PolitiFact weighs in on false claims about Walz and how to spot disinformation

A senior U.S. intelligence official has found that Russia is behind viral disinformation about Gov. Tim Walz. An account on X spread false claims against the Democratic vice presidential nominee but a closer look at the posts reveals inconsistencies and inaccuracies.

Despite all of this, the posts have been viewed millions of times and have spread to other social media platforms.

“We found these claims to be completely unsubstantiated,” said Sara Swann, who’s with PolitiFact and did a thorough investigation to debunk the baseless story.

The X account has been deleted since Swann’s fact check. She adds that as more mis- and disinformation spreads online during this election, it’s important to take a moment to cast a critical eye.

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“They want you to have an emotional reaction to them,” Swann said. “I always tell people to take a minute, to take a pause, and really question whether something is true or not and to rely on news sources like PolitiFact that debunk these claims.”

To hear the Swann interview, click on the audio player above. The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

We need to stress these are false allegations, but what do they claim?

This pro-Trump X account claimed to have insider knowledge that Tim Walz had “an inappropriate relationship with a minor” when he was a public school teacher. But we found these claims to be completely unsubstantiated.

You’ve investigated them and the supposed evidence shared by the account. What did you see that didn’t add up?

One of the first things we noticed that looked questionable was the X account’s screenshots of supposed email correspondence. The emails didn’t match the layout of Proton Mail, Yahoo Mail or RocketMail, all email servers that the account said it used to contact the former student.

The email screenshots that the X account shared also had inconsistent formatting for the dates. For example, one of the emails lacked a comma after the day of the week, and another email showed a leading zero in the day, “August 01,” but the other emails just had a single digit for the day.

Another email screenshot showed a cursor, which indicated that the email may have been forged. And since PolitiFact published our fact check, the account has actually been deleted.

What was done with it on X and other platforms where it appeared?

We contacted X to see if the platform deleted the account or if the user deleted its own account, and we did not receive a response back. So it’s unclear how exactly it was deleted.

On other platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and Threads, the posts that were sharing this claim were tagged with our fact-check, noting that it was false. On TikTok, a video that was sharing this claim was taken down.

How can people do their own fact checking? What do they have to keep in mind when they see accusations on social media?

It’s important to keep in mind that [these] claims — they want you to have an emotional reaction to them.

I always tell people to take a minute, to take a pause, and really question whether something is true or not and to rely on news sources like PolitiFact that debunk these claims.

Go to multiple sources, not just one source. We don’t rely on just one source to fact-check claims. The average person should definitely check multiple sources to verify claims and really just dig into something and not just take stuff at a surface level, first glance.

In the end, concerning these allegations about Gov. Tim Walz, what’s the rating on the Truth-O-Meter?

We rated it “pants on fire,” which is our worst rating. There was no verifiable evidence to support this claim.