A post shared on Facebook claims the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps purportedly hanged Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Arati Prabhakar for treason.

Verdict: False

The claim is false and stems from a Feb. 29 article published on the satire site “Real Raw News.” A spokesperson for the U.S. Navy JAG Corps denied the claim’s validity in an email to Check Your Fact.

Fact Check:

Prabhakar is an engineer and applied physicist who served as director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from 2012 to 2017, according to her biography on the White House OSTP’s website. She has a PhD in applied physics from the California Institute of Technology, the same website indicates.

The Facebook post claims the U.S. Navy JAG Corps purportedly hanged Prabhakar for treason. The same post further claims Prabhakar allegedly “dreamt [up] the idea of poisoning potable water reservoirs with COVID-19 vaccines in a desperate bid to continually inoculate the population against imaginary, emerging strains of the alleged disease.”

The claim is false and stems from a Feb. 29 article published on the satire site “Real Raw News.” A “Disclaimer” included on the site’s “About Us” page indicates its content is not meant to be taken literally. “Information on this website is for informational and educational and entertainment purposes. This website contains humor, parody, and satire. We have included this disclaimer for our protection, on the advice on legal counsel,” the disclaimer reads.