How an unsubstantiated, anonymous affidavit about the ABC presidential debate was amplified online

After the Sept. 10 debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the former president criticized ABC News’ debate moderators, and his supporters piled on about the network’s supposed bias. 

Two days after the debate, an X account called The Black Insurrectionist — whose profile says, "I am #MAGA," shorthand for Trump’s "Make America Great Again" slogan — elevated the ABC criticism with an unverified claim that eventually landed in the halls of Congress.

The claim said an ABC News whistleblower had said in an affidavit that the network conspired with the Harris campaign, giving her the topics in advance and agreeing that others were off-limits.

The X account initially posted on Sept. 12, a Thursday, that it would release the whistleblower affidavit "before the weekend is out." 

"The affidavit states how the Harris campaign was given sample question which were essentially the same questions that were given during the debate and separate assurances of fact checking Donald Trump and that she would NOT be fact checked," the X post said. It had more than 2.7 million views as of Sept. 20 and had been reshared more than 12,000 times.

An ABC News spokesperson said in a statement to PolitiFact, "ABC News followed the debate rules that both campaigns agreed on and which clearly state: No topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates."  

The anonymous account’s initial post included no evidence to support its claim. The affidavit the account later shared, on Sept. 15, was impossible to authenticate and made unsubstantiated claims that it provided no evidence to support. The affidavit’s author claims to have secret recordings of conversations that would prove the allegations, but those have not been released. Nevertheless, the claims ricocheted around the internet and Trump, his Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance and members of Congress amplified them.

Leading Report, a conservative account that describes itself as a "leading source for breaking news" but often shares misinformation, shared the whistleblower claim Sept. 12 on X, the same day as The Black Insurrectionist, in a post that got 15 million views and 46,000 reshares.

X owner Elon Musk, who has nearly 200 million followers, replied to the Leading Report post with his nearly 200 million followers. 

Trump also shared a screenshot of the Leading Report post on Truth Social with his more than 7.7 million followers. 

On Sept. 15, the Black Insurrectionist account followed up with an X post that shared five pages of the supposed affidavit. About an hour later, the account posted again, saying the earlier post included duplicated pages and shared screenshots of six pages from the affidavit.

The affidavit — dated Sept. 9, a day before the ABC debate — Included redactions that made it impossible to authenticate. The name of the supposed ABC employee was redacted, as was the notary public seal. As of this article’s Sept. 20 publication, no evidence has been presented to authenticate the claims.

In the affidavit, the whistleblower said he or she has worked at ABC News for 10 years in technical and administrative positions, and was concerned about media bias in general and at ABC News.

The affidavit includes one verifiable claim: that Harris would be given a shorter lectern than the much taller Trump, so they would appear similar in stature on a split television screen. Axios reported, citing an unnamed source, that was true and both candidates knew in advance of the lectern heights. Video and photos of the debate stage show different size lecterns for the candidates.

But the affidavit also made several allegations that it did not provide evidence to back, including:

• The Harris campaign and ABC News had agreed that Trump would be fact-checked by ABC moderators, but Harris would not be.

• The Harris campaign had been provided sample questions on topics similar to those  that would be covered in the debate.

• The Harris campaign imposed question restrictions, forbidding questions about President Joe Biden’s health, Harris’ tenure "as attorney general in San Francisco," and her brother-in-law Tony West, who the affidavit said faces allegations of embezzling billions of dollars in taxpayer money. 

Harris was the attorney general of California, not San Francisco; she served as the city’s district attorney. We searched Google and the Nexis news database and found no evidence that West, a former Justice Department official during President Barack Obama’s administration, has been credibly accused of embezzling money. An Aug. 4 New York Times profile of West, a Harris campaign adviser, did not mention any such allegations.

The affidavit said that to prove it was created before the debate, a certified letter dated Sept. 9 was sent to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. 

Johnson’s office had not publicly confirmed it had received the letter as of Sept. 20, and Johnson hasn’t commented on the allegations.

The Harris campaign did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment. 

ABC News didn’t respond to PolitiFact’s questions about the fact-checking claims. Debate moderator Linsey Davis said in a postdebate interview with the Los Angeles Times that she and her co-moderator, David Muir, had prepared to fact-check egregious statements from both candidates. 

Trump had his statements fact-checked or clarified five times; Harris had no statements contested. 

The Black Insurrectionist’s Sept. 15 X post was amplified by high-profile conservative figures, including Musk, Libs of TikTok, podcaster Benny Johnson, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who said he didn’t know if the claim was accurate, but shared it anyway.

Vance addressed the supposed whistleblower’s allegations with reporters, saying it "should be a national scandal" if true. Trump again mentioned the whistleblower Sept. 13 at a rally in Las Vegas, claiming that Harris had received the debate questions in advance. ​​"Fortunately, we had a leaker or a whistleblower. I don’t care which. I love that person. I’m not sure who it is," The Washington Post reported that he said.

U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., said in a Fox News interview that he would try to bring in ABC News and the whistleblower before Congress to testify about the affidavit.

News of the affidavit also sparked misinformation that its author was killed. A false rumor spread, amplified by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., that the ABC whistleblower, whose identity is unknown, was killed in a car crash. Greene later posted that the claim "appears to be false," but called for a "serious investigation into the whistleblower’s report."

PolitiFact Staff Writers Madison Czopek and Loreben Tuquero and Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.