How Mitch got rich The last time Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sought reelection, in 2014, his challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes charged that he "quadrupled his net worth on the backs of hard-working Kentuckians that can't afford it." McConnell is up for reelection again this year, and a new ad by the Lincoln Project, a group of "Never Trump" GOP consultants, reprises the attack and calls the Senate majority leader "one of the richest guys" in Washington. "After 35 years, Kentuckians are still waiting for the kinds of opportunities Mitch worked so hard to give himself," the narrator says, implying that McConnell made a fortune through government service and backroom deals. We gave the ad Three Pinocchios. McConnell is the seventh-richest senator, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, but he was once far lower in the rankings. What changed is that in 2008, McConnell's financial disclosure form showed a tax-exempt money market fund, valued at between $5 million and $25 million, listed as a "gift from a filer's relative." As a McConnell spokesman told The Fact Checker in 2014, this was an inheritance that McConnell's wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, received upon her mother's death in 2007. Forbes magazine obtained the will of Ruth Chao in 2019 and reported that "she personally had nearly $59 million of assets to her name, according to an inventory filed with her will." Forbes estimated that about $9 million was passed to Elaine Chao, "rather than the $25 million maximum that was reported on McConnell's disclosure." For the full fact check, click here. 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. Biden's early warning: Not as prescient as he claimsJoe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has been citing a preliminary study by Columbia University that estimated that tens of thousands fewer people would have died of covid-19 had social-distancing measures been put in place earlier than mid-March. Specifically, the Columbia study estimated that having orders in effect on March 8 would have resulted in nearly 36,000 fewer deaths (counting through the end of May 3), and orders as soon as March 1 would have resulted in nearly 54,000 fewer deaths. "They pointed out that if he had listened to me and others and acted just one week earlier to deal with this virus, there'd be 36,000 fewer people dead," Biden told the Breakfast Club podcast May 22. Biden makes a convincing case that he was warning early on about the pandemic risks from covid-19 — "We have, right now, a crisis with the coronavirus," he said Jan. 31 — but his use of the Columbia study is misleading. The specific numbers he cites are based on specific measures such as social distancing. Biden did not suggest social distancing early on. He kept holding campaign rallies and events into March, as did Trump. We gave the Democrat's claim Two Pinocchios. For the full fact check, click here. Sign up for The Post's Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked within the newsletter are free to access. Our new book is outPresident Trump has surpassed 19,000 false and misleading statements, according to the latest update of our database, covering all of his presidency through May 29. The number may seem daunting, but our new book debunking the president's greatest deceptions in his first three years in office provides a great road map to the universe of claims. "Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth," published by Scribner this week, methodically debunks a host of statements and tweets the president has made on the economy, immigration, foreign policy, his impeachment, the Russia probe, the coronavirus pandemic and more. It's available in print, e-book and audiobook. We talked about the book and took questions from readers this week in an online video chat hosted by the Washington bookstore Politics and Prose. Catch up on YouTube with a recording of the event here. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @rizzoTK, @mmkelly22, @SarahCahlan) or Facebook. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. |  ● By Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly ● Read more » | | | | 
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