A social media post contrasted former President Donald Trump’s mounting criminal charges with what appeared to be a lack of legal consequences for other groups and people.
The April 17 Facebook post showed a screenshot of an April 16 X post from conservative activist Benny Johnson. His post listed people and groups he said had “0 indictments,” including Hunter Biden, “COVID criminals” and “BLM rioters.”
The post ended with: “Donald Trump — 91 indictments.”
This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about PolitiFact’s partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
Johnson’s post appears to have been deleted. He did not respond when PolitiFact asked why it had been deleted.
(Screenshot from Facebook.)
Trump was indicted on 91 felony counts but the post paints a misleading picture.
Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, has been indicted twice. In December, he was indicted on nine tax charges — three felonies and six misdemeanors — in California. He was also indicted in September on three other charges related to a gun he purchased in 2018.
It wasn’t immediately clear what Johnson meant by “COVID criminals” but available information shows it is inaccurate to claim no one faced criminal charges in COVID-19-related matters.
The U.S. Justice Department reported that as of April 2024 its COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force had “used a full range of tools to hold accountable fraudsters and other criminals” who abused economic relief measures the government established to support people and businesses during the pandemic. The efforts included charging more than 3,500 defendants with federal crimes in fraud cases related to unemployment insurance benefits and federal financial assistance programs made available through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, more commonly known as the CARES Act, including the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans.
Some conservatives have used terms such as “BLM rioters,” to refer to people who participated in nationwide protests that calledi for racial justice in summer 2020, after a white police officer murdered George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. “BLM” stands for “Black Lives Matter,” which was a common refrain during the protests and the name of a related advocacy group. News reports and police reports show that although some violence, property destruction and looting occurred during the 2020 protests, most demonstrations were largely peaceful.
When the protests turned violent or destructive, however, law enforcement responded. The Justice Department reported in September 2020 that more than 300 people in 29 states and Washington, D.C., were charged “for crimes committed adjacent to or under the guise of peaceful demonstrations since the end of May.”
People were charged with offenses related to arson and explosives, assaulting law enforcement officers and damaging federal property, according to the department’s statement.
Trump faces dozens of criminal charges, but it’s inaccurate to claim that others including Hunter Biden and people who broke laws during protests in 2020 were never charged with any crimes.
We rate that claim False.
This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here.
