FACT CHECK: Did The FBI Apprehend A Man Responsible For The Los Angeles Fires?
A video shared on Instagram claims the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested someone allegedly responsible for wildfires in the Los Angeles area.
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Verdict: False
There is no evidence for this claim. An FBI spokesperson confirmed it to be false in an email to Check Your Fact.
Fact Check:
Some right-wing media personalities are supporting placing limits on aid given to Californians devastated by the recent wildfires, stating that the disaster could be attributed to the state’s “woke” policies, according to CNN. Fox News host Sean Hannity believes California doesn’t “deserve one federal dollar,” and Jesse Watters believes officials “squandered tax dollars.”
An Instagram video claims that the FBI has apprehended a man responsible for the fires. The video starts off showing two men in FBI coats escorting a man in handcuffs. Images of places on fire are in the background.
“Urgent: the FBI has arrested the owner of the company responsible for the fires in Los Angeles,” reads text overlaid on the video. The video then goes on to claim that employees of a company called Westland Developments and an alleged owner named Richard Graves started the fire in an interest of converting the devastated land into a real estate project.
This claim is inaccurate, however. There are no credible news reports to corroborate the claim. The official cause of the fires has not yet been determined, according to NBC News.
There are no press releases from the FBI about the alleged arrest, and FBI spokesperson Laura Eimiller confirmed the claim to be false in an email to Check Your Fact. (RELATED: Does Video Show South African Firefighters Arriving To Help California?)
“I am not aware of an arrest of any one at the federal level alleging responsibility for the fire. I’m not immediately familiar with this name either,” Eimiller said.
A reverse image search shows that the man in the photo being escorted by men in FBI jackets is Vincent Asaro, allegedly one of the masterminds of the Lufthansa heist in 1978, according to The Guardian.
