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Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton in JFK assassination record? No, image is doctored | Fact check

Joedy McCreary   Paste BN
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The claim: Image shows JFK assassination document referencing Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton

A Jan. 24 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) appears to show two versions of a document related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. One is heavily redacted. The other includes references to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the Zodiac killer and a former Democratic presidential candidate.“I tried to tell Cruz not to do it, but he told me, ‘If you interfere with the Zodiac’s plans, I’ll have you taken care of, you dirty commie,'" reads part of the unredacted text in the document. "Whatever you do, don’t let Ted run for Senate! I have information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton."

The post's caption reads, "#BREAKING: JFK FILES RELEASED Lee Harvey Oswald was framed for the JFK assassination AND he knew the attacker by both name and alias."

The post was shared more than 300 times in three days. A similar version circulated widely on X.

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Our rating: Manipulated media

The image has been digitally edited to change the text of one of the documents and add references to Cruz, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the serial killer known as the Zodiac. The social media user who first shared the image identified it as inauthentic in a follow-up post.

Image shows doctored version of National Archives document

Among the flurry of executive actions taken by President Donald Trump during the first week of his second term was an order to release additional government records related to the assassinations of Kennedy, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The image in the Facebook post, however, isn’t part of that trove of documents. The part supposedly no longer redacted is a fabrication.

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

The original images of the two documents appear in an article published in 2017 by the National Archives. The documents reference an October 1960 report from the Swiss Federal Police about the plans of Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin who shot and killed John F. Kennedy in 1963, to study in Switzerland. According to its caption, the image shows two versions of the same document – one that is heavily redacted and another that had those redactions removed by an agency created in the 1990s to take a second look at those assassination records. Neither version of the document includes any mentions of Cruz, Clinton or the Zodiac. Those references were digitally added into the documents later.

The Facebook post also wrongly claims the documents covered by Trump’s order were released when the post was shared. That’s false. The Jan. 23 order gave officials 15 days to form a plan for disclosing those records. It was not immediately clear when they will be made public, but no new records had been released as of Jan. 23.

The doctored image was first posted to X on Jan. 23 by a columnist for a conservative website who said in a subsequent post that he created the fabrication. In an email to Paste BN, the columnist, Tony Kinnett, said references to Clinton's imminent arrest and to Cruz being the Zodiac killer are "two of the oldest jokes on the political side of the internet. Shoving both into a photoshopped letter is funny. That's my reasoning."

A long-running meme falsely asserts the Texas senator is the Zodiac killer, who killed at least five people in the late 1960s in the San Francisco Bay Area and taunted authorities by sending cryptic messages to news outlets. Cruz was born Dec. 22, 1970 – more than a decade after the date on the document, and more than a year after what authorities say was the Zodiac killer’s last attack. Also, Trump in 2016 amplified a baseless conspiracy theory that linked Cruz's father to Oswald, referencing a National Enquirer story that the magazine's former publisher later testified was made up.

President Kennedy was fatally shot Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a presidential motorcade in Dallas. Police soon arrested Oswald – who was shot to death on live television two days later. The Warren Commission, which investigated the JFK assassination, determined that Oswald acted alone.

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

Paste BN reached out to the columnist who first posted the image and the Facebook user who shared it but did not immediately receive responses.

Lead Stories also debunked the claim.

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