A roundup of some of the week’s most popular, but completely untrue, stories and images. None of these are legitimate, even though they were widely shared on social media. The Associated Press investigated them.
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Questions are swirling about whether Trump can vote for himself in the 2024 election
CLAIM: Former President Donald Trump will not be able to vote for himself in the 2024 presidential election because he was convicted in his hush money trial.
THE FACTS: Trump, a resident of Florida, will be able to vote in the election if he stays out of jail in New York, as Florida follows other states’ disenfranchisement rules for residents convicted of crimes outside the stands. New York law only abolishes voting rights for people convicted of felonies while they are in prison. Once they are released from prison, their rights are automatically restored, even if they are on parole.
After a New York jury found Trump guilty of all 34 felony charges in his hush money trial on Thursday, social media users claimed the decision will prevent the former president from voting for himself in the upcoming election.
“The man who ran his ‘LOCK HER UP’ campaign in 2016 is about to be locked up,” reads an Instagram post. “It is also worth noting that as a conflict criminal, Trump can no longer vote for himself or anyone else in his own home state.”
The post, which misspelled the word “convicted,” had received more than 18,900 likes as of Friday.
“Trump can’t legally vote for himself now!!!” reads an X-post that had received about 9,200 likes and 5,800 shares as of Friday. “I love Karma! It’s a good day for America!”
But Trump’s ability to vote in the 2024 race will depend on his sentence.
That’s because Florida — where Trump established a residency in 2019 while president — follows other states’ disenfranchisement laws when it comes to residents convicted of out-of-state crimes. In Trump’s case, New York law stipulates that people convicted of felonies are only barred from voting if they are in prison. Once out of prison, their rights are automatically restored even if they are on parole, under a 2021 law passed by the state’s Democratic Legislature.
So as long as Trump isn’t sent to jail, he can vote for himself in Florida’s November election. His sentencing date is July 11, four days before the opening of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Republican leaders are expected to formally name him their nominee.
His conviction, and even his prison sentence, would not deter Trump from continuing his quest for the White House. The rules for the convention adopted last year did not include specific provisions on what happens if the presumptive nominee is convicted of a crime.
Delegates could change the rules before formalizing Trump’s nomination, but there is no evidence that a significant faction of the party would seek to replace the former president on the Republican ticket. Trump commands loyalty within the Republican base, and the Republican National Committee is led by his loyalists, including his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chairman.
Trump was convicted of all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex. It is expected that the former president will appeal the verdict.
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Reports misrepresent New York judge’s instructions to jury in Trump hush money trial
CLAIM: New York Judge Juan M. Merchan told the jury in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial that they don’t need a unanimous verdict to convict Trump.
THE FACTS: Merchan said that to convict Trump the jury would have to unanimously find, on each of 34 counts, that he falsified business records and that he did so with the intent to conceal another crime — in this case violating a state election law during his 2016 campaign. The judge said jurors can consider three different ways the law could have been broken and they don’t have to be unanimous on that decision.
As jury deliberations began Wednesday in Trump’s trial, social media users spread false information about Merchan’s instructions to the seven men and five women who will determine the outcome in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president.
“How can this even be a fair trial?” reads an Instagram post that had received more than 13,500 likes as of Thursday. “The judge just announced that the jury doesn’t even have to be unanimous in their verdict to convict President Trump! This entire process has been manipulated from the start.”
An X-post reads: “Judge Merchan told the jury they do NOT need unanimity to convict. They don’t all have to agree on what happened. 4 can agree on one crime, 4 on another, and the other 4 on another. He will treat 4-4-4 as a unanimous verdict.”
But these claims, repeated by Trump on Truth Social, distort Merchan’s instructions.
The judge told the jury that in order to convict Trump on any charge, they will have to find unanimously — meaning all 12 jurors agree — that the former president made a fraudulent entry in his company’s records made or incited someone else to do so. and that he did so with the intent to commit or conceal a crime.
Prosecutors said the crime Trump committed or concealed violates a New York election law that makes it illegal for two or more conspirators “to unlawfully promote or prevent the election of any person to public office ‘.
Merchan gave jurors three possible “illegal means” they could apply to Trump’s charges: falsifying other business records, violating the Federal Election Campaign Act or filing false information on a tax return.
For a conviction, each juror had to find that at least one of those three things happened, but they didn’t have to agree unanimously on which one it was.
Trump was charged with 34 felonies of falsifying business documents in the first degree, as part of a scheme to bury damaging stories that he feared could damage his 2016 campaign, especially as his reputation at the time suffered from the comments he made made about women. He was convicted of all charges on Thursday.
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The ‘Statue of Liberty’ image was created using Photoshop. It is not a structure made from ruins from the artist’s home
CLAIM: An image shows a sculpture resembling the Statue of Liberty, built by a Syrian artist from the ruins of his home. “This is the freedom they brought us,” reads a slogan accompanying the image.
THE FACTS: The image is a digital photomontage by Tammam Azzam, a Syrian artist now living in Berlin. Azzam told The Associated Press that he created the image in 2012 using Photoshop by combining fragments of photos of destroyed buildings in Syria. He said it represents the freedom the Syrian people seek.
Posts on social media give new life to years of claims that misrepresent the statue using erroneous details about its origins and meaning.
“This was built by a Syrian artist from the ruins of his house,” reads an “With the slogan: ‘This is the freedom they brought us.’”
Others shared similar messages along with the Palestinian flag emoji, appearing to compare the impact of the Israel-Hamas war on Palestinians to the ongoing civil war in Syria. One such Facebook post received more than 9,700 reactions and 3,600 shares.
But the image, titled ‘Statue of Liberty’, was created digitally and has nothing to do with the so-called slogan spreading online.
“I created the image using Photoshop by scanning and stitching together several fragments of photos of destroyed buildings in Syria,” Azzam told the AP in an email. “In terms of misrepresentation, it is unfortunate that the image has been wrongly attributed to a specific story. It was not built from the ruins of any house, nor does it bear the slogan attributed to it.”
The photomontage “was intended to comment on the themes of freedom and oppression,” Azzam said. He said he created it in 2012 “as a symbol of the freedom that the Syrian people have sought and continue to seek in a country devastated by the regime’s response to their demonstrations.”
Azzam posted the image to his Facebook account as part of what he described as a “wider series” he was working on while living in Dubai. He wrote that it “was not printed or exhibited in a gallery or similar venue, although it was widely shared and discussed online.”
Syria’s civil war, now in its fourteenth year, has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half of the pre-war population of 23 million. It began with peaceful protests against the government of President Bashar Assad in March 2011, as part of the Arab Spring popular uprisings that spread across the Middle East that year.
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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck
