protest of its leaders.

Let us note here: Whether you agree with something being described as satire or parody is a matter of opinion. Snopes is in the business of facts. We label these rumors based on creators’ description of them. Your call on whether you agree. 

In late February 2026, online users shared videos reporting Arizona police located the body of Nancy Guthrie — the mother of “Today” TV host Savannah Guthrie — floating in a pond in the Tucson-area Catalina Foothills community. Snopes received reader mail asking about the rumor.

After Nancy Guthrie’s family reported her missing on Feb. 1, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department announced she was believed to have been kidnapped, abducted or otherwise taken against her will. 

In short, this rumor was false. Numerous videos, documented later in this article, featured a news-anchor-style voice resembling vocals generated with artificial intelligence, as well as fake news report clips displaying dated, recycled footage of police recovering human remains during unrelated investigations. As of this writing, officials had not located Guthrie.

Snopes contacted the Pima County Sheriff’s Department to ask for a statement officially confirming the false nature of the videos and will update this article if we receive further information.

Debunking the false videos

On Feb. 22, a user managing the Sean Pilant YouTube channel (archived) posted a “breaking news” video (archived) with no visible broadcaster or network identifiers. The clip’s title read, “Nancy Guthrie’s body was found floating in a pond near Catalina Foothills. #arizona #nancyguthrie.”

(Sean Pilant/YouTube)

The video featured footage unrelated to Guthrie’s disappearance, including — at the 4-second mark — officers with uniforms identifying their locale as Hennepin County, Minnesota. A reverse image search found the clip’s very next shot showed a scene from the aftermath of a deadly New Year’s Day fire in Switzerland.

The audio narration, resembling AI-generated, news-anchor-style voices Snopes has previously reported about, contained the following false story:

The body of Nancy Guthrie was found floating in a pond near Catalina Foothills. On Saturday, police received a report of a floating body discovered in an abandoned pond near Sabino Canyon. The body was identified as that of long missing Nancy Guthrie, found just 2 miles from her residential community. Police investigations revealed numerous dragged footprints near the water’s edge. These tracks extended to the shoreline, distinctly different from ordinary walking patterns and appearing to show signs of struggle and forceful movement. Police preliminarily speculate that Nancy may have been forcibly brought to this location and engaged in a violent struggle with the suspect. The body’s state of decomposition indicates it may have been floating in the water for over a week. Further examination of the remains is currently underway. Meanwhile, investigators stated they are tracing clues related to Nancy’s activities prior to her disappearance.

On the following day, TikTok user @caterpillar136588 posted a video (archived) containing the same audio narration but with different visuals. The 11-second mark showed numerous officers near water, matching footage (archived) from an unrelated matter recently occurring in Lake Michigan.

Also on Feb. 23, a user managing the Sassy Paws Facebook page shared a video (archived) containing the same narration with different footage. The beginning of the clip showed officials handling a blue tarp near a body of water. That footage matched (archived) a scene from earlier in February, where officials in an Atlanta suburb recovered the body believed to be rapper Lil Jon’s son, Nathan Smith, known as D.J. Young Slade.

On Feb. 24, a user managing the News 401 Facebook page posted a video (archived), again with the same audio narration and different visuals. The 40-second mark of the clip showed men in a boat at night. That same footage appeared in a Chicago TV affiliate’s video (archived) from July 2025.

A previous post from the Empowering Change Now Facebook page displayed a similar rumor showing a still photo of men appearing to carry a body wrapped in a blue bag or tarp. That picture originated from (archived) an unrelated June 2025 investigation in Portugal.

We privately messaged all of the aforementioned users (with the exception of the YouTube user, whos account did not provide a contact method) to ask about their promotion of false content. We will update this story if we receive more details.

For further reading, we previously reported on false allegations about Savannah Guthrie’s husband, Michael Feldman, being connected to the federal case files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Sources

On Feb. 19, 2026, the U.S. women’s Olympic hockey team beat Canada in a 2-1 game, winning gold and prompting an invitation from U.S. President Donald Trump to attend his State of the Union address on Feb. 24.

The women’s hockey team declined the invitation, citing scheduling conflicts, in a move many read as an intentional distancing. Amid this speculation, an image circulated online purportedly showing Canada’s prime minister alongside both the U.S. and Canadian women’s hockey teams. 

“Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has invited both teams to his office for a photo op. He felt bad for the American women’s team not going to the White House,” one caption on a Threads post (archived) that received more than 115,000 likes, as of this writing.

https://www.threads.com/@ric.berg/post/DVJJ726jxoM

The image also spread on Facebook, Reddit and X. Many in the comments appeared to believe the image was authentic, with some praising Carney’s apparent extending of an olive branch to the U.S. team as a “class act.”

It’s unclear where the image originated, but it’s not real. There is no evidence Carney extended such an invitation to either team, and the image shows clear signs of artificial intelligence generation. As a result, we’ve rated the image fake.

One player’s jersey, for example, misspells “Canada,” instead reading “CAANADA.” The Canadian maple leaf on one player’s shirt appears blunted and out of place with other leaves on the players’ jerseys. These kinds of visual discrepancies are common features of images that were generated using AI. 

Another player’s fingers are misshapen, while another’s thumb appeared warped and reduced. Rings on another player’s hand also appear one-dimensional, as seen below:

(Snopes Illustration)

A general Google search for evidence that Carney hosted both teams returned results about related news items or primarily related to the fake image spread by various social media accounts, none of which had credibility. If a major world leader had appeared at such a meeting, credible news media outlets would have reported the events.

(Google)

A search for images related to the keyword “hockey” on the official image archive for the prime minister’s office returned only one result that was unrelated to the image depicting Carney with the women’s teams.

The man in the image additionally did not match the real Carney’s appearance, as compared to an authentic photo taken in 2020 (available on Wikimedia Commons).

(Wikimedia Commons)

Official images of the U.S. and Canadian women’s Olympic hockey teams also indicate the players in the image that circulated online were inaccurately pictured, meaning they did not resemble the real players at all. Several players in the AI image appeared to have unnaturally similar faces. 

While Snopes does not exclusively rely on AI-detection software tools such as Hive because they are not always reliable, we do supplement our reporting with its results. Hive determined the image of Carney with the U.S. and Canadian teams was 100% AI-generated.

This wasn’t the first claim about the Canadian prime minister we’ve investigated. For more, see our collection of Carney-related rumors.

Sources

Christensen, Laerke. ‘Did Melania and Barron Trump Open “free Hospital” for Homeless People?’ Snopes, 5 Feb. 2026, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/melania-and-barron-trump-hospital/.

Evon, Dan. ‘Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump Wearing Transparent Shirts’. Snopes, 2 Dec. 2016, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/melania-trump-ivanka-trump-wearing-transparent-shirts/.

Evon, Dan. ‘No, This Pic Doesn’t Show a Shirtless Hunter Biden with Melania Trump’. Snopes, 11 July 2022, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/hunter-biden-melania-trump-photo/.

Ibrahim, Nur. ‘Investigating Alleged Photo of Melania Trump, Ghislaine Maxwell and Unidentified Girls’. Snopes, 7 Feb. 2026, https://www.snopes.com//news/2026/02/07/melania-trump-ghislaine-maxwell-girls-photo/.

Ibrahim, Nur. ‘Image of Melania Trump Pole Dancing for Epstein Isn’t Real. Here’s the Proof’. Snopes, 23 Feb. 2026, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/melania-trump-pole-dancing-epstein/.

Liles, Jordan. ‘Image Claiming to Show Melania Trump Kissing Epstein on Cheek Isn’t Real’. Snopes, 1 Dec. 2025, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/melania-kiss-epstein-photo/.

Wrona, Aleksandra. ‘Bogus Story Claims Trumps Volunteered at Pennsylvania Orphanage on New Year’s Day’. Snopes, 11 Jan. 2026, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/donald-melania-trump-orphanage/.

On Feb. 22, 2026, in the last event of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, the U.S. men’s national hockey team beat Canada 2-1 in overtime to win the country’s first gold medal in the event since the “Miracle on Ice” team in 1980. 

But as videos of the men’s team celebrating their victory began appearing online, many people noticed they featured an unexpected guest — FBI Director Kash Patel. Footage showed Patel drinking a beer inside the locker room with the team before calling President Donald Trump so he could speak to the players. (Snopes separately fact-checked a claim about Trump’s remarks during that phone call).

Social media users then claimed the FBI director flew to Milan to watch the men’s hockey final on the taxpayer’s dime, alleging the trip cost approximately $400,000. Snopes readers searched the site looking to see whether this figure was accurate. 

Patel’s trip to Milan was indeed paid for with taxpayer money. FBI directors have been required to travel on a private jet due to “security and communications needs” since 2011, according to the Government Accountability Office, an independent, nonpartisan organization that works for Congress, providing information about government spending.

However, exactly why Patel was in Milan in the first place and how much his trip cost is subject for debate. The flight cost less than $400,000, based on previous information about how expensive the plane is to fly, though there was no information about how much taxpayer money was spent while Patel was in Italy.

In numerous X posts, FBI spokesman Ben Williamson attacked reporters from news media outlets CBS News and MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) for alleging Patel was in Milan for the game, saying the trip “was planned months ago” and included meetings with Italian law enforcement and security officials and the U.S. ambassador to Italy.

Patel also took to X to defend his actions, saying he “was extremely humbled when my friends, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Team USA, invited me into the locker room to celebrate this historic moment with the boys.” The FBI director is well known for being a hockey fan, according to The New York Times, and plays the game himself. 

https://x.com/Kash_Patel/status/2025736412125855918

Snopes contacted the FBI for comment on this story. We had not heard back at time of publication but we will update this article if we receive a reply.

The private jet

The Office of Management and Budget maintains a memo explaining how government officials may use private jets. For instance, the government uses private planes when the “mission requirements” (an agency doing what it is designated to do) call for it (Page 2, Section 5B). The other major category of private flights is “required use travel,” for when “the government aircraft is required because of bona fide communications or security needs of the agency or exceptional scheduling requirements” (Page 2, Section 5D).

Officials required to use private planes include the attorney general and FBI director, according to the summary page of the 2013 GAO report.

When a government plane flies because of required use, according to the OMB memo, the relevant official must refund the government the coach fare available to the general public for travel between the two locations (Page 5, Section 9B):

(i) For a wholly personal or political trip, the full coach fare for the trip;

(ii) For an official trip during which the employee engages in political activities, the appropriate share of the full coach fare for the entire trip;

(iii) For an official trip during which the employee flies to one or more locations for personal reasons, the excess of the full coach fare of all flights taken by the employee on the trip over the full coach fare of the flights that would have been taken by the employee had there been no personal activities on the trip.

It is unclear whether Patel reimbursed or plans to reimburse the government for any parts of the trip to Italy. As noted above, the FBI had not replied to our request for comment.

In sum, because Patel is required to fly privately due to security concerns, he is supposed to reimburse the government some money when he uses the plane for personal reasons. In this case, the amount of reimbursement would likely depend on Patel’s other activities during his trip to Italy.

Estimating a cost

In this case, according to MS NOW, Patel flew to Milan using the FBI’s Gulfstream jet. The 2013 GAO report estimated that one “15-hour international flight” on the Gulfstream V aircraft cost $75,440 in 2010 — about $112,500 in 2026, adjusted for inflation. According to CBS News, Patel flew from Joint Base Andrews to an Air Force Base in Italy, a roughly nine-hour flight.

MS NOW estimated Patel’s Milan trip cost “as much as $75,000,” under the assumption that the jet cost taxpayers about $5,000 per flight hour to operate. The Democratic Party claimed the trip cost “approximately $100,000” without providing evidence. 

Based on the GAO report and MS NOW’s numbers, somewhere between $60,000 and $80,000 is a reasonable ballpark estimate of the cost, given that several factors, such as the cost of aviation fuel and the salaries of pilots, could not be independently established. (If a 15-hour flight, adjusted for inflation, costs roughly $112,500, then a nine-hour flight would seemingly cost about $67,500. However, this assumes the costs have a linear relationship with the length of the flight.)

Perceived hypocrisy

Patel’s use of the private jet is further complicated by his own past words — MSNBC compiled multiple instances in which Patel criticized his predecessor, Christopher Wray, for using a private jet.

Only two FBI directors have ever been fired — but one of them, William Sessions, was dismissed by then-President Bill Clinton over ethical concerns, including improperly using the FBI’s private jet to visit family.

According to The New York Times and CBS News, Patel has flown to Inverness, Scotland, for a golf trip; to San Angelo, Texas, for a hunting trip with Republican donor Bubba Saulsbury; and to State College, Pennsylvania, to see his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, sing the national anthem at a Penn State wrestling match, all at taxpayer expense.

Congressional Democrats have sent a letter to the GAO calling for an investigation into how Patel has used the private jet, and another to Patel to reprimand him.

In the days following the trip to Italy, Sen. Dick Durbin, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said whistleblowers told him Patel’s use of the private jet had directly impeded the FBI investigation into the fatal shooting of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk in September 2025.

Sources

In February 2026, after Norway’s former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland was charged on suspicion of corruption over his ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a rumor spread that he had been hospitalized following a suicide attempt. 

American conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones, whose claims Snopes has repeatedly debunked, relayed the claim on X, referring to Jagland as “Mr. Human Rights” (archived):

The rumor that the former prime minister tried to commit suicide also spread on Facebook and Bluesky.

While one report in Norway made this claim, Jagland’s attorney denied it was true, though he stayed vague on the reason for his client’s hospitalization. For this reason, we have not rated the claim. We have reached out to the lawyer seeking more details on Jagland’s condition and we will update this report should he respond.

It is true that Jagland’s name appeared thousands of times in the files related to Epstein’s case, which the U.S. Department of Justice published on its website. Meanwhile, news of Jagland’s indictment as a result of the publication of the files has been widely reported, which Jagland’s attorney Anders Brosveet confirmed in a statement on the website of Elden Advokafirma, the firm where he works, on Feb. 12, 2026:

The Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime (Økokrim) is currently conducting searches of Thorbjørn Jagland’s residence and recreational properties. This was expected and is a standard part of an investigation of this nature.

As an automatic consequence of the search, Jagland now formally has the status of a suspect. This does not represent any real change in the substance of the case, but is a legal consequence of the investigative methods used by the police.

The claim that Jagland attempted suicide stems from a Feb. 24, 2026, report by iNyheter, a news site in Norway that Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism said was “known for right-wing critique of immigrant policy and mainstream media,” citing a “rock-solid source.” The report said Jagland, a member of the center-left Labour Party, had been hospitalized the week of Feb. 16, after he was charged with aggravated corruption. The report claimed various editors who are members of the Association of Norwegian Editors, which expects its members to follow a code of ethics, had agreed not to publish the story that Jagland had tried to commit suicide. 

A Google News search revealed the rumor spread across the English-speaking world, relayed by less-than-reputable news outlets. 

Meanwhile, another statement, dated Feb. 24, on Elden’s website confirmed Jagland was hospitalized but denied it was because he had attempted to harm himself: “We encourage editorial teams not to contribute to further dissemination of the incorrect allegation of a suicide attempt.”

It said Jagland had “been admitted to hospital due to the strain arising in the wake of this case, and that he is receiving long-term follow-up within the healthcare system.”

The statement quoted Brosveet as saying that while he had informed the media of Jagland’s health situation, “no agreement was made with either the Editors’ Association or individual media outlets.”

We have contacted Brosveet to ask whether Jagland was still in the hospital as of this writing and to confirm the date he was charged.

On Feb. 24 2026, as U.S. President Donald Trump entered the House of Representatives chamber to deliver his State of the Union speech, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, unfurled a sign reading “Black people aren’t apes.”

The White House’s livestream (archived) of the event caught the moment as other representatives greeted and applauded the president.

After unfurling his sign, Green was ejected from the House chamber. (Green also was ejected (archived) from the chamber the year before, when he heckled Trump during the president’s address to a joint session of Congress.) Green later told Reuters (archived) the sign was a reference to a video the president’s Truth Social account posted and deleted earlier in the month.

The video in question started by showing a graph that claimed to track vote counts for Trump and former President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election but switched to a two-second clip that showed the Obamas’ faces on two apes‘ bodies as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” played in the background.

Comparing Black people to primates is an age-old racist insult that implies Black people are less-developed humans. The baseless argument that Black people are less developed or less evolved than white Europeans has historically been used to justify enslavement of Black people and colonialism of countries with majority-Black populations.

Claims that Trump posted the video showing the Obamas as primates first circulated on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived) and Bluesky (archived) in early February. A number of Snopes readers emailed us at the time to ask whether the video was truly shared on Trump’s account. Readers emailed again after the State of the Union address, asking about the context for Green’s sign.

At the time of this writing, someone had removed the video depicting the Obamas as apes from Trump’s Truth Social page. It still appeared on Trump’s Truth, a public archive of the president’s posts. A White House official told Snopes a staffer posted the video “erroneously.” Snopes could not yet independently verify this claim.

Ultimately, Trump’s Truth Social page truly did post the video.

Before the removal of the post from Truth Social, we asked the White House whether the person who posted the video knew it also included the clip of the Obamas. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt replied in a written statement: 

This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.

At that time, Leavitt did not reply to a question about whether anyone would remove the video. 

Inspecting the video

According to a post (archived) by the X user @xerias_x, the clip of the Obamas came from one of that account’s videos. The user wrote, “Last night President Trump posted a video where one of my old clips appears at the very end. You won’t believe which one.”

The user then posted (archived) a 53-second version of the same clip that started by showing the Obamas as apes and also included various other Democratic politicians portrayed as a variety of other animals bowing to Trump, whom the video depicted as a lion.

It was not possible to determine why the video on Trump’s Truth Social profile, which otherwise appeared to show an excerpt from a documentary about alleged fraud in the 2020 presidential election, contained the clip of the Obamas.

Online searches revealed an identical (archived) video to the one Trump posted that someone uploaded to YouTube around a month before Trump’s Feb. 5, 2026, post. The YouTube video also included the short clip of the Obamas.

2020 election fraud claims

Reverse image searches did not reveal the source of the apparent documentary footage. That footage featured Col. Phil Waldron, an Army veteran who reportedly circulated a “detailed and extreme” plan to overturn the 2020 election on Capitol Hill. 

Waldron has featured in a number of documentaries since 2020. He is a proponent of a baseless theory that foreign powers hacked or otherwise influenced voting machines from the company Dominion Voting Systems and swung the 2020 election in Biden’s favor. In the apparent documentary clip featured in Trump’s Truth Social post, Waldron claimed machines in several states “stopped counting” at the same time and, when counting resumed, showed vote totals “that favored Joe Biden.”

Trump’s reposting of Waldron’s theory suggested that the president has not forgotten his 2020 loss. In January 2026, the FBI raided an elections office in Georgia seeking records related to the 2020 election. Trump narrowly lost the state in 2020.

During a speech (archived) in Davos, Switzerland, days before the raid in Georgia, Trump called the 2020 election “rigged” and said “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”

Snopes has previously reported extensively on claims related to the 2020 election.

Sources

In February 2026, a rumor circulated online that documents related to the case of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein proved that actor Leonardo DiCaprio consumed “over 70 pounds” of “child meat” and discussed a cannibal diet in emails with filmmaker Woody Allen. Social media users framed the allegation as emerging from a batch of Epstein files the Department of Justice shared on Jan. 30, 2026.

For example, one Feb. 21 Facebook post read (archived): “New Epstein files reveal that Leonardo DiCaprio ate over 70 pounds of ‘child meat’ as part of a cannibalism diet. The files expose DiCaprio swapping emails with Woody Allen where he brags about being a full-blown cannibal.”

Versions of the claim also spread on X, Instagram and other platforms.

In short, although the DOJ’s Jan. 30 document release includes references to DiCaprio, nothing in the materials supports claims that he was involved in cannibalism or ate “child meat.” One example of the actor featuring in the files is an email mentioning both DiCaprio and filmmaker Woody Allen, but it was not written by either man and does not show them exchanging messages with each other, let alone “bragging” about cannibalism. While the files do contain references to cannibalism and ritualistic sacrifice, they are not linked to DiCaprio. 

Because the rumor’s central allegations are not supported by the content of the released files or any credible evidence, we rated the claim false. 

Origin of rumor

A website called The People’s Voice — a rebranded version of NewsPunch, a website with a long history of publishing false information — appeared to be the source of the cannibalism allegation. On Feb. 20, the site published an article titled, “Epstein Files Reveal Leonardo DiCaprio Ate 70 Pounds of Child Meat on ‘Cannibal Diet.’”

The story claims that “coded language” in the newly released files reveals a “cannibal operation” involving DiCaprio and others. It asserts that the files contain references to “jerky,” “cream cheese baby” and other supposed food-related code words. The article also alleges that DiCaprio swapped emails with Allen about being on a “cannibal diet.” (Snopes has previously examined claims about references to “jerky” in the Epstein files and found no evidence they referred to cannibalism.)

The People’s Voice article does not provide verifiable citations to specific DOJ documents demonstrating that DiCaprio consumed “70 pounds” of anything or that he exchanged cannibalism-related emails with Allen. Rather, it presents sensational interpretations of unrelated excerpts. In the body of the article, it claims: “Epstein files reveal DiCaprio helped Epstein eat through 70 pounds of child meat in a two-week period.” However, no document identifier or page number is provided to substantiate that statement.

The article also mentions a separate rumor that Epstein ordered sulfuric acid to dissolve human remains as part of a “child-trafficking-to-consumption pipeline.” Snopes previously investigated that claim and found that while sulfuric acid purchases were documented in the Epstein files, there is no evidence it was used to dissolve human remains.

In addition to the written article, the article links to a video clip showing conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones claiming there was a “huge email list” showing DiCaprio and Allen discussing cannibalism and a “human” meat diet. Jones did not display any emails or document identifiers to support the allegation and the clip provided no verifiable sourcing that would allow viewers to confirm that such an exchange existed.

Where DiCaprio’s name appears in files

A review of the DOJ’s released materials shows that DiCaprio’s name appears in several places, but not in connection with cannibalism.

One file, labeled “EFTA00821172,” includes a message reading: “when are you in new york, do you think leo dicaprio would want to have dinner with woody.” The email was not written by DiCaprio or Allen and does not show them corresponding with each other. It solely references the possibility of a dinner and was sent by an email address owned by Epstein.

(www.justice.gov)

Another email from the DOJ release references DiCaprio indirectly through his longtime representative. It also contains no suggestion of any criminal conduct. In that message, a person wrote: “Ask aroung about Ken Sunshine…very calm cool guy. Reps Leo diCaprio for years and much more serious institutions and people. I can call him for you whenever you want. This misinformation will escalate….xoxo Peg.”

In a 2020 FBI interview summary with an unnamed individual, DiCaprio’s name appeared in a passage reading: “EPSTEIN told [REDACTED] that he had an island and his friends were actors, including LEONARDO DICAPRIO.” This reflects an allegation that Epstein name-dropped actors when speaking to a third party. It does not show DiCaprio communicating with Epstein or participating in any crimes.

Other mentions of DiCaprio in the DOJ documents are equally unrelated to any criminal allegations and appear as media or event references, such as an item titled, “Exclusive! Django Unchained Teaser Trailer Premiere,” and an invitation for a private screening of a film featuring DiCaprio.

All in all, the actor did not author any of the cited documents or emails and none of them showed him communicating in his own words. Rather, they contain third-party references to him, typically in the context of celebrity name-dropping, networking outreach or entertainment coverage. The documents that mention DiCaprio do not describe cannibalism or “child meat,” and they provide no evidence tying him to such conduct.

Snopes has also investigated a claim that the DOJ’s January 2026 Epstein document release references cannibalism and accuses Epstein or his inner circle of engaging in “ritualistic sacrifice.” We confirmed that certain documents contain such allegations, including unverified claims from a purported FBI interview, but the records themselves indicate those accusations were not supported by corroborating evidence. We also debunked a separate false rumor that the DOJ documents contain evidence that comedian Ellen DeGeneres is a cannibal.