Fact Check-Code seen in Ivanka Trump’s vaccination picture is not related to QAnon

A photo of Ivanka Trump, daughter of former U.S. President Donald Trump, receiving a COVID-19 vaccine does not contain a Quick Response (QR) code with ties to QAnon. Contrary to claims on social media, there is no evidence linking the image to the sprawling conspiracy theory, which espouses that Trump is secretly fighting a cabal of child-trafficking sex predators that includes prominent Democrats, Hollywood elites and “deep state” allies. The alleged code does not redirect to 8kun, an unmoderated forum that is home to Q’s posts, known to adherents as “Q drops.”

On April 14, 2021, the former first daughter tweeted two photos of herself receiving the vaccine, captioning them with “Today, I got the shot!!! I hope that you do too! Thank you Nurse Torres!!!” (here).

In a statement sent to the Associated Press, Ivanka said she had received Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose vaccine for the novel coronavirus, saying that “getting vaccinated is our best way to beat this virus and protect ourselves and others” (here).

A post on Facebook re-sharing the photos included a red circle drawn around a matrix code on a piece of paper next to her and included the following caption: “Wow. I just scanned the QR code that appears in Ivanka’s photo, and I got the number 01003592671000231721073110ER8. I have put it in Duck duck go, and the first thing that appears to me is this website. here Related to the Q drops where it can be read: Q Research General # 17007: We’re Not Going To Take It” (here).

The “Q drop” in question, archived here , is a Dec. 8, 2020 post from “Q,” the anonymous Web poster and movement’s leader who claims to have insider knowledge of the Trump administration. The “Intelligence Drop,” which is Q’s most recent, links to a now-removed pro-Trump YouTube video to the soundtrack of Twisted Sister’s 1984 hit “We’re Not Gonna Take It” (here).

Other posts making the same claim are seen here , here and here .

A Pfizer spokesperson said via email that Ivanka Trump’s photo shows a GS1-2D Matrix code, which appears on the labels applied to each frozen tray containing Pfizer vaccine vials and containing unique information on that tray. A separate photo of a Pfizer tray, for example, with a QR code is visible here .

The spokesperson also confirmed that contrary to the posts’ claim that the number linked to the Matrix code is 01003592671000231721073110ER8, no code produced by Pfizer ends in ER8.

Reuters was unable to independently scan the code in Ivanka Trump’s Twitter photo, given the pixilation and angle.

As pointed out by the QAnon influencer Inevitable ET himself on the messaging app Telegram, the alleged tie is “unfortunately… a nothingburger.” In his Telegram channel, which has over 66,000 subscribers, he said that entering alleged code on the internet search engine Duck Duck Go directs to 8kun likely because someone commented the code on the original Q post, thus creating “a self full-filling [sic] prophecy.”

Shown here on Twitter by BBC disinformation reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh, QAnon followers reacted in anger and disappointment to Ivanka Trump’s vaccine post. Some even claimed the photos were photoshopped or staged ( here , here ).

As reported here by The Washington Post, an internal Facebook study found a growing crossover between accounts opposing vaccines and accounts associated with QAnon.

A New York Times report on how far-right extremists moved from “Stop the Steal” after the 2020 election to “stop the vaccine” is visible here .

VERDICT

False. The Matrix code seen on a piece of paper in Ivanka Trump’s vaccine photos is not linked to 8kun or QAnon.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .

*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from Reuters can be found here ***