Fact check: Video shows Rep. Jim Jordan question Dr. Anthony Fauci

Kate S. Petersen, USA TODAY
·4 min read

The claim: Dr. Fauci 'breaks down in tears' after Rep. Jordan reveals 'implicating' documents

USA TODAY has recently debunked a series of social media posts that feature videos of politicians paired with misleading and attention-grabbing captions. A new example claims to show White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci crying during a confrontation with Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

"HOT! Fauci BREAKS DOWN In TEARS As Sen (sic) Jim Jordan REVEALS Shocking Documents IMPLICATING Him," reads the caption of the video in a Nov. 8 Facebook post.

The video was viewed nearly 500,000 times in a week.

But the caption is wrong. One part of the video shows Jordan questioning Fauci, but Jordan, who is a member of the House of Representatives, not the Senate, does not present any documents while Fauci is present. Fauci does not appear to cry.

USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who shared the post for comment.

Follow us on Facebook! Like our page to get updates throughout the day on our latest debunks

Jordan does not confront Fauci with documents in video

The video featured in the social media post is composed of two clips edited together.

In the first, Jordan is shown speaking with witnesses at the June 29, 2021, Republican Forum on the Origins of COVID-19.

At one point in the clip, Jordan holds a piece of paper and appears to reference a January 2020 email sent to Fauci by Scripps Research Institute virologist Kristian Andersen. In the email, Andersen told Fauci that the COVID-19 virus had features that could have been artificially engineered. (Andersen later said that further study led him to reject the theory that COVID-19 was artificially engineered because "features in SARS-CoV-2 that initially suggested possible engineering were identified in related coronaviruses, meaning that features that initially looked unusual to us weren’t," he told the New York Times in June 2021.)

Jordan seems to reference the email to criticize Fauci's COVID-19 pandemic decision-making.

But Jordan is not responsible for "revealing" the email for the first time.

The email had been made public earlier that year after it was acquired by Buzzfeed News through the Freedom of Information Act.

Further, Fauci is not shown – crying or otherwise – in this first clip.

The second clip shows a heated exchange between Jordan and Fauci that took place at the April 15, 2021, House Select Coronavirus Crisis Subcommittee Hearing on the Pandemic Response.

In the clip, Jordan does not present any documents, nor does Fauci appear to cry.

This style of misinformation, in which a misleading caption is paired with a legitimate video, is called "false framing," Mike Caulfield, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, previously told USA TODAY.

Fact check: False claim video shows Sen. John Kennedy presenting evidence of '2020 fraud'

While the caption is obviously wrong if someone watches the entire video, “the majority of people scroll past these with the sound off," Caulfield said. “The fact it autoplays silently makes it engaging, without undermining the (inaccurate) framing.”

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that Fauci "breaks down in tears" after Jordan reveals "implicating" documents. In the video included in this post, Jordan questions witnesses during two separate hearings, but Fauci is not shown crying. Fauci was not present at the hearing where Jordan references an email while holding a piece of paper, and the document involved had been public since earlier that year. The document does not implicate Fauci in anything.

Our fact-check sources:

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: False claim video shows Fauci crying during confrontation