FACT CHECK: No, JFK Jr. Did Not Fake His Death And Plan For QAnon

Trevor Schakohl | Legal Reporter

A Facebook post claims John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his death to escape an assassination plan by former President Bill Clinton and plan for QAnon.

Verdict: False

Kennedy did not fake his own death. His remains were found within days of his death in 1999.

Fact Check:

The QAnon conspiracy theory baselessly claims the U.S. is being run by a “cabal of pedophiles and Satan-worshippers” and former President Donald Trump is the only person who can bring them down, according to CBS News. Information is posted on the message board 8chan by Q, whose identity is unknown, though some QAnon adherents theorize that Kennedy faked his death and posts as Q, the outlet reported.

Now, a post on Facebook, written from Kennedy’s perspective, reads: “In 1999, Bill Clinton the then President of the United States, in cooperation with government agencies, planned to assassination me. They knew I had a plan to overthrow the government. After realizing their plan, I faked my death and got out of reach. Over the years, I have planned for Q project.”

There is no evidence, however, of Kennedy faking his death in order to escape being assassinated by Clinton. Kennedy, along with his wife and sister-in-law, died in a plane crash in July 1999 off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, The Washington Post reported, and all three bodies were recovered days later. Several other media outlets, including The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and CNN, also reported on Kennedy’s death and his burial at sea.

In a 2000 press release about the final report on Kennedy’s crash, the National Transportation Safety Board quoted the report as finding the probable cause of the accident was “failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation.” Other factors in the accident were “haze” and “the dark night,” according to the press release.

Had it been discovered that Clinton planned to assassinate Kennedy, that Kennedy planned to topple the U.S. government, or that he faked his death, major media outlets certainly would have reported on it, yet no such reports exist. Other fact-checkers have debunked claims of a causal link between Kennedy’s plane crash and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton running for a Senate seat. (RELATED: Did JFK Jr. Say Trump Would Be An ‘Unstoppable Force’ As President?)

According to Insider, QAnon first emerged in 2017, with the first anonymous “Q drop” being published in October of that year, more than 18 years after Kennedy’s death. Some followers of QAnon have prophesied that Kennedy will return to the public in support of Trump, though the date of his supposed return has changed several times, Newsweek reported.

Trevor Schakohl

Legal Reporter
Follow Trevor on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/tschakohl

Trending