New Walz Sexual Harassment ‘Accuser’ Created by AI
PLUS: Liberals Cite AI Image to Accuse Trump of Being a Cheapskate; Conservatives Claim Harris Secretly Used a Teleprompter
Welcome to Reality Check, your inside look at how misinformation online is undermining trust — and who’s behind it.
Today:
A new false pedophilia claim about Walz was produced by AI
Trump labeled “cheapskate” over AI-generated photo showing “check” for hurricane victims
Conservatives wrongly accuse Harris of using teleprompter to cheat at town hall
Fact or fiction? Introducing NewsGuard’s misinformation quiz
And more…
Today’s newsletter was edited by Jack Brewster, Eric Effron, and Sofia Rubinson.
1. Deepfake of Former Walz Student Accuses Walz of Sexual Abuse

What happened: Pro-Kremlin and QAnon influencers are spreading a new false sexual abuse accusation against Tim Walz, in what appears to be part of a wider campaign ahead of the 2024 election aimed at portraying Walz — whose political appeal is as an everyman schoolteacher and coach — as a pedophile who took advantage of his students.
Context: The false accusation emerged after John Dougan, the former Florida deputy sheriff turned propagandist for Russia, pushed a fake claim that a foreign exchange student from Kazakhstan was “groomed” by Walz when he was a teacher at Mankato West High School in 2004. The U.S. State Department, which oversees the foreign exchange program the student claims to have participated in, told NewsGuard that no such student attended Walz’s Minnesota school.
A closer look: On Oct. 16, a video was posted on an X account featuring a person who claimed to be a former student of Walz, alleging he was the victim of sexual assault by Walz in 1997.
You can watch the video here:
The video received millions of views when it was reposted by an anonymously run pro-QAnon account @TheWakeninq that NewsGuard has found to previously advance false claims promoted by Dougan’s network, including that cocaine found in the White House in 2023 belonged to Kamala Harris.
Actually: The man in the video claims to be Matthew Metro, the real name of a 47-year-old who graduated from Mankato West High School in 1997 and identifies himself on social media as a choreographer at the Viktor Yeliohin International Ballet Academy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. But the man in the video is not Metro. It is an AI-generated persona.
The video contains multiple signs of AI, including unnatural and inconsistent movements, disproportionate facial features, words that are out of sync with the movements of the man’s mouth, and disappearing teeth. AI detection tool TrueMedia found “substantial evidence” that the video was manipulated.
The face and voice of the man in the video do not resemble those of Metro, according to a NewsGuard comparison of Metro’s earlier authentic social media posts and the video.
Metro, who appears to have been inactive on social media since May 2021, did not respond to two phone calls, two emails, a LinkedIn message, and a Facebook message from NewsGuard seeking comment about the claim and the video.
A NewsGuard review of Metro’s authentic social media profiles found no posts or videos accusing Walz of sexually abusing him.
Tricks of their trade: The Gnida Project, an anonymously run group of volunteers that tracks Russian influence operations, said the video “bears classic characteristics” of Storm-1516, a Russian disinformation campaign dubbed by Microsoft that is reported to be an offshoot of the Internet Research Agency.
The agency is a notorious Russian troll farm sanctioned by the U.S. for meddling in U.S. elections.
Storm-1516 campaigns are characteristic of the work of Dougan, who typically stages “first-person testimony” from a fictitious persona who claims to have evidence of some outrageous act or corruption or bad behavior. This testimony is then cited as an authoritative source by Russian disinformation accounts and websites.
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2. Cheap Shot: AI Image of Trump’s Donation for Hurricane Victims Goes Viral
By Sam Howard
What happened: Liberal social media users are circulating an image that was generated by AI that is purporting to have been aired during a Fox News broadcast that shows former President Donald Trump holding an oversized check for $1,300 for victims of Hurricane Helene and Milton.
Context: The implication, if the image had been authentic, was that Trump is cheap, considering his wealth and status.
Forbes (NewsGuard Trust Score: 100/100) estimates that Trump is worth $5.5 billion, although other reports suggest that he is worth much less.
A closer look: Many anti-Trump social media users mocked Trump for the modest size of the donation, apparently believing the AI-generated photo to be real.
X user @SarahBCalif, who describes herself as a Democrat in her biography, posted the image and stated, “$1.3k is less than what Trump spends monthly on makeup and KFC.” The post received approximately 3.2 million views and 90,000 likes in three days.
Self-proclaimed human rights and racial justice advocate X user @MJFree said: “Is this real? A ‘billionaire’ is donating $1300??? Embarrassing.” The post garnered more than 1 million views and 34,000 likes in three days.
Actually: The image is AI-generated and appears to have been first posted on Reddit by a user who described it as parody.
On Oct. 13, Reddit user BobbyKristina, who frequently posts AI-generated images mocking Trump, uploaded the check image to the channel r/EnoughTrumpSpam, captioned, “Parody: Trump donating to help those affected by the Hurricanes.”
A Fox News spokesperson told fact-checking organization Verify (Trust Score: 100/100): The photo of Trump holding the check “did not air on Fox News.”
Tricks of our trade: The image bears the telltale signs of AI.
Check the text: The check Trump holds includes nonsensical writing on the “pay to the order of” line stating, “Trump Manie Mar M ATFAL,” and unintelligible characters where the date should be.
Compare reference photos: The red box under the Fox News logo is blank, when it typically displays the word “Channel” in real broadcasts.
An AI-detection tool used by NewsGuard found “substantial evidence of manipulation” in the image.
2024 U.S. Election Misinformation Monitoring Center
Our team of analysts is keeping you up to date as we cover misinformation surrounding this year’s U.S. presidential election. See below for the latest misinformation claims we’ve identified, and visit NewsGuard’s 2024 U.S. Election Misinformation Monitoring Center for detailed debunks of each claim.
MYTH: Tim Walz wrote in an X post that Russia engineered Hurricane Milton
MYTH: Tim Walz “groomed” a former foreign exchange student from Kazakhstan
MYTH: Fox News coverage shows Trump with an oversized $1,300 check for hurricane victims
MYTH: The Atlantic published an article titled 'To Save Democracy Harris May Need to Steal an Election’
MYTH: Republican strategist Karl Rove campaigned for Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania
Misinformation Quiz: Want to see how well you can distinguish fact from fiction? Select whether you think this narrative is real or fake to test your misinformation spotting skills. Scroll to the bottom to see if you were correct with NewsGuard’s fact check!
3. One more thing … Phantom Prompter: Harris Falsely Accused of Using a Teleprompter During Univision Town Hall

What happened: Conservatives are circulating a selectively cropped video of Kamala Harris at a Univision town hall on Oct. 10, falsely claiming that she relied on a teleprompter to answer questions from Latino voters.
Univision (Trust Score: 95/100) is a Spanish-language television network based in the U.S.
A closer look: The claim, which has now gotten millions of views, appears to have originated in an Oct. 10 post on X by @TrumpWarRoom, an official campaign account for Donald Trump.
The account shared a 13-second clip from the Univision town hall, showing a teleprompter displaying an unchanging, unreadable message. The post, which included a caption that simply stated, “The teleprompter,” followed by the “eyes” emoji, garnered over 2 million views within a day. (The eyes emoji is commonly used to convey suspicion or draw attention, suggesting something is questionable.)
Citing the video shared by Trump War Room, prominent Republicans and conservative commentators with millions of followers each, including Vivek Ramaswamy, Rudi Giuliani, Alex Jones, Charlie Kirk, and Tim Pool, accused Harris of using a teleprompter to cheat during the town hall.
Conservative commentator Benny Johnson posted the clip on X, stating: “BREAKING: Univision accidentally broadcast proof that Kamala used a teleprompter at her town hall. Watch them panic when they realize they were showing the prompter live on-air.” The post received nearly 15 million views and 180,000 likes in five days.
The claim gained further traction on sites including The Gateway Pundit (Trust Score: 30/100) and The Conservative Treehouse (Trust Score: 20/100).
Actually: Univision explained in an Oct. 11 broadcast that the teleprompter in front of Harris displayed instructions in Spanish for the moderator during the first six minutes of the town hall before switching to a timer.
According to Univision, the message read, in part, “Y ahora vamos con Ivett Castillo que quiere contarle una historia familiar,” which translates to “And now we go to [participant] Ivett Castillo who wants to tell you a family story.”
NewsGuard reviewed the full video of the town hall posted on YouTube by Univision and found that the screen in front of Harris and moderator Enrique Acevedo was primarily used as a timer throughout the event.
Repeat offense? This is not the first time the Harris campaign was falsely accused of using technology to cheat in public appearances.
After the September 2024 presidential debate between Harris and Trump, conservatives claimed that Harris wore earrings with a hidden earpiece to receive responses.
Tim Walz was accused of using a teleprompter during the October 2024 vice presidential debate.
Reality Check members can read NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints for these two claims here.
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.
Misinformation Quiz Answer: Misinformation!
Debunk: Project 2025 does not contain a proposal to create a national pregnancy registry, which some social media users have claimed would require women to report detailed information about their reproductive health to the government when they become pregnant. Ellen Keenan, a spokesperson for Project 2025, told PolitiFact in September 2024 that the claim is “completely false and ridiculous.”
Project 2025, a policy agenda created by dozens of conservative groups, does propose increased monitoring of abortions in the country, stating that “The CDC’s [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] abortion surveillance and maternity mortality reporting systems are woefully inadequate. … Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.” However, the document does not suggest that a future administration implement a national registry that would track all pregnancies in the U.S.
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