Hoaxsters Take Advantage of D.C. Plane Crash
PLUS: Right and Left Distort Trump Immigration Actions; Even Polio Vaccines Are Not Immune from False Claims
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Today:
D.C. plane crash leads to wide-ranging conspiracy theories
Trump immigration policies attract bogus claims on the right and left
L.A. Times owner advances false polio vaccine claim
And More …
Today’s newsletter was edited by Eric Effron and Sofia Rubinson
1. Millions of Views for False Claims About the Fatal D.C. Plane Crash
By Sofia Rubinson, Sam Howard, and Sarah Komar

What happened: Almost immediately after news broke that an American Airlines passenger jet collided with an Army helicopter near the U.S. Capitol, leaving no survivors, conspiracy accounts on X and other platforms began spreading wild theories and false claims about the tragedy.
Fake DEI connection: Far-right and pro-Kremlin accounts falsely claimed that one of the pilots on the Army helicopter was transgender woman Jo Ellis, who was recently profiled on Smerconish.com for being a trans service member.
A closer look: The claim spread widely on X, Truth Social, Telegram, and unreliable U.S. and Russian websites starting on the evening of Jan. 30.
Anti-LGBT X account @FakeGayPolitics posted images of Ellis on Jan. 30 with the text: “The pilot of the Black Hawk has been identified as Chief Warrant Officer 2 (CW2) Jo Ellis, a transgender woman. … Jo has been making radicalized anti-Trump statements on socials.” The post garnered 2.6 million views and 15,000 likes.
The Santa Monica Observer (NewsGuard Trust Score: 5/100), which popularized the false claim that Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi was attacked by a male prostitute in October 2022, published an article on Jan. 30 titled “A Transgender Pilot Named Jo Ellis Flew Blackhawk Helicopter Into the American Airlines Jet at Reagan National.”
News-Pravda.com (Trust Score: 7.5/100), part of an anonymously run network of sites republishing content from pro-Kremlin sources, published a Jan. 31 article titled “Pilot Transgender controlled a helicopter who shot down a plane with skaters in Washington.” The article stated, “We are talking about the Joe Ellisa [sic] pilot. As they write in American social networks, the chaotic flight path of Black Hawk may indicate that the transgender could be under hallucinations during the flight.”
Actually: Ellis, who is openly transgender, was not among those killed.
Two of the three soldiers aboard the Army helicopter have been publicly identified as of Jan. 31, neither of them Ellis.
Ellis wrote on her Facebook page on Jan. 31: “Some craziness has happened on the internet and I’m being named as one of the pilots of the DC crash. Please report any accounts or posts you see.” She later released a video as what she called “proof of life.”
Blaming the press: About two hours after the crash, some right-wing social media users began hypothesizing that the incident was a “false flag” — a secret government operation designed to mislead the public — and that CNN was in on it.
A closer look: These accounts circulated screenshots of Google News search results showing two CNN.com (Trust Score: 80/100) articles with time stamps indicating that they were published about three hours before the crash, leading to speculation that CNN had advanced knowledge of the collision.
X account @BGatesIsaPyscho posted a screenshot of search results showing that two CNN articles appeared to be published before the crash, with the caption, “CNN allegedly had pre-written articles about the Washington Crash - Hours online BEFORE the event & lots of people have the receipts.” The post received 2.3 million views and 20,000 likes in less than 12 hours.
Right-wing X account @endlibtyranny stated on Jan. 30: “More evidence of fake news manipulating public opinion, this is why we need free speech and a free press to hold them accountable. The fact that CNN had pre-written articles about the crash before it happened is disturbing and raises serious questions about their journalistic integrity.”
Actually: A NewsGuard review of the source code (metadata) for the two CNN articles cited in the false claims shows that they were published after the crash — one at 9:40 p.m. and the other at 10:20 p.m. (The crash occurred at 8:47 p.m.)
SEO experts, including from Google itself, have previously noted that Google News search results can sometimes display inaccurate time stamps.
CNN Director of Communications Dylan Rose Geerlings told NewsGuard in a Jan. 30 email, “CNN covered the tragic news on the Potomac after it happened and after local sources and the FAA learned about it and confirmed the news.”
A deliberate attack? In the hours following the crash, some far-right accounts claimed without substantiation that the incident was intentional and aimed at targeting someone with insider government knowledge.
Conspiracy account @PantherMike182 posted on Jan. 29: “Someone tell me how this is not intentional ? A Blackhawk casually running into an American Airlines passenger plane? Come on.” The post quickly received 12.3 million views and 31,000 likes.
MAGA X account @booterlehman wrote: “Who was on Blackhawk? Who was the target? Who was on the plane leaving Reagan Airport?” The post included a graphic that stated, “SOMETHING AINT RIGHT.”
Actually: The cause of the crash was not immediately determined, but there have been no reports of foul play.
VIP treatment: Early reports baselessly claimed the collision involved a VH-60N White Hawk, a specialized aircraft used exclusively to transport high-ranking U.S. officials, including the president and vice president.
A closer look: Social media users made this false claim in the minutes directly following the crash, and the falsehood accelerated after Russian state-owned media outlet RT posted the claim on X.
“Crashed helicopter was VH-60, a modified executive variant of the Blackhawk - the Whitehawk - which is used to carry top brass,” RT wrote on Jan. 29. The post garnered 300,200 views and 2,200 likes in two days.
Actually: The Army helicopter was a UH-60 — a standard model — and was not carrying any VIPs, military officials said.
“While performing a training mission a United States Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter … collided in midair” with the American Airlines jet, the deputy director of public affairs for the military’s Joint Task Force-National Capital Region and the U.S. Army Military District of Washington, Ron McLendon II, told Military Times (Trust Score: 100/100).
An unnamed Army official told Military Times and other press organizations that three service members, and “no VIPs” were aboard the helicopter when it crashed.
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2. Liberals and Conservatives Falsely Report Trump’s Immigration Crackdown
By Sarah Komar

What happened: As President Donald Trump pushes a hardline approach to immigration, false claims related to the crackdown are spreading on both sides of the political divide through misrepresented photos and videos.
On the left: Liberal social media users are sharing a digitally altered image of a handcuffed man in a “Latinos for Trump 2024” T-shirt being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Where it spread: The image spread widely among anti-Trump users, apparently to highlight the supposed irony of a Trump supporter being detained in Trump-ordered immigration raids.
The claim seems to have originated with a Jan. 27 X post by liberal user @RobertoMTico, who shared the image and said, simply, “Latinos por Trump,” (Spanish for “Latinos for Trump.”) The post received 1.1 million views and 37,000 likes in two days.
The national minister of politics for the Black nationalist group New Black Panther Nation, Candice Matthews, shared the image in a Jan. 29 Instagram post and said: “Welp!!!! Elections have Consequences!!!!!”
Actually: As noted above, the photo is manipulated. A NewsGuard reverse image search found that the original image is from 2018 and does not show a “Latinos for Trump” shirt.

The photo captured a June 2018 raid by ICE and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents on a meatpacking plant in Salem, Ohio, according to the caption on the Getty Images website.
In the original photo, the back of the man’s shirt is blank.
The “HSI” seen on the agents’ vests was replaced with “ICE” in the altered version.
On the right: Conservatives and pro-Russian sources are falsely claiming that a video shows more than 1,000 migrants rushing the U.S. southern border after Trump declared a border emergency. You can watch the video here:
Where it originated: The claim appears to have emerged in an X post from Mexican user @DRxbrxck, whose bio describes him as an “art Curator and photo reporter.”
The Jan. 21 post stated, in Spanish: “At least 1,000 migrants have just broken through the [Mexican National Guard] barrier in Ciudad Juarez. They are heading to the checkpoint at Paso Texas with the aim of forcibly entering the United States because the CBP One application is out of service.” The post garnered 1.5 million views and 5,600 likes.
Actually: The video is outdated. It aired in March 2023 as part of a Univision (Trust Score: 95/100) report, NewsGuard determined.
According to the Univision report, “nearly 2,000 migrants, mostly Venezuelans” pushed past Mexican authorities in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and attempted to cross the border into El Paso, Texas, before being halted by U.S. border patrol.
Click here to find out more about NewsGuard Trust Scores and our process for rating websites. You can download NewsGuard’s browser extension, which displays NewsGuard Trust Score icons next to links on search engines, social media feeds, and other platforms by clicking here.
3. Going Viral: L.A. Times Owner Sparks a False Claim About Mercury in Polio Vaccines
By John Gregory

What happened: A video clip from an interview with Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is spreading misinformation about polio vaccines on X, YouTube, and other platforms, after he falsely claimed that older versions of the jabs contained mercury, which can be toxic in large doses.
A closer look: During a Jan. 13 episode of “The Morning Meeting,” a YouTube political talk show whose hosts include commentator Mark Halperin and former Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Soon-Shiong, a biotech billionaire and surgeon, defended the views of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine activist who is Donald Trump’s pick as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
“There’s no way he wants to ban the polio vaccine,” Soon-Shiong said of RFK Jr. “He’s talking about some of the old versions that happen to have mercury in it. We all know there’s mercury that causes deficiencies, and if you can take the mercury out, which you know you can, and they’ve done.”
Shortly after the episode aired, RFK Jr. supporters posted the clip on X, Telegram, Instagram, Facebook, and Rumble.
A Jan. 13 X post from Holden Cullotta — a self-described independent consultant to a political action committee that supported Kennedy’s 2024 presidential bid — included a clip of Soon-Shiong’s comments, amassing 537,000 views and 7,200 likes.
Conservative X account @MJTruthUltra posted a video clip of the interview alongside the text, “On Vaccines, he wants to get mercury out of them, which are causing great harm and deficiencies.” The post received 115,200 views and 2,600 likes.
Actually: No mercury-derived ingredient has ever been part of polio vaccines.
While a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal has been safely used in vaccines for decades, both the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization say that thimerosal has never been used in polio vaccines in the U.S. or overseas.
A review of 200 studies published by the U.S. Institute of Medicine in 2004 found no link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.
In a phone interview with NewsGuard, Soon-Shiong said his comment about polio vaccines and mercury “was not wrong. I was talking about vaccines in general.”
Regarding thimerosal’s debunked connection to autism, Soon-Shiong told NewsGuard: “So what he’s [Kennedy’s] saying, there may be some relative relationship. Clearly, we don’t know if it’s autism, is autism based on that or is autism multifactorial? Clearly there’s been an increase in autism, which means that we need to study it.”
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