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  • 2018-01-05 (xsd:date)
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  • Was a Room Full of Servers and Hard Drives Destroyed in a Clinton House Fire? (en)
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  • On 3 January 2018, a small fire broke out on a property owned by Bill and Hillary Clinton in Chappaqua, New York, and was quickly extinguished: The fire naturally sparked a series conspiracy theories and claims that the blaze was somehow suspicious and that it was related to some sort of criminal activity. The Last Line of Defense, a repeat fake news offender, put up an article appearing to report (falsely, like everything else on the site) that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was on their way to the Clinton compound with a warrant when the fire broke out: Conspiracy theory dabblers YourNewsWire.com went a step further, claiming without offering any proof whatsoever that the fire had destroyed a room full of computer servers: The Last Line of Defense article can be debunked by simply glancing at the disclaimer at the bottom of any page that labels all its content as satire. The site (now TheLastLineOfDefense.online, previously TheLastLineofDefense.org) also has a long history of publishing misinformation and states on its About page that everything it publishes is fiction. YourNewsWire.com lacks credibility for different reasons: It frequently uses dubious tactics to promote conspiracy theories that have little to no basis in reality. In this article, for instance, they quoted a Chappaqua Fire Department source about the alleged destroyed servers. However, they did not provide any verifying information (such as the name of the outlet) or a link to the original report. We also found no record of this quote in any legitimate news articles, indicating that someone most likely fabricated this quote out of the whole cloth. Your News Wire also included a photograph purportedly showing the equipment that was destroyed in the fire, but the image was not taken at the Clinton's residence in New York; it was originally published in an article about data recovery for California fire victims on the company web site of Kroll Ontrack: Although YourNewsWire.com does not carry a disclaimer explicitly stating that its content is either fiction or misinformation, its writers do include a message excusing themselves from any responsibility for inaccuracies in their articles: The fire at the Clinton residence did not destroy a roomful of servers and it did not impede an investigation by the FBI. It actually took place in a facility for the Secret Service that is not connected to the Clinton's main residence, and it was likely caused by a faulty bathroom fan: (en)
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