Lauren Boebert didn't post about Trump charges, 'our crimes.' Image is fabricated | Fact check

The claim: Image shows Lauren Boebert post stating Trump charges mean 'they could charge any of us for our crimes’

An April 22 Threads post (direct link, archive link) shows what appears to be a social media post from Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado expressing concern about the criminal case against former President Donald Trump.

“If they charge President Trump for his crimes, they could charge any of us for our crimes,” reads part of the purported post from Boebert.

The Threads post received more than 1,000 likes in two days. Similar versions accumulated hundreds of additional likes.

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Our rating: Altered

Boebert didn't post this. The image is fabricated. It was originally posted in March 2023 by a satirical account, but a label identifying it as a parody was cropped out of the version shown in the April 2024 post.

Fabricated image originated on parody account

Trump faces a total of 88 charges across four criminal cases, including 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an attempt to conceal a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. Republicans, including Boebert, have rallied around Trump as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee in the wake of the charges. They claim the indictments are politically motivated.

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But Boebert didn’t make the post attributed to her. The purported post shown in the image does not appear on the X account it references and is “definitely fake,” Jeff Small, the congresswoman's chief of staff, told USA TODAY.

The fabricated image originated from the satirical account @FaithRubPol, which shared it in a March 31, 2023, post on X.

The account's bio states that “most of the images we share are parodies.” In the original version of the image, the word “parody” appears in the lower right corner near the number of views it supposedly accumulated. This disclaimer was cropped out of the version posted to Threads.

The Threads post is an example of what could be called "stolen satire," where content originally presented as satire is captured and reposted in a way that makes it appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, which is what happened here.

Trump’s legal issues have spawned significant misinformation on social media. USA TODAY has debunked false claims that Stormy Daniels wore a mushroom-printed dress to court, that Trump was prosecuted for taking out and repaying a loan and that President Joe Biden ordered Trump’s indictment in his classified documents case.

USA TODAY reached out to the Threads user who shared the post but did not immediately receive a response.

Our fact-check sources:

• Jeff Small, April 23, Email exchange with USA TODAY

• @LaurenBoebert, accessed April 24, X account

• @FaithRubPol, accessed April 24, X profile

• @FaithRubPol, March 31, 2023, X post

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Lauren Boebert post about 'our crimes' started as satire | Fact check