Category: Fact Checking

At 7:35 A.M. on July 1st, 1940, a ship arrived in the port of Halifax, carrying a shipment of fish. Under the watchful eye of 300 armed policemen, the cargo, packed in hundreds of wooden crates, was methodically checked and rechecked before being loaded onto a dozen railcars. From Halifax, the shipment made its way to Montreal, where the train was relieved of around half its load before carrying on to the Canadian capital of Ottawa. Here, the remaining crates were offloaded and transported to the Bank of Canada, where they were locked deep underground in a concrete vault and kept under 24 hour guard. As you might have surmised, this was no ordinary delivery of seafood. For the ship that docked in Halifax that day was not a regular old fishing trawler or cargo steamer but the 9,000-ton British cruiser HMS Emerald, while the crates it carried held not fish but some £58 million in gold bullion and securities certificates – nearly 2% of Great Britain’s total monetary reserves. Over the following months some £2.5 billion would make the trip across the Atlantic in a desperate bid to save Britain’s assets in the event of Nazi invasion. This is the incredible story of Operation Fish, the greatest transfer of physical wealth in modern history.

In June 1940, Britain stood on the edge of an abyss. France had just fallen to the Nazis, and 338,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk, leaving most of their weapons and equipment behind. A German invasion of the British Isles appeared imminent. In the event the unthinkable occurred, the government of newly-elected Prime Minister Winston Churchill planned to evacuate to Canada and run what was left of the Empire from Montreal. First, however, the government set about transferring all its monetary assets overseas for safekeeping – including its vast gold reserves. These reserves were key to Britain’s ability to continue fighting the war. At the time, the United States, which supplied Britain with most of her food, raw materials, and weapons, was still officially neutral, meaning it could not extend credit for the purchase of war materiel. All transactions were strictly cash-and-carry. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler had good reason to covet Britain’s gold reserves. Being poor in nearly every natural resource except coal, in the interwar years Germany had been unable to accumulate large stocks of gold or hard currency, and was thus forced to plunder the nations it conquered in order to fuel its ongoing war of expansion.

The transfer of British wealth overseas had actually already begun several years earlier, as the storm clouds of war began gathering on the horizon. Starting in early 1936, the Bank of England began purchasing Canadian gold and storing it in earmarked accounts at the Bank of Canada. This not only provided a convenient and safe emergency reserve in case of war, but the Bank of Canada sold gold at a globally competitive rate and charged almost nothing for processing and storage, while storing gold in Canada allowed for much easier exchanges with the United States Federal Reserve. By the end of 1937, the Bank of England had accumulated 4,748 gold bars in its Ottawa account, worth a total of $66 million USD.

But it was not until 1939, when war became all but inevitable, that the transfer of British wealth to Canada truly began in earnest. In order to keep the first shipment secret, the British government hit upon the perfect cover: the upcoming royal visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to Canada. On May 6, 1939, the Royal Couple set sail from Portsmouth aboard the Canadian Pacific ocean liner Empress of Australia. Escorting them across the Atlantic were the cruisers HMS Glasgow and HMS Southampton and the battleship HMS Repulse, each carrying a secret cargo of £10 million in gold bars. When, halfway through the crossing, King George decided that Repulse was more urgently needed for the defence of the British Isles, its gold was redistributed between the remaining two ships and Repulse returned home – and for more on the ultimate fate of HMS Repulse, please check out our previous video Force Z and the Death of the Battleship.

On May 16, as massive crowds choked the docks and streets of Quebec City to greet Canada’s royal guests, a team of workmen, police guards, and Bank of Canada employees worked quickly and quietly to count the gold and unload it from the warships for transport via train and truck to the Bank of Canada vault in Ottawa. The whole process of accounting, transport, and storage took two weeks and hundreds of personnel, yet the Canadian government managed to keep the whole operation secret from the public. It was an encouraging sign of things to come.

On September 3, 1939, Britain declared war on Nazi Germany. One month later, on October 7, a convoy consisting of the light cruisers HMS Emerald, Enterprise, and Caradoc and the battleships HMS Revenge and Resolution, set sail from Plymouth loaded with £2 million in gold bars, in the first of many wartime gold runs collectively codenamed Operation Fish. By now, however, shipping millions in gold bullion to Canada was a significantly riskier prospect, for German U-boats now prowled the North Atlantic. The British were acutely aware of the risk; on January 25, 1917 the ocean liner SS Laurentic was sunk by German mines off the coast of Ireland, carrying 43 tons of gold to the bottom. While most of Laurentic’s cargo was eventually recovered, any gold lost in the mid-Atlantic would be lost forever. And with Britain’s economy just recovering from the depths of the Great Depression, the loss of even a single shipment would have been disastrous to the nation’s war effort. Furthermore, the War Cabinet had decided not to inform the War Risk Insurance Office of the shipments, reasoning that nobody would consider insuring such an absurd amount of wealth anyway. The convoy’s mission was thus carried out under the strictest of secrecy, the ships’ crews even being outfitted in tropical white uniforms to confuse German intelligence as to the nature of their voyage. But the convoy’s greatest foe during the crossing would not be U-boats but the North Atlantic itself, with Emerald and her escorts encountering the heaviest seas any of their captains had ever encountered. By the time the convoy reached Halifax, Emerald had lost her ship’s boats, rafts, depth charges, spotter aircraft, and various other fittings and equipment. But once again the gold safely reached its destination, and was quietly and efficiently whisked away to the Bank of Canada vaults in Ottawa.

More shipments would follow, though this time they would carry more than just gold. At the outbreak of war, the British government had forced its citizens to register all securities – such as stocks and bonds – with the Bank of England. In the summer of 1940, when Winston Churchill came to power and a Nazi invasion appeared imminent, the Government confiscated these securities and secretly transported certificates to Greenock in Scotland. Here some £200 million in certificates and £30 million in gold was loaded aboard the dependable HMS Emerald, which set sail once more for Canada on June 24, 1940. By this time the Battle of the Atlantic had reached its peak, with German U-boats sinking over 100 ships – nearly 40% of all transatlantic traffic – in May 1940 alone. And just like on the first voyage, Emerald and her destroyer escorts encountered heavy seas, thick fog, and treacherous sea ice. Two destroyers were forced to turn back, while for several Emerald was forced to come to a complete stop, making her a sitting duck for prowling submarines. Miraculously, however, the convoy once again made the 4,600 kilometre crossing unscathed, arriving in Halifax harbour on the morning of July 1.

At Pier 6, officials from the Bank of Canada and Canadian National Express were waiting to greet the shipment, and under the watchful eye of armed Royal Canadian Mounted Police, they supervised its transfer to a waiting train. Twelve specially-reinforced rail cars had to be used, as the floors of regular passenger coaches could not handle the weight of the gold. Sydney Perkins, an employee of the Bank of Canada’s Foreign Exchange Control Board, would later describe the scene:

“Seeing tens of millions in gold piled on the quay gave me a cold chill. Even with the whole area fenced off, some word about this enormous shipment could easily leak out in a big port like Halifax.”

Yet once again the whole operation was carried out in complete secrecy, and within hours the sealed train and its precious cargo were on their way to Montreal, protected by nearly 300 armed guards. At Montreal’s Bonaventure Station, the accompanying team of five exhausted Bank of England officials, lead by Alexander Craig, were greeted by David Mansur, Acting Secretary of the Bank of Canada. As the two men shook hands, Craig uttered the cryptic – and very British – code phrase:

“Hope you won’t mind our dropping in unexpectedly like this, but we’ve brought along quite a large shipment of fish.”

The two men then set about arranging the division of the cargo. The securities certificates were unloaded in Montreal and transported by truck to the Sun Life Assurance Building – then the largest office building in the British Empire. At first the boxes of securities were piled in a large space known as the buttress room, but it soon became clear that a more secure repository would be needed. Chronic wartime shortages, however, meant that the steel needed to construct a vault was hard to come by. A solution was soon found in the form of 870 steel rails ripped up from an abandoned railroad and a massive vault door borrowed from the Bank of Canada. In July 1940, workmen began pumping 360 tons of concrete into the basement of the Sun Life Building to create a steel-reinforced vault 15 metres below street level with walls one metre thick. Completed in six weeks, the vault was crammed with over nine hundred four-drawer filing cabinets filled with securities, protected by an acoustic alarm system so sensitive it could detect the sound of a drawer opening, as well as 24 RCMP guards barracked in the building. As Officer Bill Ritchie later recalled:

“On arrival, two members each were stationed at the first and second basement floors at the elevators, while the majority were in the third basement, doing shift duties. We witnessed the arrival of numerous boxes being brought to the third basement while the vault was being constructed, with us standing guard. Still, we did not know officially what they contained. We made $1.50 a day and really had a lot of fun. We were a very cohesive group and we bonded a lot during that month and a half, but in the end we were happy to return home.”

To protect the secrecy of the operation, the vault construction was explained away as an emergency measure to reinforce the Sun Life Building’s foundations, while a rumour was intentionally spread in Montreal that the British Crown Jewels were being stored in the building to justify the extra security.
To help manage the storage and exchange of certificates, David Mansur hired a team of 120 retired bankers, brokers, and investment secretaries. Yet despite this increased activity, none of Sun Life Insurance’s 5,000 employees ever learned or suspected what was being stored in their new underground vault – nor, for that matter, did the Canadian public.

Meanwhile, HMS Emerald’s shipment of gold bullion carried on to Ottawa, where it was transferred by armoured trucks and labourers working 12-hour shifts into the Bank of Canada’s 60-by-100-foot underground vault on Wellington Street.

The £230 million shipment set a world record for the largest amount of physical wealth ever transferred – as did Canadian National Express’s $1 million fee for transporting it. But even this amount would be dwarfed by subsequent Operation Fish shipments. On July 5, 1940, a convoy comprising the ocean liners SS Monarch of Bermuda, SS Sobieski, and SS Batory, escorted by the British warships HMS Revenge and HMS Bonaventure set sail from England carrying £400 million in gold and foreign securities. The voyage was fraught with difficulties. Halfway through the crossing, Batory was beset by engine problems and was forced to drop out of the convoy, escorted only by Bonaventure. The two ships then encountered thick fog and were forced to stop, making them highly vulnerable to attack. Eventually, however, the Batory managed to repair her engines and the shipment safely reached Halifax several days later. More shipments followed, with SS Antonia and SS Duchess of Liverpool making the crossing carrying £10 million each and HMS Furious delivering £20 million. The largest shipment of wealth aboard a single ship, however, came courtesy of the Bank of France, which, like Britain, had begun transferring its gold reserves overseas at the outbreak of war in 1939. In June 1940, France sent 254 tons of bullion worth £75 million to Halifax aboard the cruiser Émile Bertin, among the fastest warships in the world at the time. The Bank of Canada had previously received several shipments of French gold without incident, but the changing political situation would complicate this particular delivery. With France now occupied by the Nazis, the British government requested that all French assets in foreign banks be made available to aid the Allied war effort. The captain of the Émile Bertin, however, remained loyal to the new collaborationist Vichy government and defied British orders by slipping out of Halifax harbour and sailing to the French Caribbean colony of Martinique. In response, Britain pressured the Bank of Canada to release all its French assets to the Allied cause. Canada, however, saw such a move as a violation of its role as an impartial banker, and after months of debate decided to freeze France’s assets until the end of the war, declaring:

“The time has come for Canada to distance itself from Britain’s international agenda [and] cease acting out of colonial obedience.”

By the time Operation Fish ended in late 1940, some £2.5 billion in assets from Britain, France, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and other allied nations had been shipped across the Atlantic and placed in Canadian vaults – the largest transfer of physical wealth in modern history. This wealth included some 1,500 tons of gold bars and coins worth nearly £470 million – an amount so vast that the Bank of Canada ran out of vault space to store it all. According to historian James Powell:

“The story that I have heard is that there was so much gold coming in at one point, they were just stuffing it everywhere, in hallways, in the incinerator room, just stuffing it to keep it safe before the accountants could come and look at all the boxes and tally it all up to make sure it was all there.”

Indeed, it is estimated that by the end of the war, the amount of gold stored in the Bank of Canada’s vaults was exceeded only by the United States gold reserve at Fort Knox. But perhaps the most remarkable fact about Operation Fish is that despite the U-boat menace and the hundreds of bankers, clerks, workmen, guards and other personnel involved in the operation, not a single ship was sunk nor a single bar or gold or security certificate misplaced. Nor did German intelligence or even the Canadian public ever find out about the massive transfer of wealth. Indeed, so tightly was secrecy maintained that the Maritime Command Museum in Halifax has been unable to find any official records of any gold-related activities at any of the city’s piers during the war. Even the service records of the destroyer HMCS Assiniboine are devoid of any mentions of gold, even though British records indicate that it carried £1 million in bullion from Plymouth to Halifax in November 1939.

However, by the time Operation Fish was concluded, Germany had completely abandoned its planned invasion of Britain, rendering the original purpose of the operation somewhat moot. Furthermore, on March 11, 1941 the United States further distanced itself from its pretense of neutrality by passing the Act to Promote the Defense of the United States, more commonly known as the Lend-Lease Act. This allowed the United States to loan Britain tanks, aircraft, ships, and other weapons for cheap or free, on the condition that it was returned at the end of the war. On December 8, 1941, the United States declared war against the Axis Powers, finally allowing it to freely supply Britain with arms.

Yet Operation Fish had not been for nothing. Storing her gold reserves close to the United States made it far more convenient for Britain to purchase arms and other war materiel, while the massive influx of foreign gold and securities gave the Bank of Canada the boost it needed to become a powerhouse in global banking. Indeed, after the war all the nations which had deposited assets in Canadian banks chose to keep their accounts active, with many even increasing their deposits in order to take advantage of Canada’s competitive banking fees and exchange rates. In a sense, Operation Fish epitomizes the doctrine of Total War, in which all of a nation’s resources and productive capacities – no matter how obscure – are committed toward prosecuting the conflict. As the Canadian historian Tim Cook writes:

“Operation Fish is a testament to the quiet professionalism of the men and women involved. [It] is a story of tremendous courage on the part of many, of bureaucratic planning … the stuff that doesn’t usually get written about in histories, but really one of those key events that allows Britain to keep fighting.”

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“An army marches on its stomach.” This adage, variously ascribed to Frederick the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte, captured one of the universal truths of warfare: that battles are won not by men and weapons, but by logistics – the ability to efficiently and reliably supply said men and guns with the ammunition, food, medicine, and any other resources required to sustain the fight. As armies became increasingly mechanized in the early 20th Century, a new element became vital to the prosecution of war: the fuel needed to feed vast fleets of trucks, tanks, and aircraft. During the Second World War, the massive logistical problem of slaking armies’ endless thirst for fuel led to the development of a deceptively simple but ingenious device that changed the course of history and remains in widespread use today. This is the story of the humble Jerry Can, the little metal can that won a war.

Prior to the Second World War, the mechanized armies of the world used a wide variety of fuel containers largely adapted from civilian models – few of which were particularly suited to the rigours of combat. For example, the standard British Army fuel canister was the rectangular 18-litre Petrol, Oil, and Water or “POW” container – derisively nicknamed the “Flimsy”. And flimsy it was, with thin sheet metal walls and folded and soldered seams that frequently split and leaked. Indeed, so fragile were Flimsies that they had to be transported in special wooden crates to prevent them from crushing each other. Inconveniently, the screw lids also required a wrench and funnel to use.

Early in the Second World War, the British quickly discovered the importance of fuel logistics as their armies faced off against the Germans in the deserts of Egypt and Libya. The poor design and construction of the Flimsy caused up to 30% of British fuel bound for North Africa to be lost in transit, while leaking fuel containers caused the explosion and sinking of at least one transport ship in the Mediterranean. Such shortages severely hampered the British war effort, as historian Desmond Young later described: “No one who did not serve in the desert can realise to what extent the difference between complete and partial success rested on the simplest item of our equipment—and the worst. Whoever sent our troops into desert warfare with the [five-gallon] petrol tin has much to answer for…The overall loss was almost incalculable. To calculate the tanks destroyed, the number of men who were killed or went into captivity because of shortage of petrol at some crucial moment, the ships and merchant seamen lost in carrying it, would be quite impossible.”
Indeed, these shortages were largely responsible for the failure of several British offensives, including the First Battle of El Alamein in July 1942. Meanwhile, the panzers of General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps were able to maintain their breakneck advance thanks to an ingenious piece of German engineering: the Wehrmancht-Einheitskanister or “standard army can.”

Developed in great secrecy by engineer Vinzenz Günvogel of Müller Engineering and first issued in 1937, the Wehrmachtkanister was specifically designed for the mechanized Blitzkrieg tactics that the German army would use to conquer most of western Europe. The 20-litre can was constructed of thick stamped steel with recessed welded seams, making it resistant to splitting and leakage even when roughly handled; while cross-shaped indentations in the side walls allowed the body to expand and contract with temperature. The interior was lined with plastic, protecting the steel from corrosion and allowing the can to safely carry water as well as fuel. The triple handles at the top allowed the can to be carried by one or two men or to be passed from man-to-man bucket-brigade style and. Even more ingeniously, the handles were hollow, holding just enough air to allow the can to float even when filled with fuel. Finally, the opening featured an integrated spout and air tube to allow for smooth and efficient pouring and – most importantly – could be opened and closed without the use of tools.

Hundreds of thousands of Wehrmachtskanisters were manufactured for the German armed forces, and it wasn’t long before examples of this ingenious device were captured by the British in Norway and North Africa. Immediately recognizing the superiority of the German design over the troublesome Flimsy, the British began capturing as many from the enemy as they could, and eventually began producing their own copies – which, due to their Germany origin, soon became known as “Jerry Cans.” Meanwhile, the much-maligned Flimsy was relegated to a variety of secondary roles. For example, cutting a flimsy in half and filling it with gasoline-soaked sand produced a handy makeshift stove dubbed the “Benghazi Burner” or “Benghazi Boiler.” Similar devices were also used as improvised flare pots for marking desert airstrips at night. Flimsies were also filled with sand and rocks and used in place of sandbags for fortifying trenches and foxholes.

By contrast, the United States was slow to recognize the virtues of the Jerry Can, despite first learning of the design before the British. In 1939, Paul Pleiss, an American engineer working for the German auto body firm Pleiss Ambi-Budd Presswerk or ABP, decided to embark on an epic road trip from Germany to India. Just prior to departure, however, Pleiss realized that he had forgotten to pack containers for emergency water. But as luck would have it, Pleiss’s travelling companion – a fellow ABP engineer whose name has been lost to history – knew of a supply of fuel canisters belonging to the Luftwaffe being stored at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport. He managed to steal three of the newfangled cans and strap them to the bottom of the car, whereupon he and Pleiss set off on their journey. The pair made it across 11 national borders before Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, learned of the engineer’s departure and dispatched an aircraft to bring him home. Pleiss continued his journey alone, but by the time he reached Calcutta the Second World War had broken out, making a return trip impossible. Pleiss thus placed his vehicle in storage and made his way back to Philadelphia by ship.

Upon arriving back in America, Pleiss contacted the U.S. Army and informed them of the marvellous German fuel can which had served him so well on his journey. Realizing that removing and shipping the cans separately from India would attract suspicion, Pleiss instead arranged to have the whole car shipped instead. It arrived in the summer of 1940 and the cans were sent to Camp Holabird in Maryland for evaluation. But while Army inspectors were impressed, their redesign of the German can was a poor facsimile. Its seams were rolled instead of welded, it had no plastic lining, and the spout still required a wrench and funnel to use. Nonetheless, to Pleiss’s dismay the ersatz Jerry Can soon went into full-scale production.

This situation began to change in September 1942 when Richard M. Daniel, a quality control officer posted to American oil refineries in the Middle East, learned from British officers that the only kind of fuel can worth having was the German Jerry Can. In response, Daniel submitted a report to Washington, which convinced the Government to halt production of the old 10-gallon fuel can and a newly-designed but still inferior Navy can in favour of a direct copy of the Jerry can. With the United States’s conversion to the Jerry can, production was ramped up and nearly 2 million were sent to North Africa in 1943, playing a pivotal role in the eventual defeat of Axis forces in the region. And as the Allied forces advanced across Western Europe in the wake of the 1944 D-Day landings, the Jerry Can advanced right along with them. To give an idea of the pivotal role this seemingly simple device played in the European campaign, by October 1944 the Allies were moving more than a million gallons of gasoline a day – most of it in Jerry Cans. Yet despite nearly 19 million Jerry Cans being produced by the end of the war, lack of discipline in returning the empties led to severe shortages across Europe, with soldiers using them for all sorts of unauthorized purposes such as shoring up gun positions or creating footpaths across muddy roads. Indeed, the situation got so bad that the US Army even resorted to offering prizes to French schoolchildren to bring back as many empty Jerry Cans as possible. Nonetheless, the humble Jerry Can soldiered on with distinction to the end of the war, leading U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to declare: “Without these cans it would have been impossible for our armies to cut their way across France at a lightning pace which exceeded the German blitz of 1940.”

But perhaps the greatest testament to the Jerry Can’s ingenuity and versatility is the fact that it remains in use today in both military and civilian applications, its design all but unchanged after 80 years except for the replacement of metal with modern plastics. An immortal design classic, the Jerry Can truly is the Little Can That Could.

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Claim:

In December 2025, CBS Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss pulled a story about abuses at CECOT, a prison in El Salvador, because the report was a “blatant hoax.”

Rating:

In late December 2025, CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss postponed a “60 Minutes” report on abuses in a Salvadoran maximum-security prison just before it was due to air. That prison, the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT), received heightened attention after a Human Rights Watch report (archived) found the U.S. deported hundreds of Venezuelans to the facility and uncovered dozens of reports of abuse.

Following reports about Weiss’ decision, users on Facebook and Instagram (archived, archived) shared a video story — seemingly narrated by artificial intelligence — that claimed Weiss pulled the story because it was a “blatant hoax.” The video was captioned:

Trump’s Epic Media Takedown: CBS Yanks Fake 60 Minutes Venezuela Hoax – Democrat Lies Implode in Total Humiliation! 

Massive win for Trump! CBS abruptly pulls a bogus 60 Minutes hit piece hours before airtime after editor Bari Weiss exposes it as a total fabrication smearing Trump’s deportations. The “mistreated Venezuelans” were actually illegal Mexicans still chilling in the US, working landscaping gigs, spinning scripted lies about abuse while never deported! This fake news farce proves leftist media’s desperation to prop up Biden’s border chaos amid Epstein scandals torching Dem elites. Trump’s America First juggernaut crushes the grift – no more coddling illegals over Americans! As midterms loom & Dem approvals tank, the swamp drains itself. God bless Trump for exposing the evil!

The video claimed: “CBS News was forced to abruptly pull a fabricated 60 Minutes segment just hours before airtime on Dec. 21, 2025, after new editor Bari Weiss demanded changes upon discovering the entire story was a blatant hoax designed to smear Trump’s deportation successes.”

However, there was no evidence Weiss pulled the report upon discovering it was a “blatant hoax.” Rather, it originated on a comedic social media page.

The claim first emerged on social media accounts belonging to Jonathan Gregory, whose bio was labeled “comedian.” The bio also, apparently satirically, stated he was the “Digital Content Creator for the Trump Administration.” Although Gregory’s posts tagged Newsmax, a real media company, he was not associated with it — a Google search revealed no bylines for Gregory on the company’s website.

We reached out to Gregory seeking confirmation that the claim was satirical and did not immediately receive a response.

Further, this claim was not consistent with CBS News’ own reporting on the situation. A video (archived), available on the CBS News website, reported that Weiss said in a statement that she looked “forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.” The video’s caption read: 

“60 Minutes” postpones report on Venezuelans sent to El Salvador prison

CBS News postponed a “60 Minutes” report about the Trump administration’s decision to send Venezuelans and others it says entered the U.S. illegally to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi said in an internal email to colleagues that the story was “factually correct,” but CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss said in a statement that holding stories that “lack sufficient context” or are “missing critical voices happens every day in every newsroom,” and she looks “forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”

Alfonsi reportedly claimed in an email circulated to colleagues (and reviewed by the Los Angeles Times) that because “every rigorous internal check” on the story was met, its postponement was a political decision.

We reached out to CBS seeking further details and will update this story if we receive a response. 

We’ve previously reported on Gregory’s claims before, including a rumor that director Rob and Michele Reiner’s son Nick is transgender and a claim that U.S. Sen. John Fetterman was targeted in a “deep state assassination plot.”

Sources

Claim:

The U.S. Department of Justice released a letter purportedly from Jeffrey Epstein to fellow sex offender and former U.S. gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar that said, in part, “Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls.”

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Context

The document was present in the files released by the Justice Department in December 2025, but Snopes has not verified the message was written by Epstein. The DOJ said it had “confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE.”

In late December 2025, following releases of documents by the U.S. Department of Justice related to its investigation of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, rumors circulated online that one of the files released featured a letter from Epstein to fellow sex offender and former United States gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar. 

Users shared the claim on social media platforms such as BlueSky (archived), Instagram (archived) and Threads (archived), alleging that the letter referenced President Donald Trump — specifically, that it said Trump shared Epstein’s and Nassar’s “love of young, nubile girls.” Many people sharing the claim also included a purported screenshot of the message in question.

DOJ briefly uploaded this letter from Jeff Epstein to serial child molester Larry Nassar: “Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system.”

[image or embed]

— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman.bsky.social) December 23, 2025 at 1:03 AM

The claim that such a letter was included in the Justice Department’s release of Epstein case documents was true.

However, it is important to note that Snopes was unable to verify the letter was genuinely written by Epstein. The Department of Justice said on X that it had confirmed the letter was fake.

The specific file could be viewed on the DOJ’s website, which included an evidence form, a handwritten note in a greeting card that depicted a man and woman sharing a romantic moment, an envelope that featured handwritten addressing and a stamp indicating the letter was returned to sender due to the recipient being “no longer at this address.”

The full letter read: 

Dear L.N.

As you know by now, I have taken the “short route” home. Good luck! We shared one thing … our love & caring for young ladies at the hope they’d reach their full potential.

Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to “grab snatch,” whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system.

Life is unfair.

Yours

J. Epstein

Official response

Reached for comment via email, the White House press office directed Snopes to an X post (archived) made the morning of Dec. 23 by the Department of Justice that read: 

The Department of Justice has officially released nearly 30,000 more pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. 

Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already. 

Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims.

The DOJ made another post (archived) on X that afternoon directly addressing this particular piece of evidence: 

The Department of Justice is currently looking into the validity of this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar and we will follow up as soon as possible.

In the meantime, three facts stand out:

-The postmark on the envelope is Virginia, not New York, where Jeffrey Epstein was jailed at the time. 

-The return address listed the wrong jail where Epstein was held and did not include his inmate number, which is required for outgoing mail.

-The envelope was processed three days AFTER Epstein’s death.

Roughly two hours after that post, the department posted again (archived), saying it had “confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE”:

The FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE. The fake letter was received by the jail, and flagged for the FBI at the time. The FBI made this conclusion based on the following facts:

-The writing does not appear to match Jeffrey Epstein’s.

-The letter was postmarked three days after Epstein’s death out of Northern Virginia, when he was jailed in New York.

-The return address did not list the jail where Epstein was held and did not include his inmate number, which is required for outgoing mail.  

This fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual. Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law.

What we know about the letter 

The stamp used on the envelope in question appeared to be from the Hot Wheels 50th-anniversary stamp collection released by the U.S. Post Service in 2019. The postmark read “NOVA 220,” which indeed indicated processing at a mail facility in Northern Virginia. 

The return address was written as “J. Epstein, Manhattan Correctional, NYC, NY 10007.” The addressee was written as “Larry Nassar, Inmate, 9300 S Wilmot Rd Tucson, AZ 85756,” the address for a federal prison where Nassar was incarcerated for a time, though he was eventually moved due to threats to his safety. The actual name of the Manhattan facility where Epstein was held was the Metropolitan Correctional Center; federal authorities closed it in 2021.

Keen-eyed readers will note the letter was postmarked Aug. 13, 2019, three days after Epstein’s death by suicide. Many people sharing the claim said the line in the letter reading, “as you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home” was a reference to Epstein’s intention to take his own life.

“Grab snatch” likely referenced comments made by Trump recorded by entertainment program “Access Hollywood” in 2005 and published by The Washington Post in October 2016, during his first campaign for president. Trump said:

You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women] — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the p****. You can do anything.

Inmate mail regulations

Reached for comment on the matter of inmate mail, the federal Bureau of Prisons pointed Snopes to its manual for mail management. The manual corroborated the DOJ’s assertion that inmate numbers are required on outgoing mail.

The manual stated that “inmates will place correct identification (full committed name, register number, and complete institution return address) on the envelope. Failure to include any of the above information will require the material to be returned to the inmate for correct preparation.” 

Like the Department of Justice, some users raised skepticism about the authenticity of the letter based on its postmark date falling after Epstein’s death.

The BOP mail manual did offer a potential explanation how a letter could be postmarked days after an inmate’s death. The section regarding outgoing inmate mail read: 

Ordinarily, all outgoing letter mail will be processed within 24 hours, excluding weekends and holidays. In any event, inmate correspondence and mail are under the purview of institution authorities. Staff will assure when special mail is received from the inmate, it is sealed, stamped or labeled on reverse, dated, and the institution return address noted. This mail will be dispatched within 24 hours as provided in the Program Statement Correspondence.

Epstein’s death occurred on a Saturday, so it is possible a piece of mail given to staff by an inmate that day or the day before would not have been inspected by mailroom staff until the following Monday and delivered to the post office on Tuesday — in this case Aug. 13, the date of the postmark. 

However, that does not explain why such a letter would have been postmarked in Virginia if it had been sent from New York.

Handwriting analysis

Included in the DOJ’s case files was a laboratory examination request submitted by the FBI seeking handwriting analysis of the letter in question.

The request read, “FBI New York requests the Laboratory perform a handwriting analysis comparing the letter received from MCC (Metropolitan Correctional Center) and the handwriting of Jeffrey Epstein to conclude if the individual who wrote the letter was Epstein or another unknown person.”

The FBI declined to comment to Snopes on the results of the analysis.

For further reading on rumors pertaining to Epstein, his associates and their crimes, check out Snopes’ collection of related rumors we’ve investigated throughout 2025.

For months, President Donald Trump or members of his administration have used federal data showing a large increase in employment for U.S.-born workers and a decrease in employment among foreign-born workers to claim that “all net job creation” in his second term has been for citizens. And for months, multiple economists and labor experts have said that officials should not do that because these specific figures are misleading.

The figures can mislead because the reported levels of native- and foreign-born workers are influenced by predetermined population estimates for 2025 that the Census Bureau calculated in 2024.

In an August post on Substack, Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, wrote that “the apparent boom” in employment of workers born in America “is just a statistical artifact” attributable to the way the population and employment estimates are determined.

“If someone is reporting the increased native-born employment, they are ignoring warnings by the Census Bureau not to do that,” he told us in an interview.

But that’s exactly what Trump and administration officials have done repeatedly.

“Before I entered office, 100% of all new net jobs were going to migrant workers,” Trump said during Dec. 9 remarks in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, for example. “Think of that, 100% of new jobs were going to migrants. These are government numbers, by the way. These are not Trump numbers. These are government numbers because they say, ‘Well, did Trump come up with these numbers?’ No, I didn’t … Migrant workers and illegal aliens got 100%. But since I took office, 100% of all net job creation has gone to American citizens.”

He then repeated a version of the claim about net job growth for only U.S. citizens in his prime-time address to the nation on Dec. 17.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — touted in a Dec. 16 post on the White House website — do show that this year native-born employment increased by almost 2.7 million from January to November. On the other hand, employment for foreign-born individuals decreased by 972,000 in that period.

Trump is wrong to use foreign-born employment to mean “migrant workers and illegal aliens.” BLS says the foreign-born category includes “legally-admitted immigrants,” some of whom may have since become citizens, “refugees, temporary residents such as students and temporary workers, and undocumented immigrants.”

In addition, during Joe Biden’s presidency, the data show an increase of 7.5 million in native-born employment, more than the 6.5 million increase in foreign-born employment.

BLS publishes this employment data, which is based in part on its Current Population Survey, or CPS, a monthly survey of 60,000 households conducted by the Census Bureau for BLS. But the figures shouldn’t be used to make such comparisons, some experts have said.

Misleading Employment Levels

One of those experts, Kolko, who is also a former undersecretary for economic affairs at the Department of Commerce during the Biden administration, explained the reasons why the data are questionable in his August post. He said that Trump administration officials and others who had pointed to the BLS data to claim that there had been a massive increase in native-born employment were guilty of committing a “multiple-count data felony.” 

At the time, the official figures showed that native-born employment was up 2.5 million through Trump’s first six months back in office. 

“The statistical agencies explicitly warn that these data” from the CPS “are not suitable for sizing and trending the foreign-born and native-born populations,” Kolko said. He pointed to a September 2024 working paper by Census Bureau staff that said the bureau, because of the survey’s small sample size, “routinely cautions against using the CPS to estimate the size and the geographic distribution of the foreign-born population when other data are available.”

“In fact,” Kolko wrote, “the apparent boom in native-born employment is just a statistical artifact, arising from arcane rules about how the data are constructed and population levels are determined.”

Those arcane rules, he told us in an interview, involve the household survey and predetermined population estimates for 2025 that the Census Bureau calculated in 2024. Those “population controls,” as he referred to them, significantly influence the reported totals for native- and foreign-born workers.

“The way the CPS works, the foreign-born and native-born population add up to a predetermined forecast that was made last year,” he said by phone. “So, a big decline in the reported foreign-born population” based on the survey “is going to be offset by a reported increase in the native-born population.”

As an extreme example, Kolko wrote in August that if the entire foreign-born population vanished from the U.S., the CPS would automatically report that the native-born population increased by millions of people to equal the predetermined estimate of the total population. 

And when the estimated native-born population increases, so does the estimated number of U.S.-born workers, as Ben Zipperer, senior economist for the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, explained in a September article.

Dean Baker, the founder and senior economist for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, another left of center group, said in a Dec. 1 analysis that there are “three obvious reasons why the CPS would show fewer foreign-born workers” in 2025. 

One reason, he wrote, “is that some number of immigrants have actually left the country,” either leaving on their own or being deported. Another reason is that more immigrants, even ones in the country legally, may be reluctant and not respond to the survey. Finally, “immigrants may not answer the survey accurately,” meaning that some foreign-born residents may say they were born in the U.S. when they were not, he said.

Baker noted that BLS data show that while the reported foreign-born population 16 and older has declined since last year, the native-born population has increased by more than 5 million — a figure that he suggested is not believable. That is how the Trump administration gets “the explosion in employment for the native-born they are boasting about,” he said.

Kolko also said the reported increase in the native-born population is not realistic. 

“The rate of immigration is slower this year, and it’s possible that the foreign-born population has declined,” he told us. “Immigration policy can cause the foreign-born population to grow faster or more slowly than forecast. But, in contrast, the native-born population typically grows at a predictable rate, because that’s based on fertility rates, the age distribution and mortality rates. So, aside from something like a pandemic, the native-born population typically doesn’t grow faster or slower than expected.”

“That’s why it is not plausible for the native-born population to jump the way it was reported in the CPS, and the way the CPS is constructed explains why we see this increase,” Kolko said.  

Notably, data from a different monthly BLS survey of businesses, called the Current Employment Statistics, or CES, show that total U.S. employment increased by just 499,000 workers, on net, from January to November. That’s more than 1 million fewer net jobs added than the estimated increase of almost 1.7 million according to the CPS, which is the only survey of the two that breaks down native-born and foreign-born employment.

“We might expect a difference, since these are from different surveys (native/foreign from the CPS, total jobs from CES), but a difference of 1 million jobs in just 10 months is pretty big!” Jeremy Horpedahl, an associate professor of economics at the University of Central Arkansas, wrote in a Dec. 17 blog post.

We reached out to the White House about Trump’s claims, but didn’t receive a response.

Check Unemployment Rates

Rather than employment levels, Kolko told us to look at the reported unemployment rates, as he also suggested in his August piece.

“The unemployment rate is the best information the CPS offers about the native born and the foreign born. Ignore the levels of population and employment: they mislead,” he wrote.

David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, also told us to focus on the unemployment rate, because he said that is what the CPS was really designed to determine.

“The survey is meant not to establish how many people are in the United States, or how many people are in any subcategory. It’s meant to figure out what the people in the United States are doing,” he said. “Are they working? Are they not? Are they retired? Are they in school? That’s what the survey is supposed to do, and it’s supposed to look at the rate at which these things are happening. … That’s where the survey data is useful.”

The most recent BLS data show that the unemployment rate for the native-born population has not improved; it was 4.3% in November, the same as it was in January. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for the foreign-born population was 4.4% last month, down from 4.6% at the beginning of the year.

Bier said the unemployment rate is a more reliable statistic because it’s not dependent on the number of people in the country.

“It’s really dependent on the number of people surveyed. And if you survey enough people, you’re going to get pretty close to the actual distribution of what those people are doing,” he said.

Kolko told us that the BLS only publishes the native-born and foreign-born employment levels to be transparent about the data that underlie the calculation of the unemployment rate. But the rates ultimately are not affected by the population controls in the CPS, he said, “so it is fine to look at the native-born unemployment rate and the foreign-born unemployment rate.”

In a Dec. 17 post on X, Kolko again advised the public: “Do not look at native-born LEVELS of anything — employment, unemployment, labor force, or population. These stats may be official but they are meaningless.”

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President Donald Trump and former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg have sparred over the condition of the air traffic control system, which is complex and carries a history of planned upgrades and overhauls that stretches back decades.

Trump has promised since he took office to update the system and, in December, awarded a contract with an initial $12.5 billion payment to Peraton to deliver on the Brand New Air Traffic Control System plan that he announced in May.

As he has touted his plan, Trump has also cast blame on the Biden administration for letting the system deteriorate. For example, the president referred to Buttigieg on Nov. 10, saying, “he spent billions of dollars trying to patch together our air traffic control system, which was a conglomeration of all different systems in all different cities. He spent — they had hundreds of companies working on it and they were spending billions of dollars. And when they turned it on, it didn’t work, it didn’t even work a little bit. That’s why you had a helicopter crashing into an airplane.”

Trump has made some version of this claim multiple times this year.

Buttigieg responded on Nov. 10 that the president’s claim was “false and confusing” and that the Biden administration had begun “a long-term communications fix that is still underway that he is now passing off as his idea.”

Neither one of their claims is quite right.

It’s true that the Trump administration has devoted more funding to upgrading the system than the Biden administration did, but experts also told us that much of Trump’s plan is an extension of a project that began in 2003 and continued under Biden.

We’ll explain what the state of the air traffic control system is and what each administration proposed to do about it.

As for Trump’s suggestion that Biden-era projects were responsible for the midair collision between a U.S. Army helicopter and a passenger plane on Jan. 29, that’s not supported by the National Transportation Safety Board investigation so far. The investigation is still ongoing, but the initial report published on March 7 cited a yearslong problem with helicopters and planes being too close to each other. “Existing separation distances between helicopter traffic operating on Route 4 and aircraft landing on runway 33 are insufficient and pose an intolerable risk to aviation safety by increasing the chances of a midair collision,” the report said.

The U.S. System

The U.S. air traffic control system is comprised of more than 400 towers across the country that shuttle millions of passengers to and from the nation’s airports every day.

“This is an incredibly complex system,” Lance Sherry, director of the Center for Air Transportation Systems Research at the College of Engineering and Computing at George Mason University, told us in a phone interview.

“You can’t turn this off and start over,” he said of updating the system. “You’ve got to change the tires while it’s going 100 miles per hour on the highway.”

The system is a network that broadly involves communications from the ground to aircraft in the sky — which requires each airline to equip planes with compatible technology — and management of air traffic flow. Communications and navigation are done by both radio and satellite-based technology.

“[M]odernization has long been plagued by delays, cost overruns and under-delivery of promised benefits,” John Strong, a professor at the College of William & Mary who serves on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on air traffic control, told us.

He gave an overview of efforts starting in 1984, when IBM led the implementation of the Advanced Automation System, which had originally been proposed to cost $2.5 billion but ended up costing more than twice that when it was restructured and largely cancelled 10 years later without having been completed.

Then, in 2003, the Federal Aviation Administration began what Strong called “[t]he most ambitious recent project” — the Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen. Among its many components was the goal of shifting from radar-based to satellite-based technology by 2025. “This included important applications in approach control to airports (for example, curved merging approaches rather than stacking up in a line in the sky) and moving from towers using paper flight data strips to electronic ones,” Strong said. “The technologies were rolled out to a limited number of airports.”

A September report by the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General said that the FAA had spent about $15 billion by the end of 2024 to deliver “new capabilities and benefits,” but ultimately fell short, concluding that “FAA’s efforts have not delivered the vision of a transformed and modernized air traffic system.”

“So the FAA has a long history of problems that extended from the George W. Bush administration, through Obama, Trump I, and Biden,” Strong said.

But technology, alone, is only one part of the picture, Sherry said. “The way to improve the system is to better manage the flow,” he said.

The flow of air traffic can be managed by changing the number or direction of runways at an airport or by adjusting the flight paths into the airport.

“For sure, you don’t want the sector controller using an old system, but, at the end of the day, that’s not where the bottlenecks are,” Sherry said, the bottlenecks are in the flow.

There are other factors, too, such as staffing shortages. While the number of flights has increased by about 10% over the last decade, the number of air traffic controllers has decreased by about 6%, according to a December report from the Government Accountability Office.

What Trump Has Proposed

As we said, in May, the Trump administration issued a proposal “to build a brand new, state-of-the-art air traffic control system that will be the envy of the world,” according to a press release. The initial contract for that project was awarded in December to Peraton, a security and technology company.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed in July provided $12.5 billion for the project, which Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said is expected to total $31.5 billion and be finished by the end of 2028.

But experts have characterized the plan as more of an extension of NextGen than a completely unique plan to overhaul the air traffic control system.

“FAA will continue to deploy NextGen systems beyond 2025 and other key capabilities beyond 2030,” the GAO said in its September report reviewing its oversight of the NextGen program. “Furthermore, the Secretary of Transportation recently announced a $31.5 billion plan for FAA to build the Brand New Air Traffic Control System, a state-of-the-art system that will replace core infrastructure including automation, communication, surveillance, and facilities. These plans include accelerating deployment of several key NextGen programs to be complete by 2028.”

A list of projects for the initial contract issued by the FAA on Dec. 4 shows technology and hardware upgrades, such as new radios, some updated radar systems, and additional weather-related systems.

“Everything listed there is some equipment located at some facility in the air traffic control system,” Sherry said. “It’s not to say those things aren’t necessary, but it’s a bottom up approach — it looks like a list of things people have wanted.”

The existing equipment has some limitations — some of it is old and unreliable, he said. “So, all of that needs to be upgraded. And that’s what’s been released by the FAA. But it would be nice to take this opportunity to update the principles, not just the technology,” Sherry said.

Strong told us something similar. “What is being promoted now [is] quite a step change and well beyond the incrementalism in recent years. That said, I think it mainly is modernization of facilities and equipment, but not a fundamental rethinking of how the ATC system might operate, how it should be governed, operated, and funded,” he said. “I do think the current Trump admin proposal will be a major improvement – if it can be completed on time and on budget. But both the timeline and past experience makes me withhold judgment at this point.”

The Brand New Air Traffic Control System, or BNACTS, is going to finish off what NextGen never got to do, Sherry said.

For example, as described in the GAO report, the NextGen plan had envisioned installing a tool that would help to more efficiently move planes between gates and runways called a Terminal Flight Data Manager program, or TFDM, at 89 airports. The first one was deployed in 2025, but the plan reduced the total number of airports to 49 and delayed the rollout for those airports to 2030.

“However, as part of the Brand New Air Traffic Control System, FAA now plans to deploy TFDM to all 89 planned sites,” the report said, and, indeed, the TFDM system is included in the BNACTS plan.

“It’s an extension of NextGen,” Sherry concluded of BNACTS.

What Biden/Buttigieg Did

The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided $5 billion specifically for air traffic control improvements — $1 billion per year for five years.

Of the funding for air traffic control, $3 billion was spent by the end of fiscal year 2024, Strong said. About a third of that was spent on tower replacements and upgrades, largely in secondary places, such as Grand Junction, Colorado; Missoula, Montana; Wheeling, West Virginia.

“The remaining $1.9b was allocated across updating power and communications systems (such as the one at Newark and Philadelphia which caused all the problems in 2024 and earlier this year), navigation/weather/tracking equipment, tower approach and departure facilities, long range radar and enroute flight centers,” Strong said.

Another $284 million was used to fund a surge in controller hiring to begin to address the shortfall in the number of controllers, Strong said. “This was an important down payment on staffing shortages.”

Katie Thomson, who served as deputy administrator for the FAA during the Biden administration, noted the $5 billion included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, too, when we asked her about the competing claims from Trump and Buttigieg.

She also noted a 15-year contract that was given to Verizon in 2023 to provide faster and more secure communications called the FAA Enterprise Network Services Program, or FENS, and the budget proposal for fiscal year 2025 for facility replacement and modernization, or FRRM, that would have spent $9 billion over five years to replace some facilities and modernize radar systems, although Congress didn’t allocate those funds during the Biden administration.

“The current efforts to build a ‘Brand New Air Traffic Control System’ are derivative of the FENS contract and the FRRM proposal – both initiated by the Biden Administration,” Thomson told us in an email.

We reached out to Buttigieg to ask what he was referring to when he said that Trump was “passing off as his idea” a Biden era plan, but we didn’t hear back.

“My assessment is that the failure of [air traffic control] modernization predates the Biden administration,” Strong said. “However, the funding during the Biden administration was mostly carrying on with plans that were inadequate in both scope and funding. The Infrastructure bill provided very little funding for [air traffic control] (in relative terms) and much of it was to deal with immediate problems (staffing, equipment breakdowns, etc.)”

Copper Wire

One of Trump’s frequently repeated claims is about the use of copper wire, as compared to fiber optic cable, for air traffic communications systems.

For example, Trump said while visiting Qatar in May, “They wasted billions of dollars on trying to hook up air systems to copper and they tried to hook up copper to glass.”

The White House didn’t respond to specific questions about several of the president’s claims, but a spokesperson did point to the highly publicized issue at the Newark Liberty International Airport this spring, when there were at least three outages of air traffic communications equipment for up to 90 seconds. Some lawmakers said outages were due to a “fried” copper wire.

“The FAA has multiple communications systems including copper wire and fiber, as well as some wireless,” Strong told us, and those systems are patched into one another.

Sherry considers references to copper wire as a euphemism for old infrastructure, like a landline phone. Part of the NextGen plan was to upgrade air traffic control systems to optical cable, which has better speed, accuracy and reliability, he said.

We asked the FAA how much of the older wire had been replaced across the system, but we didn’t get a response.

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Echoing a longstanding anti-vaccine trope, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the American vaccine schedule “long required” babies to get “far more” vaccines than are given in “any other” country, and he directed health officials to better “align” practices with those of other countries. The recommended schedule in the U.S. is quite similar to that of other high-income nations, and it isn’t a federal mandate.

Moreover, there are important country-specific differences, such as health care systems, that can explain why vaccine schedules differ around the world. There is no evidence that the existing U.S. vaccine schedule is harmful to children.

Trump’s directive came in a Dec. 5 memo, which told the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to “review best practices from peer, developed countries” and consider updating the childhood vaccine schedule to “align” it with countries that give fewer vaccinations.

Indeed, multiple news outlets have recently reported that the Department of Health and Human Services is considering changing the U.S. vaccine schedule to match or nearly match that of Denmark, which recommends vaccination against an unusually low number of diseases. Some outlets reported that a canceled Dec. 19 press conference was set to announce this news. (An HHS spokesperson told reporters that the accounts about the topic of the press conference and planned changes were “pure speculation.”)

Explaining the rationale for his directive in a Dec. 5 post on Truth Social, Trump exaggerated the number of vaccines given to American babies.

“The American Childhood Vaccine Schedule long required 72 ‘jabs,’ for perfectly healthy babies, far more than any other Country in the World, and far more than is necessary,” Trump said in the post. In the past, he has incorrectly claimed that babies get “80 different vaccines” all at once.

It is difficult to give a single number for how many shots children receive in the U.S., but babies do not get 72 vaccines. As of early 2025, a child by age 2 was routinely recommended to get around 30 vaccine doses that protected against 15 diseases. Many of the doses are given in combination vaccines, however, so the number of shots given is typically lower. By age 18, the total number of doses could reach into the 70s, but only if including seasonal influenza and COVID-19 vaccines for every year. 

“Getting to an exact number is difficult, given the flexibility in how vaccine doses are administered, but by any measure, any number that reaches the 50s or 60s, let alone 70s, invariably includes annual influenza vaccines and COVID-19 vaccines from birth through age 18,” Jason Schwartz, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health with expertise in vaccine policy, told us.

The CDC recommends, but doesn’t require, vaccines on the schedule, which influences what insurance policies and federal vaccination programs will cover. Vaccine mandates for school or day-care attendance are set by states, and there are exemptions.

Trump’s claim is similar to one made in a Food and Drug Administration presentation given earlier on Dec. 5 during the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ meeting. Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, the new chief of the FDA’s drug division and ex-officio ACIP member for the agency, said that as of early 2025, the U.S. was “really an international outlier in giving 72 doses of vaccines.” She contrasted the total with those of four other countries, including Denmark. Høeg’s counting choices, however, served to inflate U.S. numbers while minimizing those of other nations.

Since June, when HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed all the committee members and installed new ones, ACIP has departed from its normal evidence-based processes and weakened some vaccine recommendations.

Exaggerations notwithstanding, these claims assume that recommending more vaccines for children is a bad thing. In fact, vaccines were added over time to the U.S schedule through an evidence-based process, with the goal of protecting children against more diseases. And even as the schedule has grown, the total number of antigens — the proteins or sugars in vaccines that stimulate an immune response — remains lower today than a century ago.

“More vaccines is actually a good thing,” Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at the University of Colorado Anschutz, told us, adding that vaccines on the schedule are studied for safety and effectiveness and “the actual number is not an issue.” O’Leary is chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases. The AAP is a nonprofit membership group representing pediatricians. This year, for the first time in decades, the AAP issued different vaccine recommendations than the CDC.

Comparisons Obscure Schedule Similarities

Høeg and Trump are not alone in giving high estimates of U.S. childhood vaccine totals. This is a common strategy long used by anti-vaccine advocates to imply that the U.S. vaccine schedule has grown at an alarming pace.

It is challenging to come up with a single number of vaccines universally recommended in each country, as children can get protection against the same diseases using different combinations of vaccines. The reality, however, is that countries’ vaccine schedules are fairly similar, which becomes more apparent when looking at the number of diseases targeted.

“The core set of diseases for which vaccines are used is very similar across high income countries,” Dr. Andrew Pollard, a pediatrician and director of the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, told us. “However, there is some variation based on differences in disease burden and the way in which the health system works.” For example, he said, some countries place more emphasis on cost-effectiveness than others.

As of early 2025, the U.S. had universal recommendations targeting 17 diseases in childhood and adolescence, including the 15 targeted in early childhood plus meningococcal and human papillomavirus vaccines recommended at older ages. Again, there is some ambiguity in counting how many diseases a vaccine schedule targets and in deciding which nations are “peer, developed countries.” But looking at data on the 31 nations that are both members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and classified by the International Monetary Fund as “advanced economies,” 17 is just a few more diseases targeted than the median of 14, according to our analysis. (We did not count infant immunizations with antibody products that protect against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, in our totals, as these are not vaccines. Countries vary in whether they have adopted maternal vaccination, infant immunization or — as in the case of the U.S. — flexibility in choosing either.)

In recent months, the U.S. has walked back universal recommendations for hepatitis B and COVID-19 vaccination for children. That brings the current U.S. total down to 15.

Trump’s memo and Høeg’s presentation did include comparisons of the number of diseases targeted by Japan, Denmark, Germany and, in Høeg’s case, the U.K. But they did not place these countries in a larger context of high-income nations.

“The U.S. has a robust set of vaccine recommendations, and that reflects the priority on using the tools that are available to prevent illness and death, particularly in children, but the differences between the U.S. and peer countries have been overstated,” Schwartz said.

“The real outlier in this conversation appears to be Denmark,” he added.

Denmark is one of just three OECD advanced economy nations to not universally recommend the hepatitis B vaccine. It is also in the minority in not recommending vaccines against rotavirus, meningococcal disease or chickenpox. The U.S., on the other hand, is one of the few high-income nations to recommend vaccination against hepatitis A or to continue recommending universal COVID-19 vaccination until recently.

Seasonal Vaccines Lead to High Dose Counts

There is some truth to the idea that the U.S. vaccine schedule recommends a relatively high number of doses. However, anti-vaccine advocates often justify dramatically high numbers of doses compared with other countries by using misleading methods of counting.

In reality, a person could complete the U.S. childhood and adolescent vaccine schedule as of early 2025 while receiving less than two dozen shots and oral vaccines, not including flu and COVID-19 vaccines.

Høeg acknowledged during her presentation that in arriving at a count of 72 doses, she had counted “the yearly influenza vaccine,” but she omitted context on other countries’ flu vaccine recommendations.

The U.S. does stand out somewhat in having a longstanding universal recommendation for seasonal flu shots, including for children age 6 months and older. The universal childhood flu vaccine recommendations were progressively adopted in the U.S. in the 2000s, expanding to cover kids up through age 18 before the 2008-2009 flu season.

However, the U.S. is not alone in recommending childhood flu vaccination. In Europe, for example, flu vaccination recommendations for children have become more common in recent years, according to a November 2025 report from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. During last year’s flu season, six of the 30 European countries analyzed had universal recommendations throughout childhood beginning at 6 months, and another 13 countries had universal recommendations for certain age groups. (The remaining countries — including Denmark and Germany — recommended the vaccines to children with certain risk factors.) In our analysis of OECD countries with advanced economies, 22 out of 31 nations recommended universal flu vaccination for at least some portion of childhood.

In her dose comparisons, Høeg did not highlight vaccine recommendations from any countries that universally recommend these annual vaccines throughout childhood. Examples of these countries include Austria, New Zealand and Canada.

In her dose count for the U.K., which she reported as 17, Høeg appeared to omit annual flu vaccines, which are recommended every year from age 2 until around age 15.

The conclusion that the U.S. vaccine schedule ever included 72 doses also relies on counting yearly COVID-19 vaccines through age 18. But this relies on a counterfactual scenario in which annual shots were recommended for kids over an entire childhood. In the end, the annual doses were universally recommended starting at age 6 months for just over three years.

The U.S. was relatively slow among nations to drop its universal recommendation for COVID-19 vaccination in children. But even before Kennedy reconstituted the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, the group had been moving toward a risk- and age-based approach to COVID-19 vaccinations. 

This year, the AAP adopted recommendations similar to what the former advisory committee had been considering, urging kids under 2 to get vaccinated but backing away from a universal recommendation for all children. Under Kennedy, the CDC decided to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for all Americans 6 months and older under shared clinical decision-making. This means that people can discuss whether they need the vaccines with health care providers and get coverage for them if desired, but the vaccines are no longer universally advised.

Misleading Combination Vaccine Math

Another way anti-vaccine advocates inflate U.S. dose counts is by individually counting vaccines commonly given as a combination shot. The relative flexibility of the U.S. schedule and the availability of a variety of vaccines allows people to construct theoretical scenarios involving high numbers of doses.

In arriving at her count of 72 vaccine doses in the U.S. schedule, Høeg said on a slide in her ACIP presentation that she had counted vaccines against polio, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), and diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTaP) separately. These individual vaccines are available, but most babies get some doses in combination shots, experts told us. 

“It would be highly unusual, if not unheard of, for a child to receive each vaccine separately,” Dr. Michelle Fiscus, a pediatrician and chief medical officer of the Association of Immunization Managers, told us, referring to the combination vaccines.

Meanwhile, countries like Denmark and the U.K. have less flexible schedules that include specific combination shots. In calculating her low totals of 11 and 17 doses in these countries, respectively, Høeg appeared to count combination shots as only single doses, despite not always doing this in the U.S. tally.

She justified this by saying that “part of the difference” between the U.S. and other countries is that the U.S. can give individual vaccines, “whereas Europe tends to give combination vaccines in those circumstances.”

The FDA did not reply to a request for more information on how Høeg calculated her figures.

Decision-Making in Denmark

Trump’s directive to consider emulating vaccine schedules from other nations also glosses over major differences between countries that shape their recommendations. 

Countries are, of course, more likely to recommend vaccinations against diseases if they are common in the area. For example, the U.S. does not vaccinate routinely against “tuberculosis, typhoid, yellow fever, malaria, meningococcal disease (for infants), or dengue, while these are routinely recommended in other countries,” an AAP fact sheet said.

Other factors include those related to a country’s health system, such as availability of specific vaccines or combination vaccines, the timing of routine health visits and cost-effectiveness analyses, the fact sheet said.

“We’re the most well resourced country in the world, and so sometimes we adopt things earlier, because some other countries are more cost-conscious,” O’Leary said. “But it’s not that they’re concerned about safety issues.”

In some cases, the difference between the U.S. and other countries is not in whether vaccination is recommended at all, but in whether it is recommended universally.

For example, as we have previously written, Denmark takes a risk-based approach to hepatitis B vaccination that relies on testing pregnant women for the disease and tracking at-risk babies. ACIP members cited policies in other countries to justify recently changing the U.S. approach to a risk-based one, despite objections from experts who said that the U.S. had an inferior rate of screening and follow-up.

“What we know, at least in the U.S., is that risk-based approaches don’t work,” O’Leary said. “That’s been shown over and over again.” These risk-based approaches might work better in countries with universal health care systems and electronic health records that track people across their entire course of life, he said.

Høeg did mention cost and other practical considerations as a factor on some slides, but she also held up Denmark’s evidence-based practices as an example while sharing safety concerns about vaccines.

Denmark has a “research culture where they really rely on randomized control trials, extensive documentation about the decision-making, about which vaccines they do and don’t recommend,” she said. But experts rejected the implication that the U.S. recommendations vary from those in Denmark due to differences in transparency and rigor of decision-making.

“Certainly in the U.S., we have decades of evidence of careful deliberation regarding how to use our vaccines optimally, very transparent advisory committee processes that have functioned for decades, the very active vaccine surveillance programs that have existed for decades designed to respond to rare adverse events,” Schwartz said.

“Their decision-making is not any higher quality than ours,” O’Leary said of Denmark. It is only recently, with the appointment of Kennedy and the new ACIP panel, that the vaccine decision-making process has departed from the “normal process that has been built over decades in the U.S.,” he added.

“We consider the vaccines that are used in the US but not in Denmark to be safe and effective,” Anders Hviid, who studies vaccination and epidemiology at the Statens Serum Institut in Denmark, told us in an email. “Every country is different, and every country’s national responsible authorities must make their own decisions based on a careful evaluation of national epidemiology, cost, logistics, ethics etc.”

Vaccine Schedule Does Not ‘Require’ Shots

Trump also was incorrect in claiming that the vaccine schedule “required” 72 shots for “babies.” There are no national vaccine mandates in the U.S., unlike in some other countries, including in Europe, although the U.S. does rely on school vaccine requirements that are set by states.

The vaccine schedule is made up of CDC recommendations on how vaccines should be used at the population level, guided by the recommendations of ACIP. “While the ACIP recommendations are closely watched, they’re influential, they’re important in how we think and talk about vaccines in the United States, nothing ACIP does directly connects to whether a vaccine is required for a particular child,” Schwartz said.

States set vaccine requirements children must meet to attend schools and licensed day care, he said. Discussions about these requirements “often begin with ACIP recommendations as a starting point for whether to consider a particular vaccine requirement, but those decisions by no means derive automatically from ACIP’s action,” he added.

For example, while a few states recommend yearly flu shots for young children in day care, states do not recommend annual flu shots for school-age children, even though these are on the vaccine schedule. No states currently require COVID-19 vaccines in schools.

“The U.S. has certainly featured vaccine requirements more prominently than many of our peer countries,” Schwartz said, referring to the state-level school requirements favored in the U.S. to reach high vaccination rates. But that “has been changing in recent years, precisely because of declining vaccination rates, in western Europe in particular,” he added. 

For example, Germany — highlighted as a peer nation by Trump and Høeg — in 2020 passed the Measles Protection Act, a national measles vaccine requirement for people being cared for in certain communal facilities, such as schools or day care, as well as those working in these and other facilities, such as hospitals. Since 2018, France has required childhood vaccination against a total of 11 diseases, an increase from a previous requirement for just the DTaP vaccine. The law is also enforced by barring children who have not met the requirements from attending schools or other settings where children gather.

One 2024 analysis of vaccination policy in Europe and the U.S. found that 12 out of 32 countries had at least one nationally required vaccine. A 2020 paper analyzing mandatory vaccination policies in Europe found that mandates were associated with a greater rate of people getting vaccinated and a lower rate of measles in countries that adopted them.

Correction, Dec. 23: In counting the number of OECD countries with advanced economies that recommended universal flu vaccination for at least some portion of childhood, we inadvertently included the wrong figure. The correct number is 22, not 21.

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Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

After the U.S. Department of Justice posted a cache of documents related to the case of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Dec. 19, 2025, a rumor spread online that the DOJ initially posted a document that included President Donald Trump’s name, but the department then removed the document from the cache in order to redact his name, before reposting it with said redaction.

For example, left-leaning publication Meidas Touch posted two different screenshots showing the same document on X, one of which purportedly included more redactions than the other, with some of the redactions covering Trump’s name (archived).

The caption read: “The DOJ appears to have redacted Donald Trump’s name from the allegations made in this exhibit in the Epstein files. Trump’s name was in the original release. Now, it’s blacked out.”

(X user @MeidasTouch)

The same claim appeared on Facebook and Instagram.

The posts by Meidas Touch and others seemed to suggest the screenshot on the left was “the original release” and the one on the right showed Trump’s name had later been “blacked out.”

But the two images were actually of different documents. The one on the left, with fewer redactions and Trump’s name included, had the words “Document 1332-16” and “Filed 01/08/2024” in blue at the top, while the image on the right, with more redactions and Trump’s name omitted, read “Document 1296-17” and “Filed 12/12/2022.” (More on this below.)

Both screenshots were available on the DOJ’s website documenting the Epstein files. In other words, the department posted a version of the document that mentioned Trump.

While the evidence Meidas Touch and others used did not prove the Justice Department redacted Trump’s name from one version of the document, it was possible the DOJ edited the version on the right of the image above after publishing it. Below, we show why we did not rate this claim.

Snopes contacted the DOJ to ask for clarifications and we will update this story if we receive an answer. We also reached out to Meidas Touch asking about the post and await a response.

What we know

The DOJ did post the two different versions of the document in two separate batches of files related to the 2015 legal case involving Virginia Giuffre — one victim of the sex trafficking Epstein orchestrated — and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate and accomplice. 

One version, numbered 1296-17, showed more redactions and no reference to Trump (Page 16), while the other, numbered 1332-16, showed fewer redactions (Page 16) and included several mentions of Trump.

The screenshots circulating online were not, as those who shared them appeared to claim, before-and-after images of the document. The text in blue at the top of both screenshots showed they were screen captures of the two versions of the document.

Snopes found no details regarding when the DOJ published the two versions of the document. An examination of the DOJ web page‘s metadata revealed it had been modified on Dec. 22, 2025 — three days after the department made the Epstein documents public. It is possible the DOJ added the redactions to file 1296-17 after publication. Snopes could not independently verify whether this was the case.

In addition, The Associated Press reported that the DOJ removed at least 16 documents after the Dec. 19 publication of more Epstein files, suggesting department employees were still editing the release after publication.

In other words, while Meidas Touch and other social media users used faulty evidence to back their assertion that the DOJ modified a document after publication, Snopes could not ascertain, based on available evidence, whether the redactions on batch 1296-17 happened before or after publication. Meanwhile, the same document in batch 1332-16 was not redacted.

The less-redacted version is embedded below (Page 16):

(U.S. Department of Justice)

Comparing the two versions, it is clear that in the first batch, each mention of Trump had been redacted. In the less-redacted version of the document, the passage read (emphasis ours):

She confided in me about her casual “friendship” with Donald. Mr Trump definitely seemed to have a thing for her and she told me how he kept going on about how he liked her “pert nipples”. 

Donald Trump liked flicking and sucking her nipples until they were raw. One evening when we were showering together she showed me her nipples. They looked incredibly painful as they were red and swollen and I remember wincing when I looked at them. I also know she had sexual relations with Trump at Jeffery’s NY mansion on regular occasions as I once met Jen for coffee, just before she was going to meet Trump and Epstein together at his mansion.

Other names that appeared in the less-redacted version of the document and were redacted in batch 1296-17 included Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google; Anne Wojcicki, cofounder of 23andMe and Brin’s ex-wife; Sarah Kellen, often described as Maxwell’s and Epstein’s assistant; Epstein’s assistant Lesley Groff and Natalie [Natalya] Malyshev, whom the document’s narrator described as the person who recruited the narrator on Epstein’s behalf. 

According to the file, the narrator was Sarah Ransome, a woman who said she was a victim of Epstein’s trafficking ring. Ransome was deposed in the 2015 Giuffre v. Maxwell case.

In December 2025, Snopes confirmed that the DOJ and the FBI spent nearly $1 million in overtime pay in March 2025 for its agents to redact files related to Epstein.

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

April 28, 2025

The family of Giuffre, who also accused Prince Andrew in a sex-trafficking scandal, announced th …

Read More

In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a massive armada of more than 5,000 ships and 1,200 aircraft appeared off the coast of Normandy in northern France. Moments later, some 160,000 American and British Commonwealth troops stormed onto the beaches or landed by parachute behind enemy lines. Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe, had begun. The largest amphibious assault in military history, the D-Day landings, more on what D-day actually stands for in the Bonus Facts later as most people get this wrong, were an incredibly complex operation, and its planners left little to chance. Attacks were planned and rehearsed down to the smallest detail; specialized vehicles like swimming, flame-throwing, and mine-clearing tanks devised; and an elaborate deception campaign involving inflatable tanks, captured spies, and entire phantom armies mounted to fool the Germans into thinking the invasion would take place elsewhere. Yet despite all these careful preparations, Overlord may well have failed were it not for an often overlooked innovation: an ingenious portable harbour that could be assembled in days and allow hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo to be unloaded onto the beaches.
Perhaps more than any ship, plane, or tank, this remarkable engineering achievement allowed the Allies to sustain the momentum of the invasion and secure a foothold – and ultimately victory – in Europe. This is the story of the Mulberry Harbour, the unsung secret weapon of D-Day.

When the first preparations for what became Operation Overlord began in late 1942, Allied planners faced a daunting task. On March 23, 1940, Adolf Hitler had issued Directive 40, ordering the construction of a massive line of defences along the western coast of Europe to stave off a possible Allied invasion. By mid-1944, this so-called “Atlantic Wall” stretched 3,200 kilometres from the northern tip of Norway to the Spanish border and included more than 15,000 reinforced concrete emplacements bristling with large-calibre guns. Among the largest engineering projects in human history, the Atlantic Wall swallowed some 1.2 million tonnes of steel and 17 million cubic metres of concrete – much of it poured by 260,000 forced labourers of the infamous Organisation Todt. The artillery emplacements and machine gun bunkers, built with interlocking fields of fire and manned by a garrison of 300,000 troops, were further reinforced by millions of land mines and fearsome steel obstacles designed to halt any invading force before it could even clear the beach. The most heavily-defended sections of the wall were the festungen or “fortresses”, which included all the major Atlantic ports like Antwerp, Cherbourg, and Brest. The capture of such a port was vital to the success of any invasion, allowing the Allies to offload the vast amount of men, vehicles, ammunition, fuel, food, and other materiel needed to sustain the subsequent breakout.

But capturing such a port would be extremely costly – a fact the Allies had learned the hard way. In the early morning hours of August 19, 1942, 5,000 men of the Canadian 2nd Infantry Division and British Army Commandos carried out Operation Jubilee, a large-scale amphibious raid against the French port city of Dieppe. Right from the start, everything that could go wrong, did. While sailing across the English Channel, the raiding force ran into a patrol of German torpedo boats, ruining the element of surprise. Thus alerted, the troops defending Dieppe were ready and waiting, and rained withering fire down onto the landing troops from the sheer, horseshoe-shaped cliffs overlooking the town. Tanks struggled to advance up the shingle beach, their tracks spinning uselessly over stones round as ball bearings. One by one they were picked off by German guns, with none reaching the town or making it back to England. Meanwhile, Luftwaffe aircraft sunk dozens of Allied landing craft and made mincemeat of the raider’s RAF air cover. By the time the raiders withdrew ten hours later, more than 1,700 had been killed, 2,500 wounded, and 1,960 captured – an atrocious casualty rate of nearly 68%. 33 landing craft and one destroyer had also been sunk and 106 aircraft shot down. Operation Jubilee was a complete disaster, achieving few of its aims and demonstrating the folly of trying to capture a heavily-defended port from the sea. A full-scale invasion of Europe would require a different approach. As Royal Navy Commodore John Hughes-Hallett noted while steaming home from Dieppe:

“Well, if we can’t capture a port, we will have to take one with us.”

This was far from a new idea. In 1917, Winston Churchill – then First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy – devised a unique plan for invading the East Frisian Islands of Borkum and Sylt in the North Sea. The plan involved sinking a series of flat-bottom barges off the coast to form an artificial harbour, allowing men, vehicles, and supplies to be efficiently brought ashore. Churchill was very aware of how poor logistics and a lack of momentum could doom an amphibious assault, having planned the disastrous Gallipoli campaign in which Entente forces became pinned down on the Turkish coast and suffered nearly 200,000 casualties over an eight-month battle. Unfortunately, the strategic situation changed before Churchill could implement his Frisian Islands plan, and the scheme was quickly forgotten.

It was not until early in the Second World War that the idea of using an artificial harbour for an amphibious assault was finally resurrected. In 1941, the British War Office established a special department to evaluate various designs. The department was placed under the command of Combined Operations Headquarters, an inter-service organization tasked with carrying out special military operations on enemy territory.

According to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces:

“The first time I heard this idea [Mulberry] tentatively advanced was by Admiral Mountbatten in the spring of 1942. At a conference attended by a number of service chiefs, he remarked, ‘If ports are not available, we may have to construct them in pieces and tow them in.’ Hoots and jeers greeted his suggestion, but two years later it was to become reality.”

Despite initial skepticism, the concept was examined in detail by Lieutenant General Frederick E. Morgan and his team at Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander or COSSAC, who ultimately agreed that a portable, artificial harbour would be essential to any invasion of mainland Europe. However, it was not until the “Rattle” Conference, held in Largs, Scotland, from June 28 to July 2, 1943, that the scheme gained widespread acceptance among Allied planners. But the task would not be easy. The specifications laid out on September 2, 1942 by Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations called for a structure the size of Dover Harbour, with piers at least one mile or 1.6 kilometres long to accommodate the 8-metre draft of Liberty Ships, the Allies’ standard mass-produced cargo vessels. The whole system had to be easily transportable, assembled in less than three weeks, last at least 90 days, and be capable of handling up to 12,000 tons of cargo and 2,500 vehicles every day – all while withstanding the 7 metre tides and savage storms of the Normandy Coast. And if all that weren’t enough, everything had to be designed, built, and ready to go in only eight months.

An Artificial Harbours Sub-Committee was duly set up under the chairmanship of civil engineer Colin White, which held its first official meeting on August 4. Meanwhile, a testing station had already been established at Garlieston Harbour on the Solway Firth in southwest Scotland. The site was chosen due to its geographic and hydrographic similarity to the Normandy invasion beaches as well as its remoteness, which would reduce the number of curious onlookers. Small-scale prototypes were also tested at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, southwest London, using special tanks fitted with wave-making machines.

Three main concepts were selected for evaluation, codenamed “Hippo”, “Spud”, and “Swiss Roll.” Of these, the “Swiss Roll” was by far the most innovative. The concept was the brainchild of engineer Ronald Hamilton, the type of eccentric but brilliant tinkerer commonly known in Britain as a “boffin.” In February 1942, Canadian chemist Charles Goodeve, head of the British Admiralty’s Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapon Development – AKA the “Wheezers and Dodgers” – received a phone call from physicist and later Nobel Laureate Edward Appleton, who asked him:

“I wonder if you could find time to see a man named Hamilton. He’s an extraordinary fellow … an inventor . . . and he’s got a laboratory fitted up in a bombed wing of the Grosvenor Hotel. He’s working on some ideas which I think might interest you.”

At the hotel, Goodeve discovered that Hamilton had constructed a 200-foot-long water tank using bricks and linoleum, in which he had constructed a model of his floating harbour concept. As he explained to Goodeve:

“I have discovered something which may revolutionize warfare. If certain laws are obeyed the surface of a fluid can be made to behave in many ways like that of a solid. You can lay a sheet of canvas on water and roll a wheeled object over it in just the same way as you could if the canvas was laid on the ground… This theory of mine I call it Rolling Dynamic Buoyancy can solve one of your greatest problems in an amphibious assault. My floating bridge gives you the link between the ships and the shore. Perhaps you’d like to examine this model.”

Hamilton’s invention consisted of a long roll of canvas tarpaulin covered in an assembly of hinged wooden planks and anchored to the seafloor at both ends. When a vehicle drove down the middle of the canvas, the planks on either side were forced upwards, forming a temporary “boat” that supplied just enough buoyancy to support the vehicle in accordance to Archimedes’s principle. And once the vehicle passed a particular spot on the roadway, the planks and tarpaulin fell back to their original flat position. Completely flexible, the entire assembly could be rolled up, ferried to the target by a landing craft, and rolled out up to a mile to connect ship to shore. To demonstrate the feasibility of the concept, Hamilton rolled a toy truck along the model roadway in his testing tank. He also showed Goodeve photographs of his son Peter riding a motorcycle across a larger prototype laid across the stream.

Goodeve, immediately taken in by the concept’s simplicity, took Hamilton onboard as a consulting engineer. Development trials soon began at Portsmouth dockyard, with prototype Swiss Rolls being stretched between a crane barge and the shore. There were many technical difficulties to be overcome: for example, how to unroll the roadway and anchor it against currents and tides under combat conditions, how to prevent vehicles from veering off the roadway, and how to protect it against enemy fire and rough seas – the latter of which were simulated by driving a Motor Torpedo Boat past at high speeds to generate seven-foot waves. Progress was slow and often chaotic, thanks to Hamilton’s manic personality and insistence on making endless refinements to the design. By the time the prototype was demonstrated before senior officers from the Admiralty, the War Office, and Combined Operations on September 25, 1942, relations between Hamilton, Goodeve, and the entire DMWD organization had nearly broken down. Nonetheless, the prototype performed admirably, and in early 1943 construction of a full-scale version began in Cardiff, Wales. Following initial sea trials off Appledore, Kent, the Swiss Roll was sent to Garlieston for competitive trials against other harbour designs.

The second harbour concept selected for testing was “Hippo”, designed by Welsh civil engineer Hugh Iorys Hughes. Hughes had originally submitted his concept to the War Office in 1941, but it did not gain traction until August 1942 after his brother, a Commander in the Royal Navy, intervened. The “Hippo” design comprised a series of floating concrete caissons which could be towed to the invasion beaches and anchored offshore. An articulated metal roadway codenamed “Croc” was then laid atop the caissons to connect ship to shore. Being buoyant, the caissons and attached roadway would rise and fall with the tide. Construction of the prototype Hippos was carried out at Morfa, Wales, by over 1,000 workers under the direction of Oleg Kerensky, son of former Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky, who fled to the UK when his father’s Provisional Government was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in the 1917 October Revolution.

The third harbour design was created by Colonel William Everall and Major Allan Becket of the War Office’s Transportation 5 Department with the assistance of biology professor John D Bernal of Cambridge University. In this design, articulated roadways called “Whales” floated on pontoons called “Beetles”. These were anchored on the seaward end to pier heads called “Spuds”, which could move up and down vertical pilings resting on the seafloor, allowing the whole harbour to rise and fall with the tide.
Official trials at Garlieston, which began in August 1943, quickly revealed serious flaws in the first two designs. When Ronald Hamilton’s flexible Swiss Roll roadway was tested using a three-ton dump truck, it sank in under two hours. And despite numerous refinements, further testing revealed that the system could not support loads of over seven tons, making it unsuited to use with heavier vehicles like tanks. Even lighter vehicles were forced to drive along at low speed in low gear, often causing their engines to overheat. But the final nail in the coffin for Swiss Roll came in September 1943 when a violent storm tore the prototype away from its moorings and washed it out to sea. The innovative concept was consequently abandoned for use in Operation Overlord.

Hugh Hughes’ “Hippo” concept fared little better, for the concrete caissons did not rise and fall with the tide as expected, causing the “Croc” roadways to buckle. Hughes attempted to fix the problem by fitting adjustable spans between the Hippos and Crocs, but the unexpected pitching and yawing of the Hippos introduced massive twisting forces that could not be overcome. Thus, Hughes’s concept was also eliminated from contention, leaving only Bernal and Beckett’s “Spud and Whale” design.

Meanwhile, government officials were growing impatient with the slow pace of the project. On May 30, 1942, Winston Churchill had sent a terse memo to Lord Louis Mountbatten, head of Combined Operations, urging the construction of:

“Piers for use on beaches. They must float up and down with the tide. The anchor problem must be mastered. Let me have the best solution worked out. Don’t argue the matter. The difficulties will argue for themselves.”

A year later, little progress had been made, prompting a frustrated Churchill to write another memo on March 10, 1943 stating:

“This matter is being much neglected. Dilatory experiments with varying types and patterns have resulted in us having nothing. It is now nearly six months since I urged the construction of several miles of pier.”

Much of the delay, it turned out, stemmed from the designers’ attempts to create an artificial harbour that could withstand the full fury of English Channel weather. However, it soon became apparent that this was impossible, and that the harbour would need some sort of breakwater to protect it from rough seas. To drive home the need for such a structure, in September 1943 Professor Bernal arranged an unusual demonstration aboard the ocean liner SS Queen Mary, which was carrying Churchill and his Chiefs of Staff to the Allied summit in Quebec City, Canada. The demonstration took place in one of the liner’s opulent bathrooms – an appropriate venue given Churchill’s well-known penchant for working in the bath. As the onlookers crowded around a large bathtub, First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Dudley Pound stood on a toilet seat and invited them to imagine the shallow end of the tub as the invasion beachhead. Professor Bernal then placed a fleet of 20 small folded-paper boats on the water while Lieutenant Commander D.A. Grant used a back brush to generate waves. As expected, the paper fleet sank. Then, Bernal inflated a “Mae West” lifebelt, placed it on the water, and placed a new fleet of paper boats inside it to simulate a sheltered harbour. This time, no matter how vigorously Lieutenant Commander Grant agitated the waters, the ships were unaffected. Churchill and his Chiefs of Staff were immediately convinced, and at the Quebec Conference advocated vigorously for the concept. Despite continuing skepticism from the Americans, under intense pressure from the British the proposal was ultimately accepted, with official go-ahead being granted on September 4. The entire project was dubbed “Mulberry” – a name with no particular significance which was simply chosen from a list of approved codenames – and to learn more about the importance of keeping codenames as non-descriptive as possible, please check out our previous videos Death by Blue Peacock: Britain’s Bizarre and Deadly Cold War “Rainbow Codes”, and The Forgotten Tech War. The Quebec delegates decided that two harbours would be built: Mulberry A for the American invasion forces and Mulberry B for the British and Canadians – which was later affectionately dubbed “Port Winston”. As the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared in a later memorandum:

“This project is so vital that it might be described as the crux of the whole [Normandy invasion] operation. It must not fail.”

And who said playing in the bathtub was a waste of time?

But what form would the vital breakwaters take? Initially a number of outlandish proposals were floated, including two codenamed “Bubble Breaker” and “Lilo.” The former involved pumping air through a sunken pipe to create a wave-pacifying screen of bubbles, while the latter comprised large hollow canvas booms seven metres in diameter which could be inflated with low-pressure air and anchored to the seafloor. However, Bubble Breaker was ultimately rejected as too complex and impractical and Lilo as too fragile. Instead, the Artificial Harbours Subcommittee selected a system using two nested laters of breakwaters. The outer layer consisted of rigid floating barriers called “Bombardons”, made of steel and rubber and measuring 200 feet long and 25 feet across. These would be towed to the beaches by the tugboats and anchored to the seabed with cables. The next layer was composed of obsolete civilian block ships codenamed “Corncobs”, sunk in rows off the beaches to form breakwaters known as “Gooseberries”. Unfortunately, both the Royal Navy and U.S. Navy were reluctant to sacrifice any usable ships, and were so hostile to Artificial Harbours Committee that Rear Admiral William Tennant, the mastermind of the Gooseberry scheme, quipped that:

“We came here to get a Gooseberry, and all we seem to have got is a raspberry!”

In the end, both Navies released a small fleet of 61 ships, composed mainly of obsolete cargo vessels but also the British dreadnought battleship HMS Centurion, the French dreadnought battleship Courbet, and the Royal Netherlands Navy cruiser HNLMS Sumatra. As a result, the Gooseberries had to be supplemented with hundreds of purpose-built reinforced-concrete caissons codenamed “Phoenixes”, measuring 60 metres long, 20 metres wide, and 20 metres tall and weighing 6,000 tons each. Like the Bombardons, these would be towed across the channel by tugboats before being flooded with water to sink them to the seabed.

Inside these protective breakwaters, the seaward side of the harbours were anchored by “Spud” pier heads, which could rise and fall with the tide along four vertical pilings resting on the seafloor. From these pier heads stretched the articulated “Whale” roadways, which floated on regularly-spaced steel or concrete pontoons called “Beetles.” The whole assembly was firmly fixed to the seabed by cables connected to special anchors codenamed “Kites.”

But even with the design finalized, the challenges were far from over. As Winston Churchill later wrote:

“The whole project was majestic…[involving] the construction in Britain of great masses of special equipment, amounting in aggregate to over a million tons of steel and concrete. This work, undertaken with the highest priority, would impinge heavily on our already hard-pressed engineering and ship-repairing industries. All this equipment would have to be transported by sea to the scene of action, and there erected with the utmost expedition in the face of enemy attack and the vagaries of the weather.”

This assessment was echoed by Major General Sir Harold Wernher, the senior British Army officer in charge of the project, who stated:

“Perhaps the greatest difficulty in getting the project underway after the plan was approved was the vast number of interested parties who had to be consulted or thought they ought to be consulted…[we assembled a team comprising] three of the best brains from the consultant engineers in Britain, and alongside them were placed leading contractors in naval installation together with British and American officers.”

In addition to technical and logistical difficulties, the project was also plagued by infighting between the Admiralty and the War Office, which was only resolved on December 15, 1943 through the intervention of the Vice-Chiefs of Staff. This reorganization gave the War Office responsibility for constructing the Whales, Beetles, Phoenixes and other components of the Mulberry system and defending the harbour with anti-aircraft guns mounted on the Phoenix caissons. Meanwhile, the Navy was tasked with towing these components to the beaches and sinking the Gooseberry blockships in place. Once the components were delivered to the beach, the task of assembling them into functioning harbours would be handed over to other organizations: the U.S. Navy Civil Engineer Corps for Mulberry A and the British Royal Engineers for Mulberry B. Command of the War Office component of the Mulberry project was assigned to Colonel Vassal Steer-Webster and the Navy component to Rear Admiral H. Hickling.

By far the most daunting part of the entire project was the construction of the massive Phoenix breakwater caissons. This task involved 200 civilian construction firms and 200,000 workers working at shipyards and beaches across the UK including London, Tilbury, Woolwich, Barking, Portsmouth, Southampton, Middlesbrough, and Conwy Morfa in North Wales. A total of 212 Phoenixes were built, 147 of which were ready before D-Day. The scale of the construction effort was staggering, absorbing one million tons of concrete and 70,000 tons of steel and costing some £25 million – nearly £1.4 billion in today’s money. Construction was so speedy, in fact, that the builders quickly ran out of space to store the caissons, forcing them to be sunk in shallow water and raised or “resurrected” later – hence the name “Phoenix.”

Construction of the Phoenixes and other Mulberry components was directed by Royal Engineers Brigadier Sir Bruce White, a veteran harbour builder and brother of Artificial Harbours Sub-Committee chairman Colin White. Brigadier White maintained tight security around the whole operation, such that very few of the civilian workers knew what the giant concrete caissons were actually for. Indeed, when a rumour began to circulate that the structures were merely intended for the postwar building trade, a senior Army officer had to be dispatched from Whitehall to reassure the workers that they were, in fact, engaged in vital war work.

But such large structures could not easily be hidden from the enemy, and the Phoenixes were soon spotted and photographed by German reconnaissance aircraft. German intelligence quickly deduced their function, and in May 1944 William Joyce – the Irish-American pro-Nazi broadcaster known to the British as “Lord Haw-Haw” – announced to his listeners that:

“We know what you’re doing with those caissons. You intend to sink them off the coast when the attack takes place. Well, chaps, we’ve decided to help you. We’ll save you trouble and sink the caissons before you arrive.”

But the joke was on the Germans, for Brigadier White had ordered the Phoenixes to be stored in plain sight on beaches and in river estuaries near Dover, right across the Channel from Calais, France. This was but one part of a massive – and ultimately successful – deception campaign known as Operation Bodyguard, designed to fool the Germans into thinking the Allied invasion force would land in Calais instead of Germany – and to learn more about this ingenious undertaking, please check out our previous video The Bizarre Story of the Massive Fake Army That Defeated the Nazis and Helped End WWII.

There were also other, less expected security breaches, such as when multiple D-Day codewords like “Utah”, “Omaha”, “Neptune”, “Overlord” – and, yes, “Mulberry” – began appearing in the crossword puzzles of The Daily Telegraph newspaper – and to learn more about this peculiar incident, please check out our video That Time Crossword Puzzles Almost Gave Away the D-Day Landings over on our sister channel Highlight History.

Meanwhile, the Royal Navy assembled a special team of hydrographers to select appropriate sites for the Mulberry Harbours. Between November 26 1943 and January 31, 1944, the 712th Survey Flotilla, operating from the HMS Tormentor naval base in Hamble-le-Rice, Hampshire, carried out six survey missions on the Normandy coast, using Landing Craft Personnel (Large) or LCP(L)s to take depth soundings and land commandoes to take samples of the beach sand – and to learn more about this humble little vessel and how it changed the face of warfare, please check out our video The Ugly Little Boat That Won WWII over on our sister channel Highlight History. As a result of these surveys, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer in the American Omaha Beach sector was chosen for Mulberry A and Arromanches in the British Gold Beach sector for Mulberry B.

In spite of some minor mishaps – including one incident where a Phoenix ran aground near Southampton and had to be raised by a specialized salvage crew – all the Mulberry components were completed in time for D-Day: the 6th of June, 1944. The Corncob blockships and tugboats towing the Phoenix caissons actually left their anchorages at Portland, Poole, Plymouth, Selsey, and Dungeness on June 4, but were ordered to halt mid-channel when the invasion was postponed by one day due to weather. At 12:30 on D+1, with the invasion beaches now secure, 45 blockships arrived off the coast and scuttled in their designated positions. In total, 5 Gooseberry breakwaters were installed, one in front of each invasion beach: 10 ships at Utah, 15 at Omaha, 16 at Gold, 9 at Sword, and 11 at Juno. The Bombardon breakwaters and the Phoenix caissons soon followed, while construction of the mile-long piers proceeded round-the-clock under the direction of Captain Reginald Gwyther of the Royal Engineers. The construction did not go unopposed, with the Germans raining long-range artillery fire on the Mulberry sites. And while several shells managed to hit the Phoenix caissons, they were already in position and sank exactly as planned. One month later on July 15, the Luftwaffe carried out an air raid against the harbours. However, by this time most of the caissons had been equipped with defensive guns, which succeeded in shooting down 9 of the 12 attacking aircraft.

The breakwaters proved so effective that the Mulberries started being used before they had even been finished, with cargo ships and landing craft unloading cargo as soon as the Gooseberries were sunk. By June 15, over 15,000 British and 18,000 U.S. troops, 2,000 vehicles, and 25,000 tons of supplies were being landed every day.

But on June 16 the weather began to turn, and towing and assembly operations had to be temporarily halted. On the morning of the 18th the weather appeared fine, and a fleet of tugboats crossed the channel towing four Phoenixes and 23 Whale pier sections. But as the fleet approached the Normandy coast the skies began to darken, and in the early morning hours of June 19th a savage storm descended, with winds blowing up to 30 knots and whipping up eight-foot breakers. It was, as Major Ronald Cowan of the Royal Engineers later wrote:

“…[a storm] such as had not been seen in the Channel for 80 years—second only to the one that smashed the Spanish Armada in 1588.”

One Phoenix and 11 Whales were lost in the storm, while the still-incomplete harbours risked being torn apart. Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Mais, in charge of the piers and pierheads, sprang into action, ordering the “Kite” anchors doubled, ships outside the harbours to keep clear of the breakwaters, and a fleet of over 500 tugboats and landing craft dispatched to help guide wayward ships ashore and keep the fragile harbour together. For four days, Navy and Army crews toiled round-the-clock braving howling winds and giant waves to keep Mulberry B, AKA “Port Winston”, up and running. By the time the storm blew itself out on June 23, 7,000 tons of cargo had been successfully landed. But the weather had taken its toll, destroying or badly damaging six caissons and dozens of pontoons, pier heads, and roadway sections. An official Royal Engineers history described the scene:

“The Allied beaches were a sorry and disheartening sight; hundreds, almost thousands, of craft and small ships—some up to 1,000 tons deadweight—were lying on the beaches at and above the high-water mark in a shambles which had to be seen to be believed; craft were actually piled on top of each other two and three deep.”
Yet despite this, the damage was deemed repairable – a fact largely attributable to Colonel Mais’s quick action and the presence of the Calvados Reef, which had contributed an extra layer of protection from the storm.

But Mulberry A had not been so lucky. Over four days, the storm destroyed two blockships and all the Bombardons and displaced 10 Phoenixes, allowing heavy seas to enter the anchorage and completely wreck the floating piers. So severe was the damage that the decision was made to abandon the harbour.

The storm of June 19-23 1944 severely affected the Allied buildup and breakout from the Normandy beachhead. By the 24th, General Omar Bradleys’ Twelfth United States Army Group had only three days of ammunition left, while Lieutenant General Miles Dempsey’s British Second Army was a full three divisions under strength. With the success of the Allied invasion hanging in the balance, Royal Engineers crews worked day and night to get Port Winston back to full capacity, using parts salvaged from the wrecked Mulberry A. Though only designed to last three months, Port Winston was still in use eight months after D-Day. For while by mid-September Allied forces had succeeded in capturing the port cities of Cherbourg and Le Havre, the Germans had so thoroughly sabotaged the harbour facilities that it took several months to get them up and running again. Meanwhile, though the piers at Mulberry A had been destroyed, landing craft, “rhino” pontoon ferries, and DUKW amphibious trucks were still able to take advantage of the sheltered waters behind the Gooseberry and Phoenix caissons to land supplies directly onto the beaches. By the time Port Winston was finally closed down in early 1945, 2.5 million men, half a million vehicles, and four million tons of supplies had passed through the artificial harbour.

The Mulberry Harbours were an outstanding engineering achievement, unmatched in the history of amphibious warfare, and is widely considered to have been a key factor in the success of Operation Overlord. General Eisenhower later declared that “Mulberry exceeded our best hopes”, while his deputy, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder concluded:

“The whole question of the invasion of Europe might well have turned on the practicability of these artificial harbours.”

Even the Germans, who had devised a similar system for Operation Sea Lion, their abortive invasion of the British Isles, were impressed, with war production minister Albert Speer admitting that: “To construct our defences we had in two years used some 13 million cubic metres of concrete and 1½ million tons of steel. A fortnight after the Normandy Landings, this costly effort was brought to nothing because of an idea of simple genius. As we now know, the invasion force brought their own harbours, and built, at Arromanches and Omaha, on unprotected coast, the necessary landing ramps.”

But not all were convinced of Mulberry’s utility, with U.S. Navy Admiral John Leslie Hall declaring that:

“I think it’s the biggest waste of manpower and equipment that I have ever seen. I can unload a thousand LSTs at a time over the open beaches. Why give me something that anybody who’s ever seen the sea act upon 150-ton concrete blocks at Casablanca knows the first storm will destroy? What’s the use of building them just to have them destroyed and litter up the beaches.”

Indeed, despite losing their Mulberry piers to the June 19 storm, the Americans still managed to land some 180,000 troops, 20,000 vehicles, and 56,200 tons of supplies directly onto Utah and Omaha beaches using ordinary landing craft, calling into question whether the Mulberry harbours were even necessary at all. Nonetheless, the scheme was considered successful enough that Mulberry harbour components and engineers were sent to the Pacific in anticipation of the Allied invasion of Japan. However, the dropping of the atomic bombs and the subsequent Japanese surrender rendered them redundant. Today, little remains of this historic engineering feat aside from a handful of Gooseberry blockships and Phoenix caissons jutting out of the water just off Arromanches. Following the decommissioning of Port Winston, sections of Whale roadway were also used to repair or replace bombed-out bridges as the Allies advanced across Western Europe. Several of these bridges still exist today, including at Les Bordeaux in Normandy and Vacherauville in the Meuse department.

And now for an epilogue of sorts. Despite losing out to Allan Beckett’s “Spud and Whale” concept, Ronald Hamilton continued to refine his “Swiss Roll” concept – and indeed, at least one example was actually deployed at the Normandy Beaches. Its performance, however, left much to be desired. As a contemporary Navy report stated:

“It is perhaps desirable for the sake of completeness to mention as an additional component the Swiss Roll, which consisted of a floating canvas roadway carried on steel wires under tension. But this device was regarded as providing only a stand-by pier and was ultimately used only for landing port personnel and handling Naval stores. Though useful in this way, it was found too fragile and awkward to make any substantial contribution to the harbour facilities and has been described by the Director of Boom Defence (Admiralty) as a stunt.”

Undeterred, Hamilton continued to tinker, developing two designs for floating aircraft runways known as “Lily” and “Clover”. These would allow the Royal Navy to operate aircraft near the invasion beachhead before shore bases could be secured, freeing up regular aircraft carriers for other duties. Lily consisted of two-metre-wide hexagonal flotation chambers which could be towed to the beachhead, bolted together, and covered in steel plating to form a landing surface. Clover, meanwhile, was built of wood and designed to be cheaper and easier to manufacture. Both were extensively tested off the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, Scotland, using a Taylorcraft Auster and Fairey Swordfish aircraft. While the tests were successful, with both systems proving usable in up to 12-metre waves, the wooden Clover design quickly rotted in marine conditions and was abandoned. Lily was also intended for use in Operation Downfall, the Allied invasion of Japan, but as with the second Mulberry harbour the war ended before it could be used. After the war, Hamilton obtained a Canadian patent for Roads Or Trackways for Supporting Aircraft and Other Vehicles on Water and formed a company, Lilyflex Surfaces, to market it. But before the company could take off Hamilton tragically died in 1953 at the age of only 54, one of countless “Boffins” whose offbeat but often ingenious ideas contributed to much to the ultimate Allied Victory in the Second World War.

Bonus Fact:

Going back to what the D in D-Day stands for…You might at first be inclined to think the abbreviation is similar to V-Day (Victory Day). Indeed, one commonly touted explanation given for the meaning of the “D” in D-Day is that it stands for “designated day.” Others claim it stands for “decision day”, “debarkation”, or even “deliverance day.” Even General Dwight Eisenhower, or at the least his assistant, weighed in when Eisenhower received a letter asking for an explanation of the meaning of D-Day. His executive assistant wrote back stating D-Day was a shortened version of “departed day”.

Given Eisenhower helped plan it, that should mean cased closed right? It turns out, most historians think not. And, indeed, the evidence at hand doesn’t seem to support Eisenhower’s (or perhaps just his assistant’s) claim.

Hints of the true meaning can be found long before WWII in a U.S. Army Field Order dated September 7, 1918. The order stated that “The First Army will attack at H hour on D day with the object of forcing the evacuation of the St. Mihiel Salient.”

In that context, and with numerous combat operations that followed over the years, D-day referred to the “day” on which a combat attack would occur with H-hour likewise referring to the “hour” when an attack is scheduled to happen. Thus, the “D” is just a placeholder or variable for the actual date, and probably originally was meant to stand for “date” or “day” (if anything), if the associated “H-hour” is any indication.

The use of D-day allows military personnel to easily plan for a combat mission ahead of time without knowing the exact date that it will occur. Given that planning for the most famous of all D-day’s in June of 1944 started way back in 1943, and that, due to factors like optimal tides, only a few days in a given month were suitable for the launch of the invasion, trying to fix a firm date in the planning process was pointless, even close to the time of the attack. (In fact, the original set date was June 5, but bad weather at the last minute forced a day delay.) By simply assigning the attack to occur on “D-day”, it solved this issue, and had the side benefit of keeping the date of the attack a secret as long as possible, just one of the many methods of deception the military employed to try to confuse the German brass with regards to the pending invasion.

As for handling the pre-D-day preparations and the plan for after, adding a plus or minus sign and a number after the “D” was used. For example, D-1 would indicate the day before the operation occurring while D+3 would mean three days after the operation. In this way, the plans could be easily overlaid onto a calendar when the military leadership decided on the day of the attack. If the day needed to be switched at the last minute, it was then also easy enough to calibrate the plan to the new date.

As alluded to, the D-Day that occurred on June 6, 1944 was not the only D-day during World War II and it certainly was not the last, as this method of planning for military operations continues to this day. Of course, because the D-day at the Battle of Normandy was, and continues to be, the most famous of all given that designation, it seems unlikely in the foreseeable future that it will be usurped in people’s minds when someone mentions “D-Day”, despite the military continuing to occasionally use this designation.

Expand for References

When thinking about the middle ages, chances are that among the many images popping into your mind there stands a noble knight. Now, there are a variety of myths about what it was like to be a knight during medieval times, not just spread by Hollywood, but even by the contemporary legends during medieval times themselves- in both featuring widespread depictions of the chivalric knight rushing to the aid of damsels in distress and generally spending their time being bastions of all that is good and the very definition of “noble”. We’ll get into a lot of these myths throughout this video, but within this mythology we have the white clad Christian knight, his shield or surcoat adorned with a cross. And on the other side an equally imposing Muslim horseman, peppering said knight with dozens of arrows.

But behind the epic facade of titanic clashes in the Holy Land, lurk the mundane realities of Medieval era warfare.

For example: that brave warrior signed by the Cross, was statistically less likely to fall in combat, than to die pants down, squatting behind a bush and emptying his bloody bowels.

But who would have been responsible to feed and water that knight? Who would have paid for his weapons, horses, supplies? Who organised transport for Crusaders troops, and how? Who led them into combat? And going further up the chain: how did Crusades actually start in the first place? In short, how did the crusades actually work from a practical standpoint from start to finish?

If these questions keep you up at night, as they do us, well, you’re in luck. For today we will be diving into all this, as well as a whole lot of knightly myth debunking along the way, including whether any supposedly chivalrous knight in history actually ever rescued a damsel in distress.

So strapon your spaulders and gardbraces, and don your noble helm, and let’s dive into it all, shall we?

First, what even are the Crusades we are talking about exactly? Surprisingly, this is not an easy task to define: historiography can list more than 100 conflicts from the 11th to the 17th Century, which have been described as ‘Crusades’, featuring wildly different characteristics.

To make matters more complicated, the very term ‘Crusade’ was not used until the mid-1500s in the French language, and until the early 1700s in English. Before then, the soldiers participating in these campaigns were referred to as ‘those marked by the cross’. While the campaigns themselves would be referred to as ‘the business of the cross’, or simply as ‘expeditions’ against the infidels, pagan, heretics or whoever was the enemy of the day the leaders wanted to use Jesus against- An individual who explicitly built his entire philosophy around the doctrine “Love your neighbor as yourself” and then went on to give a parable about how your foreign enemy is your neighbor and you should treat them as your most beloved family member…

…

But in any event, for the purposes of our analysis, we will look at those conflicts on which pretty much all historians agree that they were, indeed, Crusades.

These include:

The well-known campaigns conducted by mostly Western European armies from the 11th to the 13th Century against Muslim powers in the Holy Land and the Levant;

The 13th Century expeditions conducted by Christian Kingdoms in northern Iberia against the ‘Taifas’, or Muslim Kingdoms, in the South;

And the longest of them all: the Albigensian Crusade of 1209 to 1229, waged by Northern French barons against the Cathar heresy, prevalent in the Languedoc region, Southern France.

So now- if we look at the features of these conflicts we can extrapolate what made a Crusade a Crusade: a war fought on the initiative of a Christian power, the Roman Catholic Church, or one of their representatives, directed against physical or perceived threats to the Church itself, a Christian state, or Christian pilgrims.

This initiative usually manifested as a call to arms, which might come directly from a Pope, a Monarch, an aristocrat, a bishop, or even a humble preacher. The call to arms expressed a simple concept, such as let us go to the Levant, or Southern Spain, or Southern France, and let us defeat the Muslims, or the heretics.

It may have included a precise military objective, such as:

‘Let’s defeat King Zayyan ibn Mardanish and retake the city of Valencia!’

Or

‘Let’s kick Saladin ibn Ayub out of Jerusalem!’

But it was not uncommon for a call to arms to be at once generic and grandiose in scale. In the case of the Albigensian Crusade, for example, the objective of the Crusaders was to convert or physically eliminate all Cathar heretics in the Languedoc.

The initial appeal to take the cross was followed by the Pope issuing a ‘Papal Bull’, a formal document which provided legit blessing to the expedition to come. With the exception of the First Crusade, all similar campaigns in the period would be sanctioned by these documents.

On the note of the first crusade, knights in Medieval Times were rather well known for their penchant to cause a bit of anarchy wherever they went. In fact, on top of things like recapturing Jerusalem from the Muslims, one of the many goals of the first Crusade, according to history professor Norman Cohn, “was also a matter of giving the largely unemployed and over-aggressive nobility of France something to do, get them out of Europe and stop them devastating the … lands.”

In a nutshell, bored knights with nothing to do when they weren’t training, tended to run amok against their neighboring Christian lands, and the church got tired of it all and how it was devastating their local flocks and stability. And even in the knightly training and practice in the form of things like tournaments, the knights had a tendency to cause a lot of problems.

In this case, the games at these were initially little more than massive melees, including using real, sharpened weapons. Rules were few, with the competitions not that different from actual battles, including capturing other knights and the like. They’d even often group knights by nation, which made the whole thing all the more heated.

That said, the general point, unlike real battle, was not to intentionally kill your opponent, but just knock them off their horse and take them prisoner. Once unhorsed, in the early going, many knights would also hire people whose job it was to rush any knight they had knocked off their horse and beat the crap out of them before taking them prisoner- the point of this being to make it easier to extract the knight’s armor and a bit easier to hang on to while they were in captivity. The knight being stripped of all their valuables and horse would later be offered back to the other side for a price, as well as potentially have their armor and horse offered back, also for a price.

Much like a real battle, any nearby peasants were not necessarily safe during these matches. For example, a given knight might flee from enemy knights and take refuge in a peasant’s home, which was likely then to be ransacked or even burned to the ground to get the knight to come out. Even if they didn’t do this, nearby farm fields were likely to get trampled and crops lost.

As you might imagine, while the knights, particularly the lower ranked and poorer of this class, loved these tournaments for a chance to gain prestige, practice their skills, and the chance to acquire additional wealth via prizes and ransoms and the like, the peasants and the church really weren’t big fans of all the death and destruction that surrounded the tournaments.

Towards the end of calming things down for everyone, including the knights who sometimes died during these mock battles, over the centuries more and more rules were added to the various games, as well as a trend towards blunted weapons. By the late Medieval period, this saw the tournaments start to resemble what is often depicted in film’s like A Knight’s Tale today, albeit with less We Will Rock You.

But the point was, even in their practice the bored knights were causing problems, and getting them out of the country and directing their testosterone against an enemy religion and people apparently seemed like a good idea to the Church in that particular crusade.
But in any event, the first formal Crusade Bull, or ‘Bulla Cruciata’ in Latin, was issued by Pope Eugene III in 1145, on the occasion of the Second Crusade to the Holy Land. This Bull set the template for other similar documents to come, as it included a key ingredient: plenary indulgence, defined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a ‘Remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven’

In other words: a sin may be forgiven by God via the sacrament of confession. But that sin may still carry consequences, sanctions and punishments on Earth. But an act of indulgence can free the sinner from such consequences!

Moreover, the Bull offered a moratorium on interests for debts. And the Church pledged to protect the Crusaders’ family and property, while they were fighting abroad. Finally, those who completed the Crusade, or died fighting, would receive a full absolution for their sins.
In his 1187 Bull, which kickstarted the Third Crusade, Pope Gregory VIII went one step further: now Crusaders would also be granted immunity against legal suits!

Successive Bulls would add further clauses and benefits, in order to drive recruitment. In 1209, Pope Innocent III launched the Crusade against the Albigensians by allowing participants to retain any goods plundered in battle. This appealed particularly to high-ranking knights and barons: from their perspective, the concept of ‘loot’ extended to castles, towns and entire territories!

Innocent was the first to introduce a time clause in a ‘Bulla Cruciata’. Soldiers wearing the Cross now were required to serve only 40 days to gain full indulgence, which was a pretty good deal! So good, in fact, that most foot soldiers and horsemen did just that, returning home when the short terms expired, and creating endless manpower problems to their commanders, not too dissimilar to what almost killed the American Revolution in the early going.

In this one, the traitors to King and country saw their entire army initially built on the back of short term contracts, which, only a few months after the ink was dry on the Declaration of Independence, left George Washington lamenting to his cousin on December 18th, 1776, “I think the game is pretty near up” as most of his army was set to disband all around the same time, and little hope of new recruits given loss after loss and horrible conditions for the soldiers against a vastly superior force, not just in supplies, arms, and numbers, but also because they were British.

But going back to the Crusades, subsequent Bulls could go into very specific detail about who would receive indulgence. For example, in 1237, Gregory IX supported the campaign of James I of Aragon against the Muslim Kingdom of Valencia by granting indulgence to arsonists, to those who had struck the clergy, and to those who conducted trade with ‘the infidels’.

After the call to arms was formalised by the Papal Bull, it was time to spread the message far and wide, a vital part of the recruitment drive. The sales and marketing aspect of the Crusades would normally be handled by travelling preachers, often belonging to the Benedictine and Dominican orders.

The contents of their messages were rather predictable: if you join our fun trip to the Holy Land – or wherever our enemies may be – you shall enjoy a cornucopia of benefits, from indulgence to a plentiful booty! Especially when it came to promoting expeditions to the Levant, preachers added some colour by emphasising the importance and sanctity of the holy places in Jerusalem, especially the Holy Sepulchre. On top of that, they would provide examples of the iniquity, savagery and brutality of the foe of the day, be them the Seljuks and Ayubids in the Levant, the Almohads in Spain, or the Cathars in southern France.
If such incentives to action did not work, preachers would deploy striking imagery. For example, in preparation for the Third Crusade, a popular and effective visual aid was the picture of a Muslim warrior, whose horse was shown urinating on the Holy Sepulchre! Even better, travelling preachers and local clergy could join forces to stage solemn and dramatic processions, accompanied by music and a display of holy relics. A striking spectacle designed to inflame the spirits of common folk and noble knights alike.

The latter category was the natural target audience of Crusade preachers. They were young, brawny, well-armed, professional warriors. They were hungry for action, and had the cash to travel to the theatres of operations. But knights also had responsibilities at home, namely looking after their castle, or lands on behalf of a feudal lord. Therefore, many of them might resist the lure of further adventures far from home! To overcome their resistance, preachers unleashed one of the most powerful motivators in a good salesman’s arsenal: shame.

Especially when ‘advertising’ the first three Crusades to the Levant, travelling friars would disgrace the knighthood class, blaming them for having allowed the holy places to fall into Muslim hands.

If travelling friar preached one knight into participating, they had hit the jackpot. Knights usually moved around and fought with their retinue, which included at least one squire and five to ten men-at-arms or sargeants. Richer noblemen would be able to instantly mobilise tens if not hundreds of footmen and horsemen. But the message of the preachers was extended also to individual fighters, be them mercenaries, members of a local militia, or total ‘noobs’, who had never wielded a spear before. Accounts of the Albigensian Crusade, for example, mention the importance of the latter group, known as ‘poor Crusaders’ or ‘ribauds’.

Even if less well armed, less trained, and less disciplined than the knightly units, these rookie soldiers were highly motivated with all the promises leveled at those who would join and the chance for leveling up their station in life if booty acquired. From a practical standpoint, they were also potentially good fodder to send up to assault the walls of a besieged city.

Now, motivation and morale go a long way, but moving and feeding large masses of bellicose men requires loads of cash!

So, who paid for the Crusades?

This is perhaps the most complex aspect of these conflicts. Knights and aristocrats were expected to fund their own mounts, retinues, supplies and weaponry. But even the upper echelons of feudal society experienced cash-flow problems, and thus had to liquidate their properties, mostly agricultural land. If that was not enough, they would launch the Mediaeval equivalent of funding campaigns, mobilising their relatives into selling family holdings, or collecting cash donations. To facilitate these collections, from the 13th Century onwards, Papal Bulls extended their indulgences and other benefits also to those who only donated money to the Crusades, without actually taking part in the campaigns.
As an alternative, knights and barons could mortgage their properties, with the hope of collecting enough plunder during the Crusade. Or they could enter into complex contracts with religious institutions, such as the case of one Bernard Morel. This knight received a cash advance from a nunnery in Marcigny, Eastern France, and in exchange he allowed the good sisters to collect half the rent paid by farmers on his lands.

On other occasions, knights might offer their services to land-holding monasteries. Often these institutions were embroiled in complex legal actions and territorial disputes against their neighbours. A knight might intervene to settle their disputes and receive a payment from the abbot for their services.

Even so, knights could run out of money halfway through the expedition. Take the example of powerful French knight Jean de Joinville, the seneschal of the county of Champagne, who ran out of funds while in transit to the Holy Land, in 1249. Joinville was stuck in Cyprus, completely penniless, until King Louis IX hired him in his household, and offered him transport to the Levant.

So, that was another source of ‘dough’: the coffers of Monarchs! From the 13th Century onwards, kings and queens took to participating directly in Crusades, thus funding the whole expedition altogether. Otherwise, they might invest large sums into paying stipends to contingents of knights and barons. In exchange, the fighting force would pay them back – with interest – with any loot they might plunder during the war.

But even Royal funding was less reliable than you might expect. First of all, not all Christian kings went on Crusades, as they often had more pressing business to take care at home. And second, they themselves had to rely on taxation provided by their council of barons, before they could even think about waging war! If the aristocracy was not willing to pay more taxes, monarchs could appeal to the Pope, which may allow them the right to impose special tithes on the local clergy, usually limited to one year only.

Speaking of the clergy, it would be natural to assume that the Catholic Church would be the main funders for such expeditions. The institution was notoriously rich, as it collected regular tithes from lay people residing in their dioceses. But this would be the exception, rather than the rule. For example, in 1219 and 1220, Pope Honorius III allowed the Archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, to devolve the tithes collected in the areas of Toledo and Segovia into a small Crusade against the ‘Taifa’, or Muslim kingdom, of Valencia, Eastern Spain.

Lastly, expeditions against infidels and heretics could receive healthy injections of cash from the military-religious orders which sprung up in Europe in the early 12th Century, such as the Templars, the Hospitaliers, the Order of Santiago, and that of Calatrava. The Templars in particular had developed a sophisticated banking system: as they escorted pilgrims to the Holy Land, they guarded their valuables for safe-keeping, in exchange for a letter of credit. Once in Jerusalem, the pilgrims could present their letter at the local chapter of the Templars, and redeem their cash. As a consequence, the Templars had access to large quantities of currency, which they would loan out to merchants, aristocrats, even Monarchs for their military enterprises.

Otherwise, they could use their vast wealth to buy entire territories from kings and queens. For example, during the 3rd Crusade, King Richard I ‘The Lionheart’ sold the island of Cyprus to the military order, a sweet real estate deal which allowed him to fund his troops during the campaign!

Once a knight or baron had secured enough funds, he had to sort out the next big issue: transport.

On this note, it was highly unlikely for small groups of fighters to travel on their own. The standard procedure was for feudal lords to organise assembly stations at their castle, or in a cathedral city. Once forces in the same region had amassed at the staging area, the columns of combatants – often followed by suppliers, non-fighting auxiliaries, or even their families – would embark on the long and perilous journey.

During the First and Second Crusades, the overland route was the preferred one. It made for a long, slow and dangerous trip, but at least it was cheaper than travelling by ship! The trend changed after 1147, when German and French crusaders travelling through what is today Turkey suffered heavy losses.

By the end of the century, as funding became more available, preferences shifted towards sea travel. Which was much faster, but carried its fair share of inconveniences, especially cramped spaces, lack of clean water, spoiled food, and infectious diseases.

A common solution to reach the Levant would have been to combine the two methods of land and sea travel. For example, on occasion of the 3rd Crusade, in 1191 Richard I of England, aka ‘The Lionheart’, assembled his troops in France, then marched them to Northern Italy, where he contracted Genoese ships to cover the remaining leg of the journey.

Due to their geographic location and sea-faring skills, Italian cities were the preferred providers of ‘Crusader cruises’. Sometimes negotiations would not go as smoothly as those experienced by the Lionheart, though. On the occasion of the Fourth Crusade, military leaders asked the Venetian Doge to assemble a fleet to transport a force of 4,500 knights with their horses, 9,000 squires and 20,000 foot soldiers. Venice provided the goods, demanding a payment of 85,000 marks in return. But the lack of coordination amongst the Crusader barons led to a mishap of catastrophic proportions, which we’ll explore more in detail later …

This lack of coordination highlights a key aspect of the Crusades: who was actually in charge?

In a ‘standard’ conflict, waged between kingdoms or other territories, this was a no-brainer. The Monarch of said polity would dictate strategy, or delegate military command to a younger or more competent leader.

In the case of the Crusades, Popes may have held spiritual authority, or indicate the broad strategic objectives. But the actual campaigns and operations were conducted by a variety of national, baronial, mercenary and voluntary armies, without a clear chain of command. The First Crusade was particularly chaotic from this point of view, and the lack of clear leadership manifested itself with an overall lack of discipline. Crusading soldiers may have expected indulgence and remission of sins, but wherever they marched they built a solid reputation for binge drinking, pillaging, gambling, casual sex and often not of the willing variety- a staple practice of the so-called chivalrous knight, which is in part why the myth of the chivalrous knight was created in the first place- to try to get them to stop doing things like this. More on this later.

But in any event, from the Third Crusade onwards, Monarchs – if involved – put themselves firmly in command, providing strategic vision and tactical leadership, as well as imposing strong discipline. Henry II of England was the first to impose a code of conduct on his Crusaders in 1188, the ‘Geddington Ordinances’, which imposed heavy punishments against thieving and violent soldiers.

As an alternative to a King, military operations could be directed by a Papal legate, i.e. a direct representative of the Pope’s power. A Legate was a member of the clergy, usually a bishop or abbot, but could be incredibly war-like when the occasion called for it! Otherwise, armies could be led by a council of the most high-ranking barons on site. And these councils might elect or appoint the most experienced general among them, who would take responsibility for overall command.

The Albigensian Crusade, throughout its 20 years of duration, featured all models. At the very beginning, Crusader troops were led by abbot and Papal legate Arnald Amaury.
Amaury was in charge at the first major engagement, the siege of Beziers in July 1209, which ended with a complete massacre. Allegedly, the warrior abbot incited the Crusaders to slaughter all inhabitants of the city. When the knights asked him how they would tell apart the Cathar heretics from the Catholics, according to chronicler Caesarius of Heisterbach, he replied ’Kill them all. The Lord knows who are his own.’

After this unchecked carnage, leadership passed into the hands of a council of noblemen, hailing mainly from northern France. They then appointed Count Simon of Montfort as their General, who did a pretty good job! That is, until his skull was cracked open by a trebuchet projectile in 1219 … then, the French Crown stepped into the fray, with King Philip II Augustus and later King Louis VIII in the lead.

Speaking of all that, let’s take a look at how fighting actually took place. As a general rule, pitched battles were a rare occurrence, taking place when a large contingent, or entire army, managed to intercept an opposing force while on transit.

The common chain of events was for an army to set up camp after a long march. Then, the enemy army would show up, setting up camp at a short distance. One of the two parties might then attempt to provoke the enemy into battle, usually by deploying their troops into formation, in plain view, and/or by harassing the camp with quick cavalry attacks. When a battle did break out, it very rarely consisted of a massive charge from one or both sides. Armies usually resorted to well-tried and tested tactics, in which specialised troops performed the tactics they excelled at.

For example, Muslim armies from Spain to the Levant relied mainly on the use of missile troops and light cavalry. Even better, a combination of the two: mounted archers. Arab, Berber, and Turkic horsemen excelled at a tactic known as ‘feigned retreat’ or ‘tornafuye’.

In which a cavalry squadron pretended to retreat from the enemy. When the latter gave chase, the mounted archers simply turned around and unleashed a shower of arrows. On the other hand, Western European armies – which made up the bulk of Crusading forces – were the masters of heavy cavalry: mounted, armoured knights who charged against the weak points of the enemy formations, causing a rout during which individual soldiers were picked off one by one.

But Crusaders and their enemies actually spent most of their time chasing or evading each other, all the while raiding the countryside to plunder food and other supplies. Both opponents might also resort to burning down farms and crops, as a means to deny access to resources to their foes. From an invading army’s perspective these merry rounds of burning and pillaging had the added objective of crushing the local population’s morale, and to instil a general sense of distrust towards their rulers who were supposed to be protecting them, while also potentially robbing said rulers of vital manpower.

As an example of this sort of thing, we have one 12th century chronicler Orderic Vitalis extolling the virtues of a knight for for once choosing NOT to slaughter a large group of peasants. As outlined in historian Catherine Hanley’s book War and Combat, 1150-1270: “he describes a raiding expedition undertaken by a young knight, during which his men destroy the homes of a group of peasants and kill their livestock. The peasants themselves flee to huddle around a cross; the knight spares their lives, and this charitable deed, according to [Vitalis] deserves to be remembered forever.”

Indeed, so brave; so noble.

In contrast, and seemingly a bit more typical, a 12th century knight and lord, Waleran Count of Mellent, was noted as simply cutting off one of the feet of any peasants he encountered while in his enemies’ lands. The idea presumably being that lord now had just lost a useful worker and had an extra crippled and unhappy individual on his hands to manage, assuming the individual survived the de-feeting encounter with this particular lord.

But in any event, if an entire army was on the move as a compact column, usually it was heading towards a major strategic objective, such as a castle or a fortified city. Once the objective was reached, it was time to enact the staple of Crusading warfare: a siege.
We have an entire hour long video on the subject of the reality of Medieval Sieges you can check out, unimaginatively titled “How Did People in Medieval Times Actually Siege a Castle in Reality?” because we’re just clever like that.

But in brief here, when facing enemy fortifications, Crusader generals had many options at their disposal, each carrying its fair share of pros and cons. The besiegers might try to take the city or castle by storm, for example, by scaling its walls with ladders or mobile towers, or forcing open its gates. This was a sound tactic, although the defenders might not be entirely onboard with being conquered for some reason…, and could pelt the attackers with arrows, javelins, rocks, boiling oil, or even sulphur bombs – a weapon used at least once during the Albigensian Crusade.

On top of that, your own troops liked to not die, so often had many other things higher on their personally daily priority list than rushing pell mell into a massacre like some sort of Orc army thrown against the gates of Minas Tirith. This just wasn’t something often done.

There is a reason the word “siege” literally derives from the Latin for “to sit”.

Alternatively, the besiegers might try to demolish the enemy fortifications by using a variety of artillery pieces, such as mangonels and trebuchets, able to hurl huge stones against walls and towers. The problem with that one was that such war machines were insanely expensive and time consuming to build, few had the expertise to build them, and they were notoriously difficult to transport. Nevertheless, when built, even a single such siege engine could be incredibly effective.

If the objective was a coastal city, besiegers may also have placed their siege engines on ships, so as to bombard their target from the sea, too. The defenders might build counter-artillery of their own, taking shots at the enemy engines, their encampments or troop formations.

On occasion, the besiegers and the besieged might get very creative … in the Autumn of 1229, King James I of Aragon conducted a Crusade against the Almohad King of the Balearic Isles. As he besieged the enemy capital Madina Mayurqa – modern day Las Palmas – he unleashed a barrage from his four siege engines. The Almohad King Abu Yahya sought to protect his city’s walls with a controversial tactic: human shields! In this case, Christian prisoners tied to the ramparts. As a retaliatory move, James intensified the bombardment, but with a different choice of projectile: the heads of Muslim prisoners instead of rocks.

Perhaps less destructive, but way more terrifying!

And from all this if you guessed Medieval knights we have good documentation of in journals and the like commonly exhibited strong signs of PTSD, congratulations, you’re correct.

But going back to the fighting, if trebuchets and mangonels were not able to break through enemy defences, Crusaders could count on the services of sappers and miners, a highly specialised and sought after category of soldiers. Their signature trick was to dig mines and tunnels under a major tower or wall. Then, they would light fires underground, in all severely weakening the foundations and overall structure of the fortification at whatever point they were targeting. Then, it was just a matter of time before the walls came crashing down. It was thanks to his sappers that Richard the Lionheart was able to open large breaches in the walls of Acre, which he conquered on July 12, 1191.

Of course, in reality most of the time given how difficult such fortified positions were to overcome, a successful besieging of any castle almost universally required one thing above all… No, not incredible strategy or better trained soldiers or anything exciting like that. Not even necessarily an army big enough to realistically capture the fortified position. Nope, many, many, many a siege was won without that. You just needed sufficient forces to keep the enemy forces in while you sat there. Yes, in the vast majority of cases, great administration of day to day matters was the path to victory, even with an insufficient force to actually capture the castle by force. Just make sure you have troops and supplies to outlast your enemy until they give up, essentially.

Much, much more on all this and the deep details in Medieval Sieges in our video How Did People in Medieval Times Actually Siege a Castle in Reality?

But going back to the crusades, if a besieging army succeeded in their intent of defeating a walled city or a castle, the inhabitants would typically experience two fates. If the city was taken by storm, it was customary for the winning side to pillage, burn, murder and assault at will. Survivors could be taken prisoner and held for ransom, or sold into slavery. On the other hand, if the inhabitants surrendered to the attackers, they would experience a much more lenient treatment. The local militia or garrison may or may not experience captivity, but the civilian population was usually allowed to exit the city with their possessions or otherwise just keep on keeping on.

The already mentioned siege of Acre is a curious exception: the city authorities negotiated a surrender with the Lionheart, who initially displayed great restraint. But the Crusaders did hold 2,000 prisoners, demanding a ransom from the Lionheart’s great rival, Saladin. When negotiations dragged on and eventually broke down, the Christian English King took Jesus’s words to heart on “love thy neighbor as thyself” and ordered all of this particular neighbor to be massacred.

That said, King Richard had nothing on Shigella- a bacterium responsible for most cases of dysentery. Known back then as bloody flux, this infectious disease caused sufferers to experience violent bouts of bloody diarrhoea, dehydrating them and depleting forces on every side with almost inevitable death once infected. Outbreaks of the flux were facilitated by factors such as malnutrition, lack of clean drinking water, overcrowding, and high temperatures – which were factors all too common during a prolonged, Crusader siege.

Unlike King Richard, however, dysentery was a fiercely democratic disease, as it struck at both rank-and-file soldiers and their aristocratic commanders. Needless to say, we feel sure that Shigella would be Thanos approved.

Louis VIII of France, for example, died of the disease in November 1226, after taking part in the Albigensian Crusade. His son and successor, Louis IX, was equally unlucky, succumbing to ‘General Shigella’ in Tunis on August 25, 1270, during the Eighth Crusade.
Now while you might think a given crusade would have only two outcomes- victory or defeat, there was a third possible outcome that was what happened in reality most of the time- conglomerate copulation.

Or clusterf*ck, as we’d say today.

A victory was usually marked by the occupation of a city or territory. The defeated entity might be annexed by the victor, or it may survive as a client state. Otherwise, the conquerors might found a new kingdom altogether. Sadly, most instances were followed by the expulsion, conversion or massacre of the infidels, heretics or pagans residing in said geographies. It’s what Jesus would have wanted, you see.

For example, the First Crusade concluded with the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, after which several Crusaders barons established four new Christian polities along the Levant coast, from modern-day Turkey to the Sinai peninsula: the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, collectively known as Outremer.

In the case of the Crusades against Muslim states in Spain, the Christian Kingdoms of Castile-León and Aragon might initially impose the payment of a tribute on their defeated enemies, and later annex their territories altogether. Muslim populations would be usually forced to relocate, either to North Africa or another surviving ‘Taifa’ on the Iberian peninsula.

During the long and bloody Albigensian Crusade, sometimes defined as a genocide, those Cathar heretics who had not died in battle had the choice of converting to Catholicism, or die at the stake. Their lands, and those of the Southern French barons who supported them were eventually annexed to the Kingdom of France.

In case of defeat, participating Christian nations would be left licking the usual wounds caused by a lost conflict: coping with massive loss of life, prestige and wealth. Very rarely, however, they had to sacrifice part of their territory. The very nature of most of these conflicts – invasions of far away lands – implied that the triumphant Muslims might not have the intention, nor sufficient power projection, to encroach on the territories of, say, France, England, or the Holy Roman Empire.

The exception were the Christian Kingdoms in the Levant, of course. The Crusades taking place in the second half of the 13th Century failed to relieve the pressure exerted on Outremer, eventually leading to their fall at the hands of the Mamluks.

And now, for one of the most massive FUBARs in Mediaeval history: the Fourth Crusade. As mentioned earlier, the Crusaders had negotiated a deal with the Venetians to be transported via sea to the Levant. But due to poor coordination, only one third of the planned army showed up in Venice, in the summer of 1202.

The fleet assembled by Venice was now both too large, and too expensive for the Crusaders to afford! But the 90-year old blind Doge, Enrico Dandolo, offered another deal: he would give a large discount if the Crusaders helped Venice in conquering the city of Zadar, modern-day Zara, in Croatia. And so it was that the Crusaders ended up laying waste to a Catholic city, to the great displeasure of Pope Innocent III.

But there was more. While intent on destroying Zadar, the Crusaders received another offer, this time from Alexius, Prince of the Byzantine Empire. How about helping him in toppling the reigning Emperor, Alexius III? Once again, the soldiers marked with the cross attacked another Christian city, seizing it in July 1203.

The new Emperor, Alexius IV, proved rather ungrateful, and failed to pay the promised fee. The citizens of Constantinople, hostile to the presence of the Western troops, ended up ousting Alexius in January 1204. With all hopes for their reward now gone, and disgusted at the Byzantine treachery, the combined Crusader and Venetian forces launched an all-out attack against Constantinople, which fell on April 12, 1204. It was payback time, and the invaders pillaged, destroyed and burnt all they could lay their eyes on, subjecting the population to massacres and violations of every imagining.

The past everybody.

This was a devastating blow to the Byzantine Empire, which ended up fractured into four states and greatly impoverished. Constantinople would return into the hands of a Byzantine dynasty in 1261, but the events of 1204 had initiated a long period of decline which would culminate with its fall in 1453.

The decline of the Byzantine Empire greatly favoured the Italian states, and especially the maritime republics such as Genoa and Venice. These mercantile powers had already been enjoying great trade with the Outremer, but as they inherited Constantinople’s sea routes they received a massive boost in revenue.

Other European nations gained tangible advantages from the Crusades. The Spanish kingdoms greatly expanded their territories, leaving to the Muslims only the Taifa of Granada. Which meant that Muslim inhabitants of other Taifas were forced to relocate, and had to begin anew their lives, either in North Africa, or in an increasingly crowded Granada.

The French Crown extended their authority over the region of Languedoc, virtually independent. Of course, this was at the expense of a previously wealthy and culturally rich region, and an estimated one million casualties.

England and the Holy Roman Empire did not gain direct advantages from the expeditions, although the variety of funding streams developed during the period stimulated the banking and credit sectors.

As per the Muslim dynasties and polities in the Middle East, the Crusade game on the long term ended up in their favour. They maintained their hold over the region, which clearly had an immense religious and symbolic value. Moreover, it was an incredibly profitable trade hub along the trade routes linking Europe to Asia. Besides, the decline of Byzantium eventually allowed for the rising Ottomans to expand over Asia Minor, and eventually continental Europe.

But besides the grand political consequences, it is worth considering the impact of the Crusades on those who ‘took the cross’.

Crusading knights and soldiers who made it back alive often found that they would be largely much worse off than when they had left. Physically, they might be debilitated by serious wounds, or the consequences of dysentery and other illnesses. From an economic standpoint, very few fighters returned home with their pockets filled with cash, as loot, if any, was often concentrated in the hands of a few commanders. Moreover, even wealthier knights and barons might have found that their properties had not been protected by the Church, as promised. Neighbouring landowners would frequently attack or plunder their lands while they were away. Or relatives might have been forced to sell property if a harvest had failed, or debts were mounting.

In one such case, a young nobleman who’d joined Richard the Lionheart’s campaign even returned to find his castle burned, his father murdered, and was ultimately exiled into the woods, before forming a band of merry men, successfully, with their help and the help of his moorish friend Azeem, attacking and overthrowing the Sheriff of Nottingham who’d been plotting to take King Richard’s throne while he was away…

That said, regardless of what circumstances such nobles found themselves in upon return, veterans of the Crusades would still enjoy the benefits granted by the Papal Bulls. Most people at the time firmly believed in the importance of remitting sins. And even those who did not believe in an afterlife, could still enjoy immunity from previous lawsuits, and had interest written off from their debts.

Another positive consequence was the great prestige enjoyed by returning Crusaders within their communities, even if their adventure had ended with a defeat. Moreover, their deeds would be celebrated in years and centuries to come, in chronicles, poems, songs, and other media. And after all, isn’t that what we are doing here today? Talking about them close to a thousand years later.

Bonus Fact:

Going back to the idea of the chivalrous knight… Ya… about that. We did a full video on this- Did Any Medieval Knight Ever Actually Rescue a Damsel in Distress?, but in brief, despite the best and extremely lengthy efforts of our quite experienced team researching this to try to find one single definitively known instance of that supposed bastion of chivalry- the medieval knight- rescuing a woman in peril… We couldn’t find a single one, with one possible slightly sideways exception.

In fact, Medieval knights seem to have often not done much of anything about it when even their own sisters, daughters, cousins, or even sometimes wives were kidnapped, in the best case perhaps just negotiating for a return, if anything done. And this is very noteworthy as during Medieval times in the Western world, women of means, whether of the nobility or otherwise in possession of not inconsiderable valuables, were in particular danger from a random guy coming along, kidnapping and forcibly marrying her via simply forcibly consummating the union. Once the mating act complete, presuming she was not otherwise married, she was now his wife and not much anyone could do about it at this point. A great way for a lowly knight to join a much more prominent family.

In one such case, this one giving us some hope of a knight coming to the rescue of the damsel, one Joan Beaumont was kidnapped by 40 men and forced to marry Edward Lancaster with once again the formula being forcible consummation.

In this case, however, Beaumont was already engaged to Charles Nowell who, rather than specifically coming to her rescue sword drawn, instead petitioned parliament, not just to fix the situation with his fiance, but also to fix it for all noble women by passing laws to protect said ladies from being forcibly made to marry in this way.

As to what happened after, the British national archives while detailing the petition itself don’t seem to mention how the case turned out as far as we could find. That said, other records we found seem to indicate Joan married Charles Nowell in 1452, so we’re guessing this one had a happy ending.

This case is noteworthy in our search for a knight rescuing a damsel in distress, however, in that Beaumont’s former husband, Henry Beaumont, was a knight before he died. Further, her son, also Henry Beaumont, also was a knight and he was a joint petitioner with Charles Nowell on the matter. So, while not exactly a knight rushing to rescue a damsel in distress in the way typically depicted in stories, it was a knight helping to write a very sternly worded letter to Parliament to help a damsel, in this case his mother… We’ll leave it to you to decide whether co-petitioning Parliament to have a woman’s forced marriage annulled constitutes a damsel in distress being rescued by a knight.

In the end, it turns out the whole chivalric code was more like loose and varying “guidelines” instituted by the Church to try to reign in the knights going around terrorizing people. As far as actual documented history, rather than the legends and fairy tales, this wasn’t very effective. And even in the mythology of it, we have such references as Andreas Capellanus, who more or less popularized the idea of “courtly love” in the 12th century, noting knights should feel free to do what they wished with any peasant women they encountered, but should act respectfully towards noble women.

All that said, during the late medieval period, these knightly individuals were raised on romanticized stories like that of King Arthur and his knights. So surely some of them tried to mimic certain chivalrous stories of these legendary figures, right? Just one knight is all we need here.

This all culminated in our one hope of actually finding a credible story of a knight rescuing a damsel in distress, swords drawn and ready for a fight- the order Emprise de l’Escu vert à la Dame Blanche, which was established in 1399 by one time marshal of France and governor of Genoa, Sir Jean II Le Maingre.

Why is The Emprise de l’Escu vert à la Dame Blanche special here? This was an order comprising 13 knights dedicated to defending women’s honor and their estates. In short, Le Maingre had become distressed at the many noble women telling him of ways in which they were being ill-used or threatened by those in power and entreating him, as a noble knight, to help them.

Thus, he formed the aforementioned chivalrous order of knights, and then, on April 11, 1399, sent out a letter to be read throughout France of his order’s willingness to drop whatever they were doing at the time and come to the aid of those women in need of it, fighting any oppressors encountered in the process if needs be. Of course, only noble women counted here, and as far as we can tell from Le Maingre’s extensive documented career after, he never once dropped what he was doing to travel around France helping anyone.

As with their leader, we couldn’t find any well documented stories of these knights fulfilling their pledge. But, at the least given this was literally the point of forming this band of knights, and it was formed in response to requests from ladies of privileged petitioning the knights (so we know petitions happened), and they well broadcast their intent to help noble women in distress… I mean, at some point they probably helped at least one woman, right? RIGHT?!?!?!

In the end, if you spend much time reading about the better documented exploits of the medieval knights around this time… Well… let’s just say, it’s probably far more likely that should a verifiable story of a woman and a knight actually come up, that the woman probably needed rescued FROM the knight if anything, especially if the woman was from a family of lesser station than the knight themselves, which was true for most women, or the woman was independently wealthy and unmarried. That woman was likely in the most danger of all from knights.

As 18th and 19th century historian Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi aptly sums up of the myth of the chivalrous knight, “The more closely we look into history, the more clearly shall we perceive that the system of chivalry is an invention almost entirely poetical… It is always represented as distant from us both in time and place, and whilst the contemporary historians give us a clear, detailed, and complete account of the vices of the court and the great, of the ferocity or corruption of the nobles, and of the servility of the people, we are astonished to find the poets, after a long lapse of time, adorning the very same ages with the most splendid fictions of grace, virtue, and loyalty. The romance writers of the twelfth century placed the age of chivalry in the time of Charlemagne. The period when these writers existed, is the time pointed out by Francis I. At the present day [1810], we imagine we can still see chivalry flourishing in the persons of Du Guesclin and Bayard, under Charles V and Francis I. But when we come to examine either the one period or the other, although we find in each some heroic spirits, we are forced to confess that it is necessary to antedate the age of chivalry, at least three or four centuries before any period of authentic history.”

Expand for References

Shortly after the U.S. Department of Justice released a batch of files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Dec. 19, 2025, an image (archived) depicting President Donald Trump with a young girl — whose face was censored — on what appeared to be a private jet spread online. One post sharing the image on X, which received more than 27 million views as of this writing, read: “They forgot to delete this one.”

Many users replying to the post appeared to believe the image authentically depicted Trump with an unknown girl, while others claimed she was Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter. 

There were multiple signs the image was not authentic; however, we were not able to definitively determine the image was AI-generated.

First, the date in the upper right corner — “9   1’02” — is nonsensical. This could be camera malfunction, though it could also be an artifact of AI generation or an intentional edit to make the origins of the image difficult to trace.

(X user @keithedwards)

The earliest version of the image we could find appeared on social media user Keith Edwards’ platforms, including YouTube and X (archived). We reached out to Edwards via X and Instagram seeking comment about whether he created the image and whether it was AI-generated or otherwise altered, and will update this report should we learn more.

While Edwards’ YouTube account used the image as the thumbnail for a video titled “The FBI forgot to redact this,” and he mentioned “one file they forgot to redact” involving Trump “and a 14-year-old girl” (at 0:22), Edwards did not show the thumbnail image during the 10-minute video, indicating it was likely intended as clickbait. 

(YouTube account @keithedwards)

Edwards’ YouTube account was filled with other, similarly shocking thumbnails with expressive overlays of Edwards’ face combined with large, vague, bright yellow captions. These are all classic signs of content designed to be clickbait — content meant to attract viewers for ad revenue.

Reputable news media outlets have widely reported any appearance of Trump in the files that were released to the public on Dec. 19, but these reports did not include the image in question. A Google search of the keywords “trump” “child” “epstein” and “plane” revealed results related to other claims, but did not turn up the image in question. If it was authentic and still publicly available, reputable news media outlets likely would have reported on it.

(Google.com)

While the Trump administration has received criticism for at least 16 files disappearing from the government site after the DOJ released them on Dec. 19 with no notice to the public, Edwards posts claimed the image in question had not been deleted. However, it was not among the files we reviewed.

We’ve reported on several images of Trump with underage girls that were fake. We’ve also extensively reported on Trump’s relationship with Epstein over the years.

Sources

Claim:

Images authentically show three stars of the 1990 holiday classic film “Home Alone” — Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern — sitting together for coffee and dessert.

Rating:

Did Kevin McCallister finally call a truce with Harry and Marv?

In the days before Christmas 2025, online users shared a handful of images allegedly depicting a “Home Alone” cast reunion. The images showed three of the 1990 holiday classic’s stars — Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern — sitting together at a restaurant for coffee and dessert. The trio also starred in the 1992 sequel, “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”

For example, on Dec. 16, a Facebook user posted (archived) one of the purported photos showing Culkin, Pesci and Stern with a caption that began, “REUNITED AFTER 35 YEARS.” The user added, “Seeing them together again feels like pure nostalgia and childhood memories hitting at once.”

(Movie Quotes/Facebook)

Users shared the cast reunion rumor and images on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Reddit (archived), Threads and X (archived). Some publishers reported the supposed reunion photos as authentic.

In short, the images were fake and generated with artificial intelligence. The Angel Cakes bakery in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, first posted (archived) the images to its Instagram account on Dec. 15 to promote its business and holiday items.

No credible news media outlets published information about a reunion between Culkin, Pesci and Stern. Had any such gathering taken place with multiple captured photos, outlets worldwide — in particular entertainment-focused websites — would have reported on the matter. No videos of the alleged reunion existed either, despite Angel Cakes’ Instagram account often featuring video clips.

We sent private Instagram messages to Angel Cakes to ask for the names of the AI tools used to create the images and will update this article if we receive further information.

Signs of AI in fake ‘Home Alone’ reunion images

The six fake photos in Angel Cake’s Instagram post exhibited various signs of AI. For example, Culkin’s right hand displayed discrepancies and inconsistencies with rings and wristwatches.

(@angelcakes.dubai/Instagram)

Another key sign of fakery was Pesci’s and Stern’s youthful appearances. Pesci, 82, and Stern, 68, appear much younger in the fake images than in genuine photos from 2020 and 2021, for example.

Five of the six images show the trio sitting down, while the remaining picture depicts them standing with a fourth person holding an Angel Cakes box. That image depicts Culkin as wearing a necklace that did not appear in any of the other images, as well as two close-together buttons at the bottom of his shirt instead of just one.

This fake photo shows one button at the very bottom of Culkin’s shirt, as well as no necklace. (Angel Cakes/Instagram)

Meanwhile, this image depicts Culkin with two close-together buttons at the bottom of his shirt, plus a necklace. (Angel Cakes/Instagram)

Angel Cakes previously posted (archived) other AI-generated images allegedly showing F1 racers enjoying the bakery and parking their race cars right outside.

In December 2024, Entertainment Weekly reported some of the actors playing the McCallister children in the first two films held a reunion of their own. Culkin, Pesci and Stern did not attend.

For further reading, Snopes has investigated many other rumors about “Home Alone,” including about Kevin McCallister’s airplane ticket being thrown in the garbage, as well as if the movie Kevin watches titled “Angels with Filthy Souls” was a real film.

For years, a rumor has claimed that U.S. President Donald Trump secretly paid tens of millions of dollars to settle multiple allegations that he sexually assaulted minors.

A frequently shared version (archived) of the claim has appeared as a meme, titled, “TRUMP RESUME FOR THE PRESIDENCY.” Under that heading is list of six named children, each paired with a specific age, location, year, description of alleged abuse, and an alleged settlement amount:

1: Michael parker, 10-years old, oral rape Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, FL, 1992. Trump paid his parents a $3 million settlement.

2: Kelly Feuer, 12-years old, $1 million settlement paid in 1989, allegations of forced intercourse, Trump Tower, NY, NYC.

3: Charles Bacon, 11 years old, $3 million, allegations of oral and anal intercourse, 1994, Trump Tower, NY, NYC.

4: Rebecca Conway, 13 Years old, claimed intercourse & oral sex. Trump Vineyard Estates, Charlottesville, VA, 2012, $5 million settlement.

5: Maria Olivera, 12 years old. Her family was paid $16 million to settle allegations of forcible intercourse – occurring in Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, FL, 1993

6: Kevin Noll: 11 years old, anal rape, Trump Tower, NY, NYC, 1998. Settlement details unknown.

(Facebook page Don’t Be Weird)

The image ends with a caption reading “ANY OTHER JOE WOULD BE ROTTING IN PRISON BUT MAGA SAID … THIS DUDE WILL MAKE A GREAT PRESIDENT!”

It has circulated on Instagram, Facebook, Reddit and X, often shared as evidence that Trump is a “child rapist” whose wealth and political power have allegedly kept him out of prison.

In short, there was no credible evidence that any of the six named children exist as accusers, that any such lawsuits were ever filed, or that Trump paid the settlements described in the meme. The origin of the rumor is an uncorroborated list published on a blog, not a court document or credible news investigation.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the claims were “obviously false.”

We investigated a similar meme in 2020 that claimed Trump had paid at least $35 million to settle child-rape allegations and likewise found no evidence that such settlements existed.

Where the rumor came from

The rumor traces back to a Jan. 16, 2019, blog post (archived) on Legal Schnauzer, titled, “Donald Trump has paid about $30 million to settle child-sex complaints, including a 2012 incident at Albemarle Estate in Charlottesville, Virginia.” 

That post in turn cites an article at Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), a blog run by American writer Wayne Madsen, titled, “Why is Trump so afraid of [ex-Trump lawyer Michael] Cohen’s testimony?” (In 2020, the article was only available to members.)

The Legal Schnauzer piece quotes WMR as saying that Trump had paid roughly $30 million to settle “child-sex complaints” since 1989, and that the alleged settlements extended “beyond those widely reported in the mainstream press.” 

WMR claimed it had received a list of child-sex settlement claims “from a reputable Republican source,” but it presented no documents, court filings, or corroborating evidence for these purported cases. The only stated basis was an unnamed Republican source. As such, we were unable to independently verify it.

WMR is not a reputable, mainstream investigative outlet and has been frequently described as being run by a conspiracy theorist or spreading conspiratorial views. Fact-checking organization Lead Stories, which investigated a similar meme in 2021, likewise described WMR as “a blog which was described by the Encyclopedia of American Loons as an ‘utterly deranged nutter with a mind unclouded by facts, evidence, or reason.’”

We contacted Legal Schnauzer and WMR seeking supporting evidence, and we will update this story if we receive a response.

Six cases, zero evidence

The six names most often cited online: Michael Parker, Kelly Feuer, Charles Bacon, Rebecca Conway, Maria Olivera, Kevin Noll. For each name, the meme specifies the child’s age (10-13 years old), a Trump-owned property and year, a description of alleged sexual assault and a specific settlement amount (or “unknown” for one case).

If any of these were real lawsuits in U.S. courts, there would be some record of them, such as a case docket, court filings, media reports, or later mentions in books or legal databases — even if the specific terms of any settlement were kept confidential. However, no public records, credible news reports or court documents corroborate the existence of any of the six alleged child victims or the multimillion-dollar settlements listed.

The Katie Johnson lawsuit

WMR also pointed to two pseudonymous accusers, “Katie Johnson” and “Maria P.,” who allegedly were raped as minors at the Manhattan townhouse of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a one-time friend of Trump, in 1994. 

In fact, there were two related lawsuits filed in 2016 by the same anonymous woman, first as “Katie Johnson” in California and then as “Jane Doe” in New York, accusing Trump and Epstein of raping her when she was 13. Both cases were ultimately dismissed or withdrawn, with no trial, no public finding of guilt and no announced settlement.

In 2020, we reported the lawsuit was promoted by figures such as former TV producer Norm Lubow, who told us he helped file it under a false name, Al Taylor. As we’ve reported, it “does not disprove that Johnson is a real person, but it does show that those claims were aggressively promoted and aided by someone who has a professional history of using individuals to create fictional salacious drama, and that is a fact both he, and lawyers working for the plaintiff, attempted to downplay or hide.”

Bottom line

All in all, claims that Trump paid about $30 million to settle child-sex complaints brought by six named minors is unsupported by any credible evidence and rests entirely on an unverified list from a blog.

In July 2024, PolitiFact, a fact-checking organization, published a fact check of a Threads post sharing the same list, concluding, “We found no evidence of these cases or settlements.” LeadStories similarly stated in a 2021 article that “there is no evidence of the cases ever having been filed against Trump and no proof the listed legal actions exist.”

The in-question list was not the only social media claim asserting that Trump has been charged with, or paid to cover up, child rape. In 2024, Reuters debunked a rumor that The Associated Press (AP) had reported prosecutors were “reconsidering” bringing child rape and molestation charges against Trump. Reuters confirmed with the AP that no such story had ever been published and noted that “there are no credible news reports about any child molestation charges against Trump.”