ZeroHedge, a ‘media’ source well known for Wing Nut conspiracy theories, posted a misleading claim about Mykola Zlochevsky, the head of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, who is the focus of the House impeachment inquiry.
The Fake News site claimed Zlochevsky had been indicted for money laundering related to the Biden family; however, no announcement of any indictment even remotely related to this issue exists.
Perhaps, the ‘news’ organization confused their claim with an article from Reuters that stated: “Ukraine has widened its investigation into the founder of energy company Burisma to include suspicion of embezzling state funds, Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka said on Wednesday.” But, there is not one mention of any indictments issued to anyone, including Hunter Biden.
ZeroHedge may have also confused their claim with the Russian news organization, Interfax-Ukraine News Agency, who also published an article about the investigation. But they didn’t mention anything about indictments either.
Within an hour after ZeroHedge posted their Fake News article, the usual suspects in Wing Nut World jumped all over it.
More than 10,000 users engaged with the ZeroHedge story on Facebook, which was shared to dozens of pages that totaled more than 3 million followers.
One minute before the ZeroHedge article was published, the anonymous account that inspired the QAnon conspiracy theory — generally known as “Q” — linked to the same Interfax-Ukraine article
NBC:
