Category: Fact Checking

In late December 2025, online users discussed a series of YouTube videos allegedly showing conservative political columnist George Will commenting on fresh matters concerning U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and Supreme Court rulings.

Without specifying a particular video, a Snopes reader emailed, “George Will from the Washington Post reports a decision by SCOTUS for a 72-hour compliance by Trump to produce financial documents. The subpoena was apparently under seal.”

That reader’s email led us to search and find numerous YouTube videos supposedly depicting Will providing fresh thoughts about Trump and the high court. For example, one of the most-viewed videos (archived) was titled “BREAKING NOW: Trump’s Financial Records Trapped by Supreme Court — 72 Hours or Jail.” The clip’s thumbnail image depicted Trump in handcuffs, echoing the title’s reference to jail time.

The video’s text description read, in part:

In this breaking update, we explain the Supreme Court ruling that has stripped Donald Trump of any remaining legal cover. After a year-long sealed legal battle kept completely out of public view, the Court has ordered Trump to hand over critical financial records, internal communications, and sensitive documents within a strict seventy-two-hour deadline.

[…]

Will Trump comply, or will he defy the Supreme Court and risk jail? Either way, what he has been hiding is about to come out.

In short, this video and others like it were fake and generated with deepfake artificial-intelligence tools, as were some pictures of Trump featured in YouTube thumbnail images. Users fabricated the rumor about the 72-hour deadline and jail time.

According to Will’s own Facebook, Instagram and X accounts, as well as a list of his Washington Post columns and the Internet Archive’s TV News Archive, he did not provide any such commentary online or on TV news appearances between late December 2025 and Jan. 2, 2026.

Snopes contacted The Post to ask whether the publication or Will wished to comment and will update this article if we receive further information. The two YouTube channels prominently referenced in this article did not feature any contact details.

The fake videos circulated following Dec. 23 — the day news broke of the Supreme Court declining, by a 6-3 vote, the Trump administration’s emergency request to overturn a ruling blocking the deployment of National Guard troops in the Chicago area.

How users created the George Will deepfakes

Using deepfake AI technology, users manipulated genuine interview clips of Will to alter his mouth movements and vocals. Some of the videos displayed an “altered or synthetic content” label creators enabled during the YouTube upload process, as well as disclaimers near the bottom of the clips’ text descriptions — disclaimers viewers may have missed, as they were visible only for users who expanded the text to display in full.

For example, one YouTube video title read, “The Supreme Court’s ‘Hidden Warning’ to Donald Trump | George Will.” A user managing the LivingGolden (@LivingGolden60) YouTube channel (archived) uploaded the clip (archived) on Dec. 27. The thumbnail image displayed a diamond-shaped watermark indicating the user chose a Google AI tool to generate the fake Trump photo.

The user who created the fake video downloaded or screen-captured a genuine interview clip of Will appearing on the MLB Network TV channel in March 2025, then used an AI tool to manipulate his mouth movements and audio to read from a lengthy script. That script also contained signs of AI, including, for example, overdramatic phrasing commonly found in AI-generated text.

Other popular videos promoting inauthentic Will commentary appeared on YouTube channels named Capitol Transparency Watch, George Will Analysis, TwoNation News, Mind to George and Voices of Freedom. Some of the same, or similar, videos appeared on Facebook and TikTok.

A YouTube channel named Inside the Capitol also featured numerous deepfake AI videos with MS NOW host Rachel Maddow supposedly commenting about various political matters.

For further reading, we previously reported whether a video truly showed former President Barack Obama saying Trump was dying.

On Dec. 30, 2025, a rumor began spreading online that alleged U.S. President Donald Trump had less than three days to release his financial records due to an order from the Supreme Court. Refusal to comply allegedly would result in the president’s imprisonment. 

The allegation circulated on Facebook, YouTube and Threads. While most posts claimed the deadline was 72 hours, several Facebook posts in the days after Dec. 30 also alleged the deadline was 52 hours. Snopes readers also searched the website for information on whether Trump was “under a 72 hour deadline to comply with a Supreme Court decision.” 

The Supreme Court did not hear arguments, release a final opinion or take any other actions on Dec. 30; in fact, the court’s last public action of 2025 happened on Dec. 22 and was not relevant to this rumor. Several of the videos circulating the claim included artificially generated news broadcasts. Given that the rumored Supreme Court order did not exist, we have rated this claim false. 

As of this writing, the most recent Supreme Court decision related to releasing Trump’s financial records happened in 2022, when the Supreme Court refused to block a request by Trump to prevent the release of his tax returns.  

No Supreme Court order matching rumor

Social media posts offered few details as to what, exactly, this Supreme Court case was about. The posts referred only to Trump’s “financial records” without clarifying what specific documents the justices supposedly ordered the release of. 

Videos circulating the rumor on YouTube included audio with a flat, monotone inflection, a telltale sign of artificially generated voices. These videos also included the fact that they used “altered and synthetic content” in the description. 

Several Facebook posts about the supposed Supreme Court case included a picture of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, implying that the Democrat sued for the president’s financial records. However, neither a Google search for “Newsom Trump Supreme Court” nor a Supreme Court docket search for “Newsom Trump” returned any relevant results. 

As of Jan. 2, 2026, the court has not heard arguments for any cases related to releasing Trump’s financial records in 2025 or 2026. That’s based on reputable sources like the judicial archive Oyez and the Supreme Court-focused news source SCOTUSBlog, as well as the Supreme Court’s oral arguments calendar for the session beginning in October 2025 — the most recent as of this writing. 

Finally, a Google search for “Trump financial records Supreme Court” did not return any relevant news articles from reputable sources, instead showing reports from 2020 and 2021 about previous Supreme Court rulings on cases related to Trump’s tax returns. If the Supreme Court had, in fact, ordered Trump to release financial records or face jail time, it would have certainly made news. 

Earlier legal battles over Trump’s tax returns 

While this particular rumor wasn’t true, Trump has previously been involved in multiple Supreme Court cases related to the release of his financial records. In one of those cases, Rep. Richard Neal, a Democrat from Massachusetts and then-chair of the Ways and Means Committee, requested six years of Trump’s tax returns from the IRS in 2019, sparking a multiyear legal battle. 

On Nov. 22, 2022, the Supreme Court denied the president’s request to block the disclosure of his tax returns. The court did not explain its reasoning. As a result, Ways and Means Democrats released Trump’s tax returns from years 2015 to 2020. As of this writing, the original release via the committee no longer appears available online, but various reputable news sources, including The Associated Press, have published the full set of returns. 

Sources

As the year 2025 came to an end, many online claimed that MTV — a decades-old cable television channel known for airing music videos — was shutting down completely. Numerous clips spread online stating that the music channel’s last played video was the 1979 song, “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

While parent company Paramount did shut down MTV’s 24-hour music channels in the U.K. and other countries, MTV as a channel still existed. In the U.S., MTV was still running, except the main channel largely aired reality shows such as “Ru-Paul’s Drag Race” and re-runs of old programs, not solely music videos, which is what MTV focused on for decades. As such, we rate this claim a mixture of truth and falsehood.

We reached out to Paramount to determine where exactly the channel had been shut down and will update this post accordingly.

MTV’s U.S. channels were still on air as of this writing. Per the schedule (archived) available on the channel’s website on Jan. 2, 2026, MTV Classic was still showing music videos, while MTV and MTV2 were airing reality shows and other programming.

MTV’s U.K. channels had partially shut down. According to an online programming schedule (archived and screenshot below), MTV Music UK, MTV Hits UK, MTV Live, MTV 80s UK, and MTV 90s UK, all had stopped the 24-hour music video airing they were known for. However, the remaining channel MTV UK was still airing old movies and re-runs of programs like the reality show, “Catfish: How Not To Date.”

(Screenshot via mtv.co.uk)

The music channel closures hit other markets. According to a report in entertainment media outlet Deadline, the 24-hour music channels had also stopped running in Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Australia and Brazil (archived). We have asked Paramount to confirm these international closures.

BBC journalist Jono Reed posted a video of MTV Music UK’s last ever music video, “Video Killed The Radio Star.” The 1979 song by the Buggles was reportedly the first music video ever aired on MTV in the U.S. in 1981. 

An unnamed spokesperson told entertainment news outlet Variety: “MTV’s specialist music channels in the UK will no longer operate as linear channels. The flagship MTV UK channel will continue to broadcast… Paramount is reviewing and adjusting its international Pay TV portfolio, given shifts in audience behavior towards streaming and digital platforms.”

Through 2025, Paramount sought to cut costs of around $500 million according to the BBC, which included shutting down Paramount Television Studios. MTV’s brand was still visible on social media channels and Paramount’s streaming service.

While MTV still existed at a smaller scale as a television channel, it was unknown if this would remain the case in the future. As of now, the channel had not shut down completely.

Snopes has previously covered Paramount’s other shutdown efforts, including the July 2025 cancellation of comedian Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk show on subsidiary television network CBS.

A claim that U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. might intervene in ongoing protests in Iran circulated on social media in early January 2026. 

Social media users, particularly on X (archived, archived, archived), shared purported screenshots of a post in which Trump allegedly proclaimed, “If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” Screenshots of the alleged post included the typo “shots” instead of “shoots.”

Some of Trump’s supporters shared the claim with approving comments, while detractors criticized what they saw as overreach into a foreign country’s politics.

U.S. President Donald Trump: 

“If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

Contributed by @AZ_Intel_. pic.twitter.com/MeOHORic7l

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) January 2, 2026

The social media post shared in the claim was correctly attributed to Trump. 

Trump made the post to his Truth Social account at 2:58 a.m. ET Jan. 2, 2026. The post also appeared on Trump’s Truth, an archive of all of Trump’s posts on the platform. 

The full post read:

If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Trump was commenting on protests in Iran that began on Dec. 29, 2025, following the country’s currency hitting a record low.

The Associated Press reported that the currency’s depreciation was increasing prices for food and other household items and that a reported gasoline price increase could worsen tensions in the country.

On Jan. 1, the AP reported at least seven deaths in the protests but noted that “state-run media did not fully acknowledge the violence,” leading to uncertainty about the numbers and identities of the dead.

The reported deaths of protesters appeared to have inspired Trump’s post.

Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, responded to Trump’s comment with a post on X (archived, translated from Arabic by X) reading, “Trump must realize that U.S. intervention in this internal matter will lead to destabilizing the entire region and destroying American interests. The American people must know that Trump is the one who started this adventure, and they should pay attention to the safety of their soldiers.”

In June 2025, the U.S. got involved in Israel’s conflict with Iran when it attacked three Iranian nuclear sites. At the time, the AP reported that Trump, who did not have congressional authorization for his actions, said there would be further strikes if Iran retaliated against the U.S.

For further reading on Trump’s social media posts, Snopes previously confirmed that Trump’s Christmas message on Truth Social highlighted the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Around the start of January 2026, a video (archived) circulated online that claimed to show martial artist and actor Jackie Chan saying he cried over a video of a Palestinian child saying children in Gaza don’t grow up.

According to reports in Turkish news outlets CNN Türk and TRT World and the U.K.-based, Middle East-focused news outlet Middle East Eye (archived), Chan made the remarks during the Beijing premiere of his new Chinese-language movie. TRT World posted a video on Jan. 1 of Chan’s reported remarks. 

According to TRT World, Chan said:

I watched a video recently. I started crying as soon as that little kid started speaking. They asked him, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” He said, “Children don’t grow up here.” I started crying. Gaza. You see it, Gaza’s children are bombed every day. He had no expression when he said, “Children don’t grow up here.” I couldn’t hold it in, I cried. You see, growing old is a blessing. That is why I congratulate everyone who’s had the chance to grow old. You will grow old too, so will I.

The video of Chan circulated on X (archived), Facebook (archived), Threads (archived), Instagram (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived). Snopes readers searched our site to find out whether the video was real and whether Chan actually said the reported words.

A report by Chinese state media and Getty Images, a trusted picture agency, showed Chan attended a film premiere for “Unexpected Family,” his latest movie, on Dec. 28, 2025, wearing an identical outfit to that seen in the video that circulated online. 

Chinese state media reported Chan spoke to an audience at the event but did not include his reported quote about crying over the words of a Palestinian child. Other Chinese–language reports also did not include this quote (archived, archived, archived, archived). 

Snopes reached out to Chan’s management to ask whether the clip authentically showed the actor speaking. We also reached out to TRT World, CNN Türk and Middle East Eye to ask how they sourced and verified the video. We await replies to our queries.

Meanwhile, on the basis of the available evidence, we leave this claim unrated.

Inspecting the video

It was unclear at the time of this writing who recorded the video of Chan speaking, which appeared to be from the Dec. 28 event in Beijing.

We did not find decisive evidence that the video of Chan was fake, meaning generated by artificial intelligence. Analysis by online AI detectors Hive Moderation and SightEngine found screenshots from the video unlikely to be AI-generated. 

(Hive Moderation/Sight Engine/Snopes Illustration)

Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector analyzed soundbites from the beginning, middle and end of the video and found two of three to be authentic. Chan’s mouth movements generally appeared to match his speaking pattern, meaning it did not appear that someone had put AI-generated audio over authentic pictures. (Research shows AI-detection software is imperfect. Readers should consider the tools’ results with skepticism.)

A transcript of the video by ElevenLabs, an artificial intelligence transcription app, generally matched the subtitles for the clip provided by TRT, meaning it did not appear someone had put unrelated subtitles on an authentic video.

According to ElevenLabs and DeepL translation, Chan said: 

Recently I watched a video, and the moment that child spoke, I started crying. He asked, “What do you adults do? Here, our children never grow up.” Wow, my tears just started streaming down. Gaza, the children of Gaza, bombed every day. Look, he said this, nothing else—our children here never grow up. Waaah, I just broke down. So you see, old age is a kind of happiness. So here, congratulations to all the elders who can grow old.

Snopes consulted a Mandarin speaker, who also said the subtitles generally matched Chan’s words.

In December 2025, Facebook users shared a rumor claiming Meta signed into policy a “new Facebook rule” allowing the company the rights to users’ photos starting “tomorrow.” According to the posts, a lawyer advised “60 Minutes” to post about it on social media, advising users to publish a message effectively barring Meta from using their personal data.

The warning, appearing many, many times in Facebook searches, read as follows:

Big day tomorrow I It’s official. Signed at 8:10am. It was even on TV. Mine really turned blue. Don’t forget that tomorrow starts the new Facebook rule (aka… new name, META) where they can use your photos. Don’t forget the deadline is today!!!

Hold your finger anywhere in this message and “copy” will appear. Click “copy”. Then go to your page, create a new post and place your finger anywhere in the empty field. “Paste” will appear and click Paste.

This will bypass the system….

He who does nothing consents

According to the show 60 Minutes:

Just in case you missed it: a lawyer advised us to post this. The violation of privacy can be punished by law NOTE: Facebook Meta is now a public entity. Every member must post a note like this. If you do not publish a statement at least once, it will be technically understood that you are allowing the use of your photos, as well as the information contained in your profile status updates.

I HEREBY DECLARE THAT I DO NOT GIVE MY PERMISSION FOR FACEBOOK OR META TO USE ANY OF MY PERSONAL DATA. I do not give consent!

Searches showed a fair amount of users posted a slight variation of the text. Instead of “8:10am,” those posts began, “Big day tomorrow I It’s official. Signed at 7:03pm.” Some users even claimed fact-checkers had looked into the matter and deemed the claim true. Others posted about how U.S. Rep. Valerie Foushee, a member of the Democratic Party from North Carolina, copied and pasted the warning message on her personal Facebook page.

In short — and regarding the reference to fact-checking — none of this was true. Meta did not sign into policy a “new Facebook rule,” nor did “60 Minutes” post about the matter on social media. Snopes contacted Foushee’s office to ask about the post, which no longer appeared on her page as of this writing, and will update this article if we receive a response.

One of the oldest and more persistent rumors in internet history is the Facebook post asking users to copy and paste text to declare an establishment of legal authority. Users who copy and pasting a block of text onto their profile page will not change anything about the fact that they already agreed to the company’s terms of service and privacy policy when they signed up for an account.

In 2019, Meta published of such rumors, “Copy-and-paste memes — those blocks of text posted on message boards, forwarded in emails and shared via social media — are as old as the internet.”

We previously reported numerous times about this same rumor, including at least two variations of this very same text, as well as many past versions, too. We label such posts as copypasta, meaning copied-and-pasted social media messages.

For further reading, we previously investigated another rumor claiming Meta planned to update the corporation’s privacy policy to give the company permission to read all direct messages sent by its users and use the data to train its generative AI.

A rumor that circulated online in late December 2025 claimed Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, the widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, promoted a sale on “Charlie Kirk dishware” while blasting her husband’s killer or killers, as well as anyone who stood against his political and religious preachings.

For example, on Dec. 21, X user @Jesse_Brenneman posted (archived), “Erika Kirk: ‘To those who killed my husband…Charlie Kirk…and who wish to undo his righteous work…I say to them…you will NEVER be able to purchase this limited edition set of Charlie Kirk dishware for only $39.99 or, if you call now, only $24.99 WHILE SUPPLIES LAST.'”

(@Jesse_Brenneman/X)

Another popular post (archived) with the quote spread on Threads.

(@nachointhabox/Threads)

Users shared the same quote, or a similar one, on Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived) and X (archived).

In short, the quote was incorrectly attributed to Erika Kirk. She did not promote “Charlie Kirk dishware.”

Snopes contacted Turning Point USA to ask if it wished to comment about the fake quote. We also contacted @Jesse_Brenneman on X to ask if the user created the quote or if it originated from someone else’s post. We will update this story if we receive further information.

According to users’ comments under posts, the fabricated quote originated as one of several joking criticisms — including some edited or inauthentic videos — about clips of Erika Kirk recorded following her husband’s fatal shooting. Instagram and TikTok users, and others, commonly referenced the matter as her “grieving tour,” specifically pertaining to her use of sparkling pyrotechnics at public appearances.

The fake quote first made the rounds one day after Erika Kirk’s flub of the word “grit,” mistakenly referencing her late husband’s work as a “grift” — a common charge made by critics of both Charlie and Erika Kirk.

For further reading, we previously investigated whether Erika Kirk launched a $175 million charity project for a Chicago boarding school named The Kirk Academy of Hope.

Yes, Virginia Giuffre, Jeffrey Epstein accuser, posted she was not suicidal in 2019

April 28, 2025

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A rumor that Snopes had verified a photograph depicting a shirtless former U.S. President Barack Obama as being taken at late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s private island circulated online in December 2025. 

Social media users, particularly on Facebook (archived, archived, archived), shared the purported photograph, with some writing that claims “liberal fact-checker Snopes has determined that the latest Epstein release photo of Barack Obama was ‘completely unaltered.’ In other words, not fake.”

(America Loves Liberty Facebook page)

Some readers seemed to interpret the rumor about the photo as fact, but Snopes can confirm we never reported on the alleged photo and the claim in question was clearly labeled as satire. 

The post’s misnames the island in question, possibly confusing some readers. In reality, the smaller of Epstein’s islands was called Little St. James, not “Little St. John.”

The photograph itself, if not its alleged location, appeared to be authentic, however. A reverse-image search on Google showed it appearing in stories as far back as 2008 during Obama’s first campaign for president. 

An August 2008 article by Hawaii Magazine titled “Beaches! Bodysurfing! Barack Obama begins his Hawaii vacation,” showcased the photo in question. A December 2008 article by The Telegraph featured the same photo with the headline “Barack Obama shirtless: Best of the world leaders?” The photo appeared again in a January 2009 piece, also published by The Telegraph, titled “Barack Obama: redefining the male physique.” 

The media continued to be use the photo over the years, including NBC News in a 2012 story about Obama’s love of surfing and Vogue in a 2015 feature titled “How to Dress Your Favorite Dadbod.” 

Reputable image repository Getty Images had photos of Obama shirtless and in a similar black bathing suit, vacationing in Hawaii from December 2008.

While the photo appeared to be authentic, the rumor about its connection to Epstein’s island were entirely fabricated. 

The rumor originated with a Facebook post by an account called America Loves Liberty, part of a network of websites and social media pages called America’s Last Line of Defense that describes its output as being humorous and satirical in nature. ALLOD describes itself as a “network of trollery” and is linked to websites and social media pages that all identify themselves as satire.

The image in the America Loves Liberty Facebook post included a “satire” label in the bottom right corner. The Facebook page’s Intro section also reads: “Nothing on this page is real.”

Further, ALLOD’s website, the Dunning-Kruger Times, posted a longer version of the satirical Obama post. The “About Us” page of the website reads, “Dunning-Kruger-Times.com is a subsidiary of the ‘America’s Last Line of Defense’ network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery, or as Snopes called it before they lost their war on satire: Junk News.”

The fictional story spread as thousands of documents related to the case against Epstein were released to the public by the Department of Justice.

Snopes has addressed similar satirical claims about alleged connections between Obama and Epstein in the past, including the assertion that Obama was a participant in a ” ritualistic orgy empire” on Epstein’s island and that he awarded Epstein the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.

In December 2025, social media users claimed Costco, the popular big-box warehouse club retail store chain, was building apartments over its stores to address the affordable housing crisis. Some of these posts highlighted a specific Costco store in Los Angeles, whereas other posts referenced the rumored company initiative more broadly, without naming any particular stores.

Internet users shared the claim through posts (archived) on (archived) Instagram (archived), Facebook (archived) and Reddit (archived). It also appeared on X (archived) in January 2025. The posts used various images that appeared to come from multiple different Costco construction projects.

It’s true that, as of this writing, Costco was working with a real estate firm to build affordable apartments over a store currently under construction in Los Angeles. However, there was no evidence that Costco had any particular plan to similarly add housing to its other stores nationwide. Therefore, we’ve rated this story a mixture of truth and falsehoods.

Snopes reached out to Costco by email to confirm if the company had any plans to build apartments over its stores nationwide. We’ll update this story if and when we learn more.

The claim originated from reports about a real Costco store and housing development under construction in the Baldwin Village neighborhood of southern Los Angeles. Confirmation of the project, which is being developed by real estate firm Thrive Living and AO Architects, appeared in a news release from the city of Los Angeles, multiple news releases from Thrive Living and webpages dedicated to the project on both the AO Architects and Thrive Living websites.

According to the releases, the finished project will include 800 rental apartment units split between five floors, all on top of a street-level Costco Wholesale store. The project will consist of 184 apartments dedicated to low-income households, with the rest of the units aimed at middle-income families. Specifically, those middle apartment units would be for tenants who may not be eligible for low-income housing but aren’t able to afford a typical rental unit in the area.

The developer of the project, Thrive Living, is a private real estate firm that focuses on developing underused properties in places experiencing housing affordability issues. The Costco housing project is replacing an abandoned office development previously on the property.

The development’s construction broke ground in September 2024, at which time Thrive Living said in a news release it believed the construction would take 2 1/2 years. If the construction finishes when anticipated, that would put its completion in 2027.

As of Dec. 30, 2025, Snopes found no project updates or images dated after January 2025. The images of the project available at the time all showed concept art. Six of these images appeared on the AO Architects website and another on the city of Los Angeles website. Images in December 2025 social media posts that appeared to show the development under construction did not depict the real project.

While there are news reports of some cities integrating Costco stores into residential areas, any other reporting on Costco apartment units just pointed to the Los Angeles project as the first-of-a-kind.

For further reading, Snopes has previously fact-checked a number of other claims related to Costco.

As stories spread in December 2025 about massive welfare fraud in Minnesota in which the vast majority of people charged were of Somali descent — leading to accusations the state’s Democratic leadership had ignored warnings — critics of Republican U.S. President Donald Trump shared a rumor that he had pardoned a fraudster who was serving a 20-year sentence for stealing far more money. 

One popular instance of this accusation, which focused on alleged fraud in Minnesota involving day cares, appeared on X on Dec. 29, identifying the supposedly pardoned fraudster as Philip Esformes (archived):

Another version of the claim on Facebook purported to compare the sum stolen by “every single Somali scheme in the state of Minnesota COMBINED” to the amount Esformes stole, arguing Esformes had swindled more. Occupy Democrats also amplified the claim.

As we outline below, the claim is false on one count: Trump did not pardon Esformes. It may also be incorrect on the scale of the fraud in Minnesota, though the total has yet to be calculated. 

Esformes’ crimes and sentence commutation

Esformes, who had been in custody since July 2016, was convicted in April 2019 of “the largest health care fraud scheme charged by the U.S. Justice Department,” according to a DOJ statement at the time, and a judge sentenced him that September to 20 years in prison. Esformes fraudulently billed Medicaid and Medicare $1.3 billion in unnecessary services through his network of assisted-living facilities and skilled nursing facilities. Esformes also was sentenced to restitution and forfeiture totaling $44.2 million, as well as three years of supervised release following his prison term.

In December 2020, near the end of his first term in office, Trump commuted Esformes’ sentence. A pardon is a complete forgiveness of someone’s crimes, while a commutation is only a reduction of sentence. In Esformes’ case, Trump commuted his prison term to time served, but left in place all other elements of his sentence, including the supervised release and the restitution of $5.5 million and forfeiture of $38.7 million. In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Esformes’ appeal.

In other words, Trump critics were incorrect in saying he pardoned Esformes.

Scale of fraud in Minnesota

The scale of the fraud in Minnesota is still unclear as of this writing. 

In November 2025, The New York Times reported that prosecutors were expanding their investigation to other schemes set up to steal welfare money in what they said represented “more than $1 billion.” At that time, more than 90 people had reportedly been charged and nearly 60 people convicted, the vast majority of whom were members of the Somali community, according to several reports from reputable news outlets.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reported in early December that it had calculated $217.7 million in stolen money, which it said was a number likely to grow. Federal authorities disputed the newspaper’s calculations, saying in a statement that it had found “$300 million in proven fraud loss” in one program alone and that “when the ongoing fraud prosecutions are finished, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will have prosecuted a billion dollars in fraud.”

On Dec. 18, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson said in a news conference that “staggering industrial-scale fraud” in Minnesota may have taken more than half of the $18 billion allotted in federal funds for social programs in the state since 2018. 

(The fraud in Minnesota was a portion of nationwide fraud that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which calculated taxpayers lost between $100 billion and $135 billion in unemployment claims.)

In sum, it was undetermined as of this writing how much money the various fraudulent schemes in Minnesota stole from taxpayers, but the amount appeared poised to exceed the $1.3 billion Esformes siphoned from Medicare and Medicaid. 

For more on this topic, Snopes examined an independent journalist’s investigation into supposedly Somali-run day care centers in Minnesota allegedly receiving millions of dollars in fraudulent payments of taxpayer money without providing actual child care services. We also debunked the claim that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz gave $8 billion to a Somali company to investigate fraud in the state. 

Musk reposted post that said, ‘Stalin, Mao and Hitler didn’t murder millions of people’

March 14, 2025

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In late December 2025, a video circulated online allegedly showing a group of New York City residents throwing dozens of snowballs at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

For example, one Instagram user shared the footage (archived) with overlaid text that read: “New Yorkers pelt ICE agents with Snow Balls.” The caption added: “New Yorkers letting ICE agents know that they are not welcomed in New York.”

Social media users shared the clip with similar captions, many stating that it occurred in New York City, on Bluesky (archived), Facebook, Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), TikTok (archived), X (archived) and YouTube (archived). One Facebook user labeled (archived) the people throwing snowballs as “far left protesters” who were demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration’s immigration enforcement policies.

In short, the video did not show New Yorkers pelting ICE agents with snowballs. The clip depicted supporters of Russian anti-Kremlin activist Alexei Navalny, who died in prison in February 2024, throwing snowballs at police officers during a 2021 protest in Moscow. Therefore, we determined that the video had been miscaptioned.

On Jan. 23, 2021, British newspaper The Guardian posted the footage on its Guardian News YouTube channel with the title: “Russia protests: police pelted with snowballs in Moscow.” The text description read: “Tens of thousands of Alexei Navalny supporters have protested across Russia in one of the largest demonstrations against Vladimir Putin’s rule in the past decade.”

There were no signs the clip was generated using artificial intelligence software.

The Guardian video cited Russia’s independent news media outlet Mediazona as the clip’s source. Mediazona also posted the footage on X on Jan. 23, 2021 (archived). The caption, translated from Russian using DeepL, read: “Police officers were pelted with snowballs near the circus on Trubnaya Street, and they clearly lost their composure.” At the end of the video, a man could be heard saying inaudible words in a Russian-sounding accent.

Using Google Maps, it was possible to geolocate the video to Tsvetnoy Boulevard near Trubnaya Square.

Mediazona tracked the Navalny protests throughout the day in a live blog (archived). At 5:16 p.m. local time, the outlet reported: “Security forces began arresting protesters at Trubnaya Square, using batons, a Mediazona correspondent reports. The crowd responded with a hail of snowballs and pushed a group of riot police away from the memorial pillar.”

For further reading about rumors involving New York City, we previously investigated a video allegedly showing Muslims participating in a Fajr (dawn) prayer at 5 a.m. in the middle of a one-way street in Brooklyn.

Sources

In late December 2025, social media users shared what appeared to be a Truth Social post by U.S. President Donald Trump that read, “Windmills are killing all of our beautiful Bald Eagles!” and included an image of a bird that appeared to be dead in front of several wind turbines.

People shared screenshots of the post to platforms such as Threads (archived), Facebook (archived), Reddit (archived) and X (archived). Many of these posts claimed the image Trump posted was not of a dead bald eagle in the United States, but instead a dead falcon at a wind farm in Israel.

The claim was true. Trump made the post to his Truth Social account (archived), and it was shared by other administration (archived) accounts (archived) on other platforms. The image was not taken in the U.S. and the dead bird was not a bald eagle.

Enlarging the image revealed the first obvious hint that the picture is not from the United States: Text written in the Hebrew alphabet is to the left of the “13” on the wind turbine closest to the dead bird. The Hebrew alphabet is used to write the Hebrew language, which is spoken in Israel.

Snopes used a reverse image search to determine the photo was previously published by two Israeli newspapers, one in 2017 and one in 2022. Another Israeli newspaper published a photo of the same scene from a different angle in 2017. The three newspapers credited the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and identified the bird as a falcon or a kestrel, which is the common name for several birds in the falcon genus. The two images published in 2017 included timestamps establishing them as being taken four minutes apart on Sept. 11, 2017. All of the newspapers wrote that the photo was taken in Israel.

We’ve reached out to the Israel Nature and Parks Authority to confirm it took the photo and for confirmation of the exact species of bird in the photo. This story will be updated if or when we receive a response.

The bird in the photo could easily be identified as a species that wasn’t a bald eagle. The bird lacked the white plumage of an adult bald eagle. Although juvenile bald eagles are brown, the bird in the photo is far smaller than a juvenile bald eagle and has a much smaller, visually different beak than that of a bald eagle at any age. While the bald eagle is not native to Israel, multiple kestrel species are native to the region.

Wind turbines can kill bald eagles, although U.S. law currently requires energy companies to take certain steps to mitigate harm to eagle populations. Additionally, the American bald eagle population has continued to rise over the past two decades at the same time as wind energy production in the U.S. has greatly increased.

Snopes has previously fact-checked a number of other claims regarding wind turbines.