A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out.
Images made to look like court records circulate online
amid Epstein document release
CLAIM: Court documents connected to a lawsuit involving financier Jeffrey Epstein that were released this week include details about theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking’s “proclivities” and accusations about a sexual encounter with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
THE FACTS: No such reports were included in the documents. Images made to look like question-and-answer sessions included in the court documents were fabricated. In both cases, the alleged participants were unidentified. In the fake image involving Hawking, the questioner asks, in reference to Epstein, “Did Jeffrey ever talk to you about Stephen Hawking’s proclivities?” The respondent answers, “Yes, he liked watching undressed midgets solve complex equations on a too-high-up chalkboard.” Additionally, the respondent replies “yes” when asked whether Hawking “frequented the island for pleasure.” The other image includes an exchange about Kimmel in which the respondent says they gave him multiple massages and had sex with him at the comedian’s suggestion. Posts that shared the images had received tens of thousands of views on X, formerly Twitter, and other social media platforms as of Friday. Hawking is mentioned twice in the documents that were released on Wednesday. One reference involves a 2015 email from Epstein offering a monetary award to friends, family or acquaintances of Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims, if they could help disprove allegations that the physicist had participated in an “underage orgy” on one of Epstein’s islands. The other is a request for Giuffre to turn over all photos or videos of her with a number of individuals, including Hawking. But there is no reference to any “proclivities.” In 2006, a few months before Epstein was charged with multiple counts of unlawful sex with a minor, Hawking was one of many scientists who attended a five-day conference in the Caribbean funded by Epstein. The physicist appears in multiple pictures from the event. Kimmel does not come up in the documents at all. Ahead of their release, social media users wrongly claimed that his name might appear, spurred by a comment New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers made Tuesday on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show.” Kimmel said in response on X that he had never met Epstein and that Rodgers’ “reckless words put my family in danger.” Moreover, the purported document snippet that mentions Kimmel states that it is part of page 1,375, but only 944 pages of records had been made public when the image began spreading. Other major public figures social media users have falsely claimed are named in the documents include Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Elon Musk and many more. There was much speculation before the release that the records amounted to a list of rich and powerful people who were Epstein’s “clients” or “co-conspirators.” But the records come from a 2015 lawsuit filed by Giuffre against Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, which was settled two years later. U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska, who ordered the release, said most of the names were already public. They include many of Epstein’s accusers, members of his staff who told their stories to tabloid newspapers, people who served as witnesses at Maxwell’s trial, people who were mentioned in passing during depositions but aren’t accused of anything salacious, and people who investigated Epstein, including prosecutors, a journalist and a police detective. There are also boldface names of public figures known to have associated with Epstein over the years, but whose relationships with him have already been well documented elsewhere. Previous documents from the case were released in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. About 60 of 250 records currently released had been made public as of Thursday, with more expected in the coming days. Epstein killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison term for helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls.
False claims
question Haley’s eligibility to serve
as US president
CLAIM: Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is ineligible to be president because her parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth.
THE FACTS: Haley is a natural-born U.S. citizen who is eligible to serve as president. The former ambassador to the United Nations was born on Jan. 20, 1972, in Bamberg, South Carolina, according to information on her official website when she was governor of the state. With the Iowa caucuses just two weeks away, some on social media are erroneously claiming that Haley, who served as governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017, cannot legally hold the country’s highest office. “Nikki Haley is Constitutionally ineligible to be President….or Vice President,” reads one post on X, formerly Twitter, that had received approximately 10,200 likes and shares as of Friday. The post links to an article that argues Haley is ineligible because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born. In her 2012 autobiography, Haley wrote that her parents “were born in the Punjab region of India.” Haley’s office told South Carolina newspaper The State in 2015, when she was governor, that her father, Ajit Randhawa, became a U.S. citizen in 1978 — six years after Haley’s birth — while her mother, Raj Randhawa, was naturalized in 2003. But experts agree Haley is a legitimate candidate as defined by the Constitution, regardless of her parents’ citizenship status. Her birth in Bamberg makes her a natural-born citizen, one of three qualifications to hold the U.S. presidency. “Having been born in South Carolina, she is clearly a ‘natural born citizen,’ without regard to the fact that her parents were immigrants,” Geoffrey Stone, a professor of law at the University of Chicago who is an expert on constitutional law, told The Associated Press. Stone called claims otherwise “bonkers” and said that there are no legitimate arguments that would disqualify Haley from the presidency based on her parents’ citizenship. The Constitution stipulates that the president must be “a natural born citizen” of the U.S., be at least 35 years old and have been a U.S. resident for at least 14 years. The 14th Amendment clarifies that anyone born in the country is a U.S. citizen, with exceptions for the children of people whose allegiance belongs to another nation, such as those of foreign diplomats. Similar false claims that Vice President Kamala Harris is not legally eligible to serve as U.S. vice president or president because of her parents’ citizenship have previously spread online. Haley’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
No, T-Mobile isn’t going to start policing customers’ personal texts
CLAIM: As of Jan, 1, 2024, T-Mobile is going to fine individual consumers for texting about topics that fall under the categories of sex, hate, alcohol, firearms or tobacco.
THE FACTS: A new T-Mobile policy aimed at curbing mass marketing texts that don’t meet industry standards is being misrepresented on social media as an effort to censor the messages of everyday people. The wireless carrier is instituting new fines for third-party vendors that send mass messaging campaigns on behalf of other businesses, not for individual consumers. These fines apply to texts that discuss sex, hate, alcohol, firearms or tobacco under certain circumstances, such as if the content violates federal law or is sent without an age verification system. “Well, just when you thought censoring couldn’t get worse, as of Jan. 1 of 2024, which is like a week away, T-Mobile is now going to be policing and fining your text messages,” a woman says in an Instagram video. “Yes, personal text messages on your phone. And if your messages fall under what they call SHAFT — that is the acronym for sex, hate, alcohol, firearms or tobacco — they are going to start fining their customers for talking about stuff about that on their bandwidth,” she continues. T-Mobile will be introducing three new fines in 2024, but personal texts won’t be affected. “The change only impacts third-party messaging vendors that send commercial mass messaging campaigns for other businesses,” the company wrote in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. “The vendors will be fined if the content they are sending does not meet the standards in our code of conduct, which is in place to protect consumers from illegal or illicit content and aligns to federal and state laws.” Content that manipulates people into revealing private information will result in a fine of $2,000, while content on subjects that are not legal federally and in all 50 states — such as marijuana and solicitation — will elicit a $1,000 charge, according to notices posted last week by third-party vendors that facilitate mass text campaigns. Other violations — for example, “SHAFT” content that is sent without verifying recipients’ ages — will cost companies $500 each. T-Mobile’s statement also noted the company does not have the ability to censor personal messages, aside from filters that “protect our customers from unwanted texts that could contain malware and other fraudulent or malicious activities such as phishing.” This is not an update to T-Mobile’s general terms of service. Rather, the fines apply to companies that violate text marketing industry standards regarding illegal, unallowed or illicit content that have been previously set by the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association. Adherence to these standards is already outlined as part of T-Mobile’s code of conduct for its commercial messaging customers.
