2023's Pinocchio-est Pinocchios We wish all of our readers a joyous holiday season and a happy new year. The newsletter will return Jan. 5. It's time for our roundup of the biggest Pinocchios of the year. False claims made by President Biden and conspiracy theories about the president yet again dominate the list. The president earned three slots — for the unverifiable or false stories he loves to retell, for his false claim that he lowered the federal budget deficit by $1.7 trillion, and for the revelation this year that he misled voters in 2020 when he asserted that his son Hunter made no money in China. Meanwhile, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) latched onto a conspiracy theory that Biden was giving migrant families $2,000 a month. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) falsely claimed that Hunter Biden in 2018 paid $49,000 in rent to his father — who did not report it on his tax return. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) absurdly suggested that the president, via email, sent a secret message to his son indicating that he was about to push for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor. (Here's the problem with that one: The email is dated May 26, 2016. The prosecutor in question had been dismissed by the Ukrainian parliament two months earlier.) Former president — and 2024 presidential hopeful — Donald Trump featured on this list for the ninth straight year. As usual with Trump, it's hard to isolate a particular falsehood. We focused on invented stories he told about his dealings with Iran, as well as his claims about a top rival in the GOP primary, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, regarding tariffs on imports from China. DeSantis and his main rival for second place, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, also were cited for false claims they make about each other regarding China. Click the link to read the full report. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. A timeline of the tangled life, career and legal woes of Hunter Biden: The House of Representatives voted this week to formally launch an impeachment inquiry of President Biden. An examination of the intersection of his political career with his son's business interests is expected to be a big part of it. To help make sense of this complex story, The Fact Checker has assembled this timeline of key moments in Hunter Biden's life. Trump on Hannity's show: 24 false or misleading claims in 5 minutes A bogus claim every 12 seconds, on average. That's what a single five-minute clip of Trump speaking in Iowa on Dec. 5 yielded. In the clip, from a Fox News "town hall" hosted by Sean Hannity and brought to our attention by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), Trump ludicrously asserts that American oil and natural gas resources — "liquid gold" in the ground — could solve Social Security's looming fiscal imbalance. That claim comes toward the end of the clip; to get there, a listener must first hear falsehood after falsehood in rapid succession. We went through a transcript of Trump's response, noting each false or misleading statement in boldface and providing a time stamp. The first falsehood comes in the 43rd second. Click the link to read the full report. Here's something fun from The Post: Have you ever wondered what your news habits say about you? Newsprint 2023 is now live. Check it out to discover your top author, topics and more. You might even see some familiar faces. Click this link to learn more.  (youbringfire for The Washington Post) | We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP and @AdriUsero) or Facebook. We're also on TikTok. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. About the cats: It's a Friday and sometimes our fact checks deal with heavy subjects. So we hope to bring a smile to your face. Scroll down to read some of our most popular fact checks of 2023 | 
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