Misinformation Watch

In a press conference Thursday, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, claimed to have evidence of voter fraud in Michigan based on sworn affidavits from four individuals. According to Giuliani, those four affiants reported seeing "thousands and thousands" of Biden ballots in what appeared to be a food truck hauled into the Detroit, Michigan polling center at 4:30 a.m after all Republican inspectors had left the site.   

"What they swear to is that at 4:30 in the morning a truck pulled up to the Detroit center where they were counting ballots. The people thought it was food so they all ran to the truck. Wasn't food. It was thousands and thousands of ballots," Giuliani said. 

Facts First: A Michigan judge ruled that such affidavits claiming widespread voter fraud were baseless.   

In a ruling on November 13, Judge Timothy Kenny of the Third Judicial Circuit Court of Michigan invalidated the affidavits Giuliani mentioned. The judge ruled that the claims regarding the nature and quantity of the ballots were speculations at best and sinister at worst. 

Republican challenger Andrew Sitto implied the "tens of thousands of ballots" he saw cast for former vice president Joe Biden were proof of fraud, but the judge considered those ballots "not surprising."  

"It is not surprising that many of the votes being observed by Mr. Sitto were votes cast for Mr. Biden in light of the fact that former Vice President Biden received approximately 220,000 more votes than President Trump," Judge Kenny wrote in his ruling. 

Sitto also suggested that the batch of ballots referenced previously were somehow different because they were brought in through the back from vehicles with out-of-state license plates.  

State Elections Director Christopher Thomas, who was present at the TCF Center in Detroit where ballots were being counted, refuted the allegations in an affidavit submitted to the judge and cited in the ruling. According to the judge’s ruling, Thomas stated that all ballots delivered to the center were brought in through the back and that Detroit employed out-of-state rental trucks to deliver them. 

President Trump was apparently duped by a Twitter account purporting to be his older sister Elizabeth Trump Grau.

On Friday morning Trump shared an article on Twitter from right-wing site WayneDupree.com about a Twitter account supposedly belonging to his sister, and thanked her for her public support. The article claimed Trump Grau had issued a "rare and bold statement" on the election and that it "prove[d] how much she believes in her brother."

However, the article was based on tweets from a Twitter account which, according to the account itself, is a parody not actually belonging to Trump's sister. "I would've clarified sooner that I was a parody but I certainly didn't anticipate President Trump himself taking notice of the account ... it's on me for not making that clear," the account wrote in a tweet later Friday.

A Twitter spokesperson said it suspended the account on Friday afternoon for violating its rules on platform manipulation and spam.

Vice News reported that when it reached a woman who identified herself as Trump’s sister on Friday she told them, “I’m trying to delete it,” and “I don’t even belong to Twitter.”

The article the President shared has been updated with a note that says: "While this has not been officially “fact-checked” by social media executives and professionals, we’re hearing from many others that this is not actually the account of Ms. Elizabeth Trump, but is actually a parody account. If this is true, we deeply regret the error and apologize."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After yesterday’s wild and fact-free press conference from President Donald Trump’s legal team, it’s clear that the campaign’s efforts to cast doubt and confusion over election results won't die down anytime soon. 

One way Trump and his allies have tried to prove their baseless allegations of widespread  fraud is by claiming that thousands and thousands of dead people were on states' voter rolls across the country.

CNN has already debunked viral allegations of dead people voting in Michigan and Georgia, two states which Trump won in 2016 and lost in 2020.

The President and his allies have made similar efforts in Pennsylvania, where they’ve claimed that the identities of several deceased individuals were used to cast ballots in this election. 

Laura Humphrey, a spokesperson for Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State told CNN, “There is no factual basis” for those claims and noted “[a]llegations of fraud and illegal activity have been repeatedly debunked and dismissed by the courts.” 

On Wednesday, Trump escalated this narrative of voter fraud in Pennsylvania. The President tweeted a quote he attributed to the pro-Trump outlet One America News Network, which alleged tens of thousands of dead people were on the commonwealth’s voter roll. 

 “'Evidence of voter fraud continues to grow,” Trump’s tweet reads, “including 20,000 dead people on the Pennsylvania voters roll and many thousands all over the Country. Now, there has been an artificial number of votes in favor of Joe Biden.’”

Twitter attached a label to the tweet that says, "This claim about election fraud is disputed."

In October, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which describes itself as an election integrity non-profit firm, filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania federal court alleging that the state’s voter rolls included nearly 21,000 dead people. 

The case was dismissed five days later on October 20.

PILF then filed an amended lawsuit on Nov. 5 alleging that the state wasn’t properly maintaining its voter rolls. The secretary of state filed a motion to dismiss this week.

“The original complaint was brought before a federal court -- and soundly rejected. The court found no deficiencies in how PA maintains its voter rolls, and the plaintiffs have no new allegations that any deceased person voted in the 2020 election,” Attorney General Josh Shapiro told CNN in an email.

Facebook confirmed on Thursday that it took down a large private group dedicated to anti-vaccine content.

The company said the group was flagged for violating its policies on recidivism -- which stops group admins from creating another group similar to the one the company removed -- as well as violating its policies against QAnon.

NBC News previously reported on the anti-vaxxer Facebook group, which it reported played up stories of vaccine deaths and targeted grieving mothers.

Still, plenty of anti-vaxxer groups remain on Facebook. A cursory search by CNN Business found at least a dozen Facebook groups advocating against vaccines, with membership ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands of users.

One group dedicated to stories about supposed “injuries” after vaccines has nearly 50,000 members. For example, one woman linked her childhood vaccinations to her later having seizures, hearing loss, wild mood swings and vision problems. In their descriptions, these anti-vaxxer groups include false and dangerous claims that vaccines aren’t effective and some push conspiracy theories about impending Covid-19 vaccine.

Public health experts say vaccines are extremely safe, and serious adverse reactions are very rare. Scientists have repeatedly and consistently debunked the most common anti-vaccine myth, the idea that there is a link between vaccinations and the development of autism in children. Reputable organizations such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics say that vaccination for children is crucial to public health.

Facebook groups related to vaccines all have an information box from Facebook that says: “This Group Discusses Vaccines. When it comes to health, everyone wants reliable, up-to-date information. Before joining this group, you might be interested in information that can help answer questions you may have about vaccines. Visit the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

In a wild, tangent-filled and often contentious press briefing led by President Donald Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, the Trump campaign's legal team laid out its case for widespread voter fraud in the election. The roughly 90-minute briefing was overflowing with falsehoods and conspiracy theories.

At no point did Trump's legal team offer any proof for their allegations of widespread fraud. Jenna Ellis, a legal adviser for the campaign, said the group was laying out an "introductory statement" with more to come, and called the team an "elite strike force." Also working for the campaign, attorney Sidney Powell made extreme, baseless claims about communist Venezuela and George Soros supposedly interfering in the US election. Giuliani on multiple occasions made allegations citing individuals he said couldn't be revealed for their own safety and wellbeing.

Many of their specific claims have already been refuted by federal election security experts and a wide, bipartisan array of election administrators across the country.

Read more here

The Georgia recount for the presidential election, which was scheduled to end yesterday, is expected to confirm Joe Biden's win and find no widespread fraud. But that likely won't be enough to stop President Donald Trump from spreading disinformation about the results.

Throughout the recount, Trump has continued to tweet out falsehoods around Georgia ballots and his campaign has followed suit.

On Wednesday, the Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party David Shafer tweeted that someone monitoring the recount found a "9,626 vote error in the DeKalb County hand count," giving Biden 10,707 votes instead of the correct number of 1,081 votes." He also claimed the "error" could have given Biden's numbers a significant boost in the closely-contested state had it not been caught.

The Trump campaign retweeted the post, feeding Trump's narrative that the recount is a "joke" and rife with fraud.

Within hours, Twitter added a label to Shafer's tweet saying, "this claim about election fraud is disputed," because it violated the company's civic integrity policy.

Facts First: These claims are misleading and need context. State election officials say the county accurately reported its results after Election Day but that there was a mistake made during this week's recount. The error was caught, officials say, and was never at risk of affecting the vote totals reported for either Biden or Trump.

Read more here

William Hartmann, a Republican member of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, who temporarily blocked certification of election results in the Michigan county on Tuesday, has recently shared conspiracy theories about the election and Covid-19 on Facebook, CNN has found. He also shared racist posts about President Barack Obama during his presidency. 

Read more here

Twitter launched its own version of disappearing posts this week, called Fleets, to some fanfare (and eye rolls). But it's had to pause the rollout as the feature has been plagued with glitches, calling into question whether the product was fully ready.

Unlike typical tweets, Fleets do not receive retweets, likes or public replies, with Twitter hoping they will reduce the pressure many people feel on social media. But ephemeral content will bring fresh challenges for Twitter, such as how it will effectively moderate misinformation, harassment and abuse on content that disappears after 24 hours.

The timing of Twitter's launch is curious – not only because it's adopting "stories" so many years after rivals – but also as it comes in the wake of a contentious election in the US. Ahead of the election, Twitter made several changes to its platform and created new policies to try to minimize the harmful impacts of misinformation. Though Joe Biden has been projected President-elect, that hasn’t curbed the flow of online misinformation or baseless claims of voter fraud, which are being pushed by President Trump and his allies on Twitter.

The company said it labeled about 300,000 tweets for content that was disputed or potentially misleading during a two-week period covering the election, and its aggressive efforts to provide context on such content continue.

How effectively and consistently Twitter will tackle misinformation or abuse in Fleets is an open question. Twitter spokesperson Aly Pavela said Fleets will be subject to the same rules as regular tweets. For example, if President Trump decides to Fleet misinformation, the Fleet would receive a similar fact-check label as a tweet would.

Twitter will rely on user flags to manage abuse on Fleets, as well as its automated systems. Users can report a Fleet as abusive or harmful, misleading about a political election or other civic event or say it expresses intentions of self-harm or suicide.

Extremism researcher Marc-Andre Argentino experimented with sharing a variety of misinformation and hateful content in Fleets, and most were not marked with a warning label.

For example, a Fleet that falsely said "Vaccines don't work" and one containing an untrue conspiracy theory about Covid-19, were left untouched. Meanwhile, Argentino's Fleet saying "5g causes covid" -- another baseless conspiracy theory -- had a warning before it.

The warning label said: "Some or all of the content shared in this Fleet conflicts with guidance from public health experts regarding COVID-19." Users had to click through the warning before viewing the Fleet.

It's unclear why Twitter took action on the latter conspiracy theory, but not the former. Twitter's lengthy policies about Covid-19 misinformation say: "We will continue to remove demonstrably false or potentially misleading content that has the highest risk of causing harm."

"We are always listening to feedback and working to improve Twitter to make sure it’s safe for people to contribute to the public conversation," Pavela said. "We’ll take enforcement action against any Twitter rule violations in Fleets accordingly."

It's worth noting a lot of content beyond Fleets goes unmoderated on Twitter, even when it violates its rules, but because Fleets disappear so quickly, it will likely be harder for the company to take action fast enough. The company said its systems will store Fleets for a limited amount of time past their 24 hour expiration to give it more time to review user flags and potentially take action. However, by that point it would be too late to label misinformation.

There are also other concerns with Fleets raising questions about whether the product was ready to be fully rolled out. Beyond general glitches and lag, there is a loophole which allows someone to tag you in a Fleet even if you've blocked them, opening the door for potential harassment. (Twitter said it's working to fix this).

Late Wednesday, Twitter said it was "slowing down" the rollout of Fleets to fix "performance and stability problems."

When asked on a call with reporters earlier this week about how the company will approach moderation as it rolls out Fleets and tests new audio-focused features, Christine Su, senior product manager at Twitter said: “It’s really important for us to be building controls and features that people can take with them to feel more comfortable and safe as they move through the variety of spaces that we’re building.”

She added that the company is doing “a ton” behind the scenes with expanding its rules and policies to prevent abuse and harassment before it happens, although she didn’t elaborate further. “We’re going to continue to do that with every space that we’re working on," Su said.

President Donald Trump continues to baselessly claim that the election results will shift in his favor in Georgia, where the state plans to announce the results of the statewide audit around noon on Thursday.

Trump baselessly claimed the results would change after signature matching in a tweet and made accusations of widespread fraud, despite no credible evidence, in another tweet, both aimed at Gov. Brian Kemp, a Trump ally.

But Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger told CNN’s Jake Tapper Wednesday that once the audit ends, he believes Biden will carry the state and that they have “not seen widespread voter fraud.”

The Republican leader also intimated that Trump lost Georgia because he questioned the mail-in ballot process in the fall, saying: “24,000 Republicans that actually voted absentee in the June primary did not come out in the Fall and vote. They did not vote absentee nor did they vote in early voting or the day of the election. 24,000… that’s the margin right there.”

The Secretary of State plans to post county-by-county tallies with timestamp, so the public can view the results of the audit. Georgia’s voting systems implementation manager Gabriel Sterling said that the state has finished auditing virtually all ballots from the presidential race. About 5 million Georgians voted. The Secretary has until Friday to certify the results.

Trump would have two business days after state certification to ask for a recount. Trump called on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to “get it done!”

Trump tweeted: "Thousands of uncounted votes discovered in Georgia counties. When the much more important signature match takes place, the State will flip Republican, and very quickly. Get it done! @BrianKempGA

In a separate tweet, he said: "Almost ZERO ballots rejected in Georgia this election. In years past, close to 4%. Not possible. Must have signature check on envelopes now. Very easy to do. Dems fighting because they got caught. Far more votes than needed for flip. Republicans must get tough! @BrianKempGA"

As of 10:30 am ET on Thursday, neither tweet was labeled by Twitter.