Summary:
On Nov. 5, 2017, a PACER screenshot was posted to Twitter, in support of a newly developing conspiracy theory, which claimed many members of the "deep state" were being pursued with sealed criminal indictments.
This image had been edited to give the appearance that 12 potential sealed indictments were filed in the US District Court of DC, over only 3 days. This was not true. Below, I explain the deception.
NOTE: All of the screenshots listed originated on 4chan, and were then shared to other online communities. 4chan does not keep archives of posts, so I have linked to the first accounts that shared them on Twitter.
I have kept the identity of the Twitter accounts anonymous here, as they were not the original source, and they were not necessarily sharing the pictures with ill intent.
Analysis:
On November 4, 2017 a PACER screenshot was posted to 4chan, which showed two sealed criminal cases in the US District Court of DC, and later shared to other online communities. These sealed cases were rumored to be indictments.
I will refer to this screenshot as 'image A'.
The search spanned 11/2/2017 - 11/4/2017.
Take note of the search settings on this image... the 'Case type(s)' selection has been filtered for 'cr' (criminal). This is because 'cr' is the specific category in which indictments would be filed.
Later that same day, another PACER screenshot from that district was posted, which now showed 10 additional sealed documents in the results.
I will refer to this screenshot as 'image B'.
Note the search settings in this image. This time, whoever ran the search incorrectly searched 'All' case types, instead of only 'cr'. This means that the 10 additional sealed documents in the results, were NOT indictments... they were merely all 'other' types of sealed documents within the entire D.C. US District Court system.
Here again is the photo shopped image I posted at the top of this article:
The search spanned 11/2/2017 - 11/4/2017, which is the same timespan as image A.
Notice that the sealed case numbers match all of the sealed case numbers in image B, which had 'All' case types selected... but the search settings on this document show that only case type 'cr' had been selected.
Why did all of those extra sealed documents show up in this search, if the search setting had correctly been filtered for only case type 'cr'? It's because this image is a combination of the previous two images. Someone took the sealed document section from image B, and pasted it into the body of image A.
In doing so, they created a false document which showed 12 potential sealed indictments filed in only 3 days, in the US District Court of DC. The truth was that there were only 2 potential sealed indictments, and 10 sealed non-indictments.
I'm struggling to come up with a plausible scenario in which someone would have done this without the intent to mislead people. This proves that doctored images were being circulated at the very beginning of the sealed indictment claim, and it's quite possible that they were created with malicious intent.
Feel free to leave comments/questions here, or to email me at wmerthon@mail.com.
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