How an X account twisted facts to push unsubstantiated Tim Walz abuse allegation

With Election Day just weeks away, a pro-Donald Trump X account claimed to have insider knowledge that Democratic vice presidential candidate and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had "an inappropriate relationship with a minor" when he was a public schoolteacher.

The X account, which posts under the username @DocNetyoutube and goes by the name "Black Insurrectionist," is known for spreading unsubstantiated claims. In September, the X account elevated the unverified account that an ABC News whistleblower had said the network conspired with Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign to set up the presidential debate in Harris’s favor.

On Oct. 13, Black Insurrectionist posted that an unnamed, male former Walz student had contacted the X account in August, alleging Walz had sexually abused him in the 1990s when he was a student at Alliance High School in Nebraska.

Through more than 20 posts shared over almost 48 hours, Black Insurrectionist built the narrative around this allegation. But much of the purported evidence contained inconsistencies and inaccuracies. And the X account never offered verifiable proof to support the claim.

Still, some of Black Insurrectionist’s X posts about Walz were viewed millions of times. And this baseless story has spread to other social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads and TikTok.

The Facebook, Instagram and Threads posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.) TikTok also identified video of the claim as part of its efforts to counter inauthentic, misleading or false content. (Read more about PolitiFact's partnership with TikTok.)

Earlier this month, Walz was the subject of a similar unsubstantiated allegation that he "groomed" a foreign exchange student from Kazakhstan. NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation, debunked the claim, finding that a Russian disinformation operative was pushing it.

McKenzie Sadeghi, NewsGuard’s artificial intelligence and foreign influence editor, told PolitiFact, "DocNetYouTube played a key role in promoting the false Kazakhstan former exchange student narrative and distributing it to a larger audience."

PolitiFact contacted the Harris-Walz campaign, but a spokesperson declined to comment.

Black Insurrectionist’s first Oct. 13 post announcing its email correspondence with the former student included screenshots of the supposed emails. But formatting inconsistencies undermined the emails’ authenticity.

For example, Black Insurrectionist shared side-by-side screenshots supposedly showing the former student’s initial email and the X account’s response. Although Black Insurrectionist’s email appeared to be sent using Proton Mail, an email service with end-to-end encryption, the picture of the former student’s email did not match Proton Mail’s layout. The account posted that it used Proton Mail, Yahoo Mail and Rocketmail, but none of the former student’s email screenshots matched those layouts either.

(Screenshots from X and Proton Mail)

Screenshots of the former student’s emails also showed inconsistent date formatting. For example, the first email’s date had a leading zero in the day number, whereas the other two dates showed single digits only. The second email also lacked a comma after the day of the week.

(Screenshots from X)

Additionally, Black Insurrectionist’s screenshot of the former student’s Aug. 9 email showed a cursor, indicating the email may have been forged.

(Screenshot from X)

Black Insurrectionist wrote in an Oct. 13 post that it contacted the Harris-Walz campaign before releasing details about this allegation. "I was trying to give them every chance in the world," the X user wrote.

In that post, the user shared a screen recording of a message being typed and sent through the Harris-Walz campaign website. The typed message included the date "8-23-24." No other date was visible in the recording.

But PolitiFact found a discrepancy with the date Black Insurrectionist said it contacted the Harris-Walz campaign. The campaign website’s design seen in the screen recording doesn’t match how the website looked Aug. 23, according to an archived version of the site.

An Aug. 23 archive of the campaign website’s contact page showed a red "Submit" button and navy banner at the top of the page.

But the screen recording showed a blue "Submit" button and a bright blue banner with the words "Contact Us" at the top of the page, as it did Oct. 17, when last we looked.

Sometime between Sept. 11 and Sept. 13, the campaign website was updated, changing certain design elements and colors. This means the X account’s message was recorded after mid-September, and not in August like it said.

(Screenshots from the Harris-Walz campaign website)

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stated on October 13, 2024 in social media posts

Video shows former Vice President Mike Pence endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

To build the narrative around this allegation, Black Insurrectionist also manipulated facts about Walz’s life and career, pulling from information in public records and news reports.

For example, the X user wrote Oct. 13 that the former student said Walz took him to an Indigo Girls concert in Nebraska in March 1995. In a subsequent post, the X user wrote that the former student said Walz sexually abused him after the concert.

Months earlier, on Aug. 20, The New York Times published a story about Walz’s efforts to support gay students as his high school’s gay-straight alliance adviser. The article included an anecdote about Walz and his wife, Gwen, who was also a public schoolteacher in Nebraska, taking a gay student to an Indigo Girls concert in the 1990s. The article did not say exactly when or where the concert was held.

Black Insurrectionist claimed this story "dropped" because the Harris-Walz campaign was "trying to get out in front of" the allegations the account was sharing.

The X account wrote in another Oct. 13 post that the board overseeing Alliance Public Schools in Nebraska, where the Walzes taught, "voted 6-0 to fire Tim Walz." In two subsequent posts, Black Insurrectionist shared screenshots of March and July 1996 board meeting minutes as purported proof.

But the meeting minutes do not support the X account’s claim. The documents, which PolitiFact obtained from Alliance Public Schools’ superintendent, show the school board unanimously approved Walz’s professional leave request in March 1996. Then, four months later, in July 1996, the board accepted Tim and Gwen Walz’s resignations from their teaching and coaching positions at Alliance Public Schools.

In their resignation letters, included in the meeting minutes, the Walzes wrote that they were resigning because they had accepted teaching positions at Mankato West High School in Minnesota.

The former student’s account shared by this X user also included personal details about Walz in an attempt to corroborate the allegation. But these details do not lend credibility, as some of them are factually inaccurate or were already public knowledge.

For instance, one of the posts mentioned Walz had a "hearing problem." It’s been widely reported that Walz suffered hearing loss from decades in the military. Walz underwent corrective surgery in 2005 to improve his condition.

Also, the former student supposedly said Walz said he served in the Persian Gulf War, an international conflict in the early 1990s triggered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. But that’s wrong. Although Walz served in the Nebraska National Guard then, he was not deployed for that war.

Walz’s sole military deployment came a decade later. He and his Minnesota National Guard unit were sent to Italy to support U.S. operations in Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Freedom.

An X account called Black Insurrectionist claimed screenshots show one of Walz’s former students lodged sexual abuse allegations against Walz.

But the screenshots’ formatting inconsistencies reveal these documents are fabricated. The X account also mischaracterized details from Walz’s life and career to build the narrative around the allegations. These details do not corroborate the claim, nor does the X account provide verifiable evidence.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!