No, Gov. Shapiro Didn’t Plan Trump Assassination Attempt
PLUS: Calls to Boycott Coca-Cola Over Nonexistent ICE Raids; Jewish Celebs Didn’t Really Flip Off Kanye West; Obama Daughter Drawn into USAID False Claim Frenzy
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Today:
Baseless claim accuses Gov. Josh Shapiro of being behind attempted Trump assassination
Liberals call for Coke boycott after the company was falsely accused of reporting its Latino workers to ICE
Jewish celebrities did not flip off Kanye West in a video — it was AI
Malia Obama is latest victim of bogus claims about USAID spending
And More …
Today’s newsletter was edited by Eric Effron and Sofia Rubinson.
1. Alex Jones Pushes Bogus Claim that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro Planned Trump Assassination Attempt
What happened: Far-right social media users are falsely claiming that Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was involved in the July 2024 assassination attempt against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The baseless claim has been rejected twice by a Republican district attorney in Pennsylvania.
A closer look: The claim gained traction on Feb. 7, after former Pennsylvania resident Hadassah Feinberg filed what is called a “citizen criminal complaint” to Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger.
In Pennsylvania, any citizen can file such complaints against another state resident, requesting that the state bring charges against the accused. After a complaint is filed, the district attorney in the jurisdiction of the alleged crime may approve it and move forward with charges or reject it.
In the citizen complaint form, Feinberg charged that Shapiro “facilitated, organized, and carried out his plan to assassinate President Donald J. Trump on July 13, 2024.” She provided no evidence, and the complaint was rejected.
In July 2024, Feinberg filed a nearly identical complaint against Shapiro. In an August 2024 letter addressed to Feinberg, Goldinger, a Republican, rejected the complaint, citing ongoing federal investigations into the shooting.
Law enforcement investigations into the attack found that alleged gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks acted alone.
Where it spread: Despite the flimsiness of the claim, it gained widespread attention on X from far-right users after Feinberg posted images of her complaint on Feb. 9.
A Feb. 9 X post from conservative @wake_up_girl_3 stated, “Holy S---! Shapiro being charged with the attempted assassination of Trump! Screw the superbowl this is HUGE!!!” The post garnered 6 million views and 52,000 likes within a day.
Alex Jones, publisher of conspiracy theory website InfoWars.com (NewsGuard Trust Score: 7.5/100), reposted the above post with the caption: “Day one I said the events in Butler Pennsylvania on July 13th 2024 were all part of a carefully prepared plan. The total stand down was obvious to everyone!” Jones’ post accumulated 1.6 million views and 23,000 likes in a day.
In December 2023, Elon Musk restored Jones’ X account after it was banned in 2018, prior to Musk’s acquisition, for calling the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a “hoax.” Jones’ InfoWars site was put up for sale after he filed for bankruptcy to pay nearly $1.5 billion in defamation damages to the families of Sandy Hook victims. In January, a company linked to Jones offered to pay $7 million to buy the site.
Between Feb. 9 and Feb. 11, there were approximately 56,000 online mentions on X of the words “Shapiro,” “complaint,” and “assassination,” according to a social media analytics tool used by NewsGuard. “Shapiro Linked to Trump Assassination Attempt” was trending on X on Feb. 10.
Feinberg did not respond to NewsGuard’s request for comment via Facebook direct message. NewsGuard emailed Shapiro’s office seeking comment on the matter but did not receive a response.
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2. Liberals Demand Coca-Cola Boycott Over Claim Coke Reported its Latino Workers to ICE
By Nicole Dirks
What happened: Liberal TikTok and X users are calling for a boycott of Coca-Cola, spreading an AI-generated video to claim that the company reported its Latino workers in Texas to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and had some of them deported.
A closer look: A Feb. 7 TikTok video posted by liberal user @artgarfield0 showed ICE agents loading people into Coca-Cola cargo containers carried by ICE vehicles, with the overlaid text: “HORRIBLE! Coca-Cola is reporting its own latin workers to ICE! BOYCOTT COCO-COLA!” [sic]. The post received 407,200 views and 25,100 likes in four days.
You can watch the video here:
In a Feb. 8 TikTok post, user @gfjh447 said, “Coca Cola, did y’all hear? Tell me you didn’t funnel a whole lot of illegal immigrants who you hired and lied to them about how there was a meeting and then you had them all cornered by ICE.” The post captioned “THE REASON WHY PEOPLE ARE A [sic] BOYCOTTING COCA-COLA,” garnered 620,600 views and 11,500 likes in three days.
Liberal X user @ceolawyer stated on Feb. 8: “Coca-Cola called the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) on their Hispanic workers… WHILE THEY WERE ON THE JOB! … Make sure to research whatever you’re buying in order to effectively boycott, as Coca-Cola owns A LOT of brands.” The post garnered 12,200 views and 550 likes in three days.
Actually: There are no credible reports of recent ICE raids of Coca-Cola employees in Texas or elsewhere, and the video is AI-generated.
A Coca-Cola Co. spokesperson told NewsGuard in a Feb. 10 email, “We can confirm that the accusations in the video against The Coca-Cola Company are false.”
The video supposedly showing the roundups displays clear signs of manipulation. For example, the people on the video seemingly appear out of thin air and fade in and out of the screen. NewsGuard ran the video through AI detector Hive, which determined with 99.3 percent certainty that it was AI-generated.
Zooming out: This is the second boycott of a major brand due to a false ICE claim in as many weeks.
As NewsGuard reported in Reality Check on Feb. 7, conservatives called for a boycott of the Amazon-owned Ring home security system over false reports that Ring notified customers in the Phoenix area that ICE agents were nearby. In fact, the message was sent by a Ring customer via the “Neighbors” app, not by the company.
NewsGuard attempted to contact the TikTok users who shared the claim for comment via direct messages, but they were not delivered by the platform. X user @ceolawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
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. Video of Jewish Celebrities Flipping Off Kanye West Turned Out to be AI-Generated
What happened: Social media accounts are getting fooled by a video of notable Jewish figures, including Scarlett Johansson, Mike Bloomberg, Jerry Seinfeld, Steven Spielberg, and Mark Zuckerberg, extending their middle fingers to rapper Kanye West, who has made a series of antisemitic remarks, including, “I’m a Nazi … I love Hitler.”
While the message of the video may align with the views of the celebrities, the footage is entirely AI-generated.
A closer look: On Feb. 11, Israeli generative AI entrepreneur Ori Bejerano posted a video to Instagram of the celebrities wearing shirts with a Star of David enclosed in a hand sticking up the middle finger, alongside the word “KANYE.” The video ends with: “Enough is Enough. Join the Fight Against Antisemitism.”
The caption of the video did not indicate that it was created using AI, although Bejerano’s username on Instagram is @oribejerano_ai and his bio states that he is a “Generative AI Expert.”
You can watch the video here:
Context: Directly following an advertisement for West’s clothing brand during the Super Bowl, Kanye West’s website featured a single item for sale: a white t-shirt with a black swastika for $20.
Where it spread: The video of the Jewish celebrities was shared widely among social media users, many of whom appeared to believe the clip was authentic.
X user @VerbalKintSoze, a pro-Isreal account, posted the video on Feb. 11 with the caption, “F--- you Kanye.” The post, which did not indicate that the video was AI-generated, garnered 29,800 views and 500 likes in one day.
Pro-Israel X user @Never_Again2020 also appeared to view the video as authentic, posting it alongside the text, “Some famous creatives sporting a t-shirt that features a very succinct message for Kanye West.” The video received 20,600 views and 370 likes within a day.
Actually: As noted above, the video is AI-generated.
Scarlett Johansson, whose image was used in the video, told People (Trust Score: 100/100) that she is pushing for government limits on AI-generated content: “I am a Jewish woman who has no tolerance for antisemitism or hate speech of any kind. But I also firmly believe that the potential for hate speech multiplied by AI is a far greater threat than any one person who takes accountability for it. We must call out the misuse of AI, no matter its messaging, or we risk losing a hold on reality.”
NewsGuard contacted representatives of the other people depicted in the video: Woody Allen, Sam Altman, Jack Black, Mike Bloomberg, Sergey Brin, Sacha Baron Cohen, Drake, Art Garfunkel, Jake Gyllenhaal, Lenny Kravitz, Lisa Kudrow, Mila Kunis, Adam Levine, Larry Page, Natalie Portman, Adam Sandler, David Schwimmer, Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Simon, Steven Spielberg, Ben Stiller, and Mark Zuckerberg. None of them responded.
If you see something, say something
If you see or hear something that you think may be provably false, please alert NewsGuard via realitycheck@newsguardtech.com and we'll do our best to get to the bottom of it. Note: Tips should not include content that you simply disagree with, however strongly.
4. Malia Obama Did Not Receive USAID Funding to Become a Penpal to Impoverished Children
By Sarah Komar
What happened: Conservative social media users have again been tricked by a Facebook page that delights in punking conservatives. This time conservatives have been lured into falsely claiming that former first daughter Malia Obama, now 26-years-old, received $2.2 million in funding from USAID to exchange letters with children in low-income countries.
A closer look: Amid the dismantling of USAID, social media accounts shared a graphic featuring a photo of Malia Obama with the text, “Can someone explain why Malia Obama received $2.2 million in funding from USAID? Enquiring, taxpaying minds want to know.”
In a Feb. 12 X post, conservative user @Sassafrass_84 shared the graphic and said: “Apparently, she wrote to ‘dozens of kids.’ She doesn’t think she should pay it back.” The post received 532,000 views and 5,600 likes in a day.
Conservative pastor Johnny Branham shared the graphic in a Feb. 12 Instagram post, captioning it: “The Deep State is Crumbling and the Crime of the Century is being EXPOSED!!! I want them ALL PROSECUTED.” The post received 18,200 likes in a day.
Actually: The graphic originated as satire, published by a prolific political satire Facebook account.
The false claim was created by America’s Last Line of Defense (ALLOD), a Facebook page that punks conservatives by attempting to bait them into sharing phony headlines. The page’s description states: “The flagship of the ALLOD network of trolley and propaganda for cash. Nothing on this page is real.”
The page posted the graphic, which has a small “ALLOD” logo in the lower right corner, on Feb. 9. The next day, the page posted: “Malia Obama says she deserved every penny of the $2.3 million she got from USAID. ‘I provided penpal services for dozens of lonely kids in impoverished countries.’”
A search of USASpending.gov, an online database that catalogues federal spending, showed no payments made to Malia Obama by USAID or by any other U.S. government agency.
Zooming out: America’s Last Line of Defense has had recent success fooling the conservative mediasphere into believing its unlabeled satire items are fact.
In January 2025, NewsGuard identified three false claims that gained significant traction after emerging from the Facebook page.
The false claim that FEMA transferred $2 billion from immigrant aid to North Carolina disaster relief under Donald Trump.
The false claim that the Episcopal Church removed Bishop Mariann Budde from her position at the Washington National Cathedral after she gave a sermon at Trump’s inauguration asking him to show “mercy” to immigrants and LGBT children.
The false claim that a federal judge ruled that presidents cannot issue preemptive pardons, possibly voiding some of Joe Biden’s pardons.
Members can read NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints for these claims here.
5. Introducing NewsGuard’s German Elections Misinformation Tracking Center
In the run-up to Germany’s snap elections on Feb. 23, NewsGuard is identifying and debunking false claims related to the vote, including disinformation advanced by malign Russian actors using fake local news sites in Germany to target mainstream political parties that support NATO and Ukraine.
Among the falsehoods identified so far: that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz owned a villa in Los Angeles that burned during the January 2025 California fires, that Germany plans to import 1.9 million Kenyan workers, and that a woman named Milina Graz was sexually abused by German Green Party candidate Robert Habeck.
To stay up-to-date on the latest disinformation campaigns targeting Germany, visit NewsGuard’s German Elections Misinformation Tracking Center here.
AI Content Farm Tracker: 1,254 Sites and Counting
AI content farms are taking over the internet, and NewsGuard analysts track their spread. Read more about AI content farms, and how they are proliferating:
Reality Check is produced by Co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, and the NewsGuard team.
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