This Trump statement ordering arrest in JFK assassination is a fabrication | Fact check

The claim: Image shows Trump statement ordering woman’s arrest in JFK assassination

A Nov. 29 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows what appears to be a statement from President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 61 years ago.

The headline of the purported statement references “presidential orders” from Trump, and its text instructs police and prosecutors in Dallas to “begin preparation for the arrest and prosecution of Ruth Paine (9-3-1932) for Conspiracy to Commit the Murder of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.”

The Instagram post received more than 300 likes in three days. A similar post was also shared on Threads.

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The image is a fabrication. The social media user who first shared it identified it as inauthentic in a subsequent post. There is no record of the statement on Trump’s official social media channels.

Fabricated document created as ‘social experiment’

The purported statement in the Facebook post was first shared to X on Nov. 27 by a social media user who said in multiple follow-up posts that it is a fabrication.

“I made it as a social experiment to see how people would respond on X,” the X user said in a post hours later. In a separate post the following day, he said he created and posted it “to show how easy it was for fake news to spread.”

Fact check: Image shows RFK’s ‘debate’ moderator, not JFK Jr.

There is no record of the supposed statement being shared by Trump to his verified Truth Social or X accounts or on the website where his transition team posts its announcements.

The X post with the fabricated statement was made in response to an Aug. 27 post from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of the slain president and Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. In that post, which includes a clip of his appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show, Kennedy said Trump told him he would release files connected to the assassination. During his first presidential term, Trump authorized the release of more than 2,800 files related to the 1963 shooting in Dallas.

The fabricated statement references the 92-year-old Paine, who was a friend of the wife of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and was living with her at the time of the shooting. No one faced more questions from the Warren Commission than she did during its investigation into the assassination. It determined that Oswald acted alone and that unbeknownst to Paine or her husband, he stored the rifle used in the shooting in her garage.

The document also contains several clues that it is a fabrication.

It refers to the president-elect as “incumbent President Donald J. Trump” and misspells the last name of Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot. Because Trump does not become a government official until he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025, he does not have the authority to issue such an order. It also includes an outlandish demand for police to “immediately arrest anyone who attempts to interfere with this order,” charge them with obstruction of justice and have their “entire background brought into question for potential ties to the Central Intelligence Agency.”

USA TODAY previously debunked false claims that Trump released JFK’s autopsy report and that a video shows the CIA “admitted” to killing Kennedy.

USA TODAY reached out to the Trump transition team, to the X user who said he created the image and to several social media users who shared it but did not immediately receive responses.

Our fact-check sources

• @Alien_Scientist, Nov. 27, X post

• @Alien_Scientist, Nov. 27, X post

• @Alien_Scientist, Nov. 28, X post

• Donald J. Trump, accessed Nov. 29, Truth Social profile

• Donald J. Trump, accessed Nov. 29, X profile

• Donald J. Trump, accessed Nov. 29, News

• Dallas County, Texas, accessed Dec. 1, Meet the DA

• National Constitution Center, Jan. 6, 2017, What constitutional duties are placed on the President Elect?

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fabricated Trump statement about Kennedy shooting arrest | Fact check