Trump gins up a claim of an assassination attempt Did you hear the news about how President Biden supposedly targeted Donald Trump with deadly force during the FBI search for classified documents at Trump's Mar-a-Largo estate? If so, it was a made-up story — drawn from Trump's own court filing in the criminal case. We explored how this falsehood spread through social media and into the news. It started with a misleading quotation from standard FBI policy in one of Trump's court papers — which was then highlighted by a right-wing social media star. Within 30 minutes, another right-wing influencer posted over the first tweet: "NEW: The FBI was basically authorized to assassinate Trump if necessary in Mar-a-Lago raid." Trump then jumped into the fray and said he had seem the "reports" that the Biden Justice Department had "AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE." In a fundraising appeal less than an hour later, Trump wrote: "BIDEN'S DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME!" Our report explains how utterly false these statements are. The same policy was in effect when the FBI searched Biden's properties for classified documents. Please 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. How Jim Jordan tried to connect the dots on Biden's $8 million book deal At a hearing in which Republicans voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asserted that the special counsel who investigated President Biden said Biden had a financial motive to improperly disclose classified information — a book deal with Flatiron Books in April 2017 that supposedly earned him $8 million. (That figure was an advance for three books, including one by Jill Biden.) Robert K. Hur investigated Biden's retention of classified documents when he was out of office, and issued a 388-page report on Feb. 8. The Justice Department released a transcript of Biden's interview with Hur but has refused to provide the audio recording, which is the reason for the contempt vote. In a fact check, we examined what Hur says about Biden's motivation for retaining private notebooks. Jordan — as well as other Republican lawmakers at the hearing — say that Biden was motivated by money. The aim seems to be to suggest that Biden is motivated by greed. But despite the GOP claims, Hur's report does not say the book advance was a factor in Biden's retaining the documents. Click the link to read more. 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 other fact checks of over-the-top Trump claims. | 
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