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  • 2017-11-07 (xsd:date)
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  • Has Tony Podesta Been Arrested in the Mueller Investigation? (en)
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  • On 5 November 2017, two notorious fake news sites — Neon Nettle and YourNewsWire — posted stories falsely reporting that Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta has been arrested in relations to an investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and is in the custody of the U.S Marshal Service: Since May 2017, Mueller has been leading a Department of Justice investigation in a wide-ranging probe into allegations of collusion between President Donald Trump, his associates and the Russian government. As of 7 November 2017, there is no evidence that Tony Podesta (the brother of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign chair, John Podesta) has been taken into custody. He is not named on the list of publicly-filed charges by Mueller's office, and he has not been officially accused of wrongdoing. His lobbying company Podesta Group made headlines after the first indictments from Mueller's investigation were made public, resulting in the arrests of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates. In the indictment, the firm is not named but is referred to as Company B, according to media reports. Another lobbying firm, Mercury Public Affairs, was identified in the indictment as Company A. Manafort and Gates hired both companies to lobby on behalf of Ukraine's ousted pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych and his political party, paying them millions from accounts held offshore: In the aftermath of the arrests and swirl of speculation and news coverage, Podesta stepped down from his position with the company he founded in 1988 the day the indictments were unsealed, on 30 October 2017. Stories posted by Neon Nettle and YourNewsWire often go viral, even though the content they post is almost always completely fabricated and conspiratorial. YourNewsWire also spread far and wide concocted and false claims that there was a second shooter in the 1 October 2017 massacre in Las Vegas. (Authorities have concluded there was only one.) YourNewsWire also promoted Pizzagate, a wholly debunked and bizarre conspiracy theory alleging that Democrat politicians were covering up a massive pedophile ring being run out of a Washington D.C. pizza parlor. Neon Nettle took that story a step further by reporting falsely that deceased rock stars Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell were murdered because they were about to reveal names of people participating in the fictional pedophile ring. Both Cornell and Bennington, singers for the bands Soundgarden and Linkin Park respectively, committed suicide and were not murdered, according to their local coroners' offices. (en)
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