Trump Shares—Then Deletes—Conspiracy Theories About FBI On Truth Social

Topline

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday shared multiple posts from followers that made several evidence-free claims about the FBI, the Jan. 6 riots and Covid-19 vaccines on his Truth Social platform, which he has used in recent weeks to rail against the Department of Justice’s ongoing probe into his possible mishandling of classified government documents.

Key Facts

Screenshots of the now-deleted posts shared on Twitter by Politico’s Kyle Cheney show Trump boosting old QAnon conspiracy theory posts shared by his followers.

One of the posts shared by the former president makes the baseless claim that the “FBI colluded with Antifa” to carry out the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, despite the outcome of multiple legal cases proving the involvement of Trump supporters.

Trump also shared a post that included the image of a fabricated tweet by his daughter Ivanka Trump criticizing the Biden administration and “useless” vaccines.

While those controversial reposts have now been deleted, multiple other memes attacking President Joe Biden’s domestic policies, the media and one showing Attorney General Merrick Garland with a Communist ‘Sickle and Hammer’ lapel pin were still up late Tuesday morning.

Trump appears to have also deleted a post he made in the morning attacking a recently retired FBI agent who was in charge of investigating Hunter Biden.

The deleted post was replaced with one which again falsely claims the agent was “fired” and also “in charge of the Mar-a-Lago Raid, and the Election investigation.”

Key Background

In a post on Monday, Trump demanded to be reinstated as president or “a new Election, immediately” in reaction to reports that Facebook has temporarily restricted the reach of a news story about Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 elections based on the FBI’s earlier warnings about foreign election inference campaigns. Despite the FBI stating it had issued “general warnings” and did not specify the Hunter Biden story, Trump accused the agency of burying the story and claimed, “if they didn’t, Trump would have easily won the 2020 Presidential Election.” A report published on Monday by the NewsGuard—which monitors online misinformation—Trump and other Truth Social executives are actively involved in boosting conspiracy theories on the platform, including ones linked to the far-right QAnon movement.

Big Number

65. That is the total number of times Trump has reposted or boosted QAnon conspiracies on his Truth Social account since April 2022, according to NewsGuard’s research.

Further Reading

Trump and His Truth Social Platform Actively Promote QAnon (NewsGuard)

Trump demands reinstatement as ‘rightful’ president or ‘a new Election, immediately!’ as some Republicans seek distance from him (Business Insider)