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  • 2016-12-12 (xsd:date)
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  • Do Tony and John Podesta Match Madeleine McCann Police Sketches? (de)
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  • In November 2016, the Pizzagate conspiracy theory grew to encompass many other claims, one of which was that Tony and John Podesta (the latter Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, the former his brother) had a connection to the abduction of missing British girl Madeleine McCann: Images of 2013 police sketches known as efits (short for Electronic Facial Identification Technique, or computer-generated composite images) were circulated alongside images of the Podestas with little additional information or context. The implication of such non-detailed posts was the Podesta brothers eerily resembled men wanted in connection with the kidnapping of Madeleine McCann in Portugal on 3 May 2007. However, the efit sketches depict only one man, who was sought as a witness to the kidnapping (not necessarily as a perpetrator of, or an accessory to, the crime). The digitally generated images were released in October 2013 alongside renewed pleas from police to the public for any information in the McCann cold case: It is true that some reports referenced the man (singular) as a suspect, but reports also listed a number of other factors that didn't match the Podestas: John Podesta was 67 in December 2016, mearing he was between 58 and 59 at the time of McCann's disappearance, while the man depicted in the efits was described as being between the ages of 20 and 40. Mistaking a man of 40 for one of 58 is already a stretch, and mistaking a 60-year-old man for a 20-year-old one is exceedingly unlike. Some versions of the rumor claimed that John Podesta was in Portugal around the time of the incident, but referenced an e-mail about a trip which occurred several months after Madeleine McCann vanished. In another version, Podesta was placed in Portugal at the time of the disappearance by an unnamed law enforcement source, information that was as implausible as it was unreliable, being backed by no substantive evidence. An unrelated (yet notable) aspect of the Podesta brothers and their purportedly eerie resemblance to the Madeleine McCann abduction sketches was that before Pizzagate captivated internet investigators, some individuals were invested in separate theories peddling the idea that McCann's parents Gerry and Kate McCann were depicted in both the same sketch and other police drawings: One version of the rumor provided an account from a witness claiming that Gerry McCann closely resembled the suspect police had been seeking: Such rumors disregarded the fact that law enforcement agents had access to both the sketches they themselves generated as well as to Gerry McCann. More than one or two people claimed that Gerry McCann was the man depicted in police sketches, incredibly suggesting that years of law enforcement work on the case had simply failed to reach that obvious conclusion. A British tabloid published an article about the widespread rumors that McCann and the suspect were one and the same, which kicked up after an October 2013 episode of Crimewatch: Claims that the Podesta brothers appeared in the sketches and matched for the suspects were an example of an extremely common conspiracy theory trope. Virtually identical claims were trotted out weeks after the Sandy Hook mass shooting, when conspiracists claimed that the victims had appeared in photographs taken with President Obama a few days after the shooting. (en)
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