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Fact check: Inauthentic Hallie Biden tweet about presidential election circulates online

Kate S. Petersen, USA TODAY
·3 min read
Nov 4, 2022: Dylan Bryan casts his vote during the midterm elections at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral on Tuesday night, in Columbus, Ohio.

The claim: Hallie Biden tweeted about a Biden family effort to rig the presidential election

Two years after the 2020 presidential election, social media users continue to share misleading and inaccurate claims about the election process.

A recent example involves purported tweets by Hallie Biden, who was married to President Joe Biden's son, Beau, until he died in 2015.

"So on election night ... Jill Biden was on the phone yelling at state legislators and the people who tabulate the votes to stop the count. Because there was a deal worked out: if Trump got too far ahead, stop the count to rush in fake ballots," reads one of the purported tweets in a Dec. 4 Facebook post. (direct link, archive link).

The post garnered more than 100 interactions in 4 days.

But the purported tweets did not come from Hallie Biden, who doesn't use the platform, according to a spokesperson for the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children. The Twitter account with the handle shown in the purported tweets is an imposter account that has been suspended.

USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who shared the post for comment.

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Hallie Biden doesn't have a Twitter account

The Twitter account shown in the post did not belong to the president's daughter-in-law even though it uses the handle @HallieBiden.

"Mrs. Hallie Biden does not have a Twitter account. Any account bearing her name is fraudulent," a spokesperson for the Beau Biden Foundation told USA TODAY in an email.

Hallie Biden is chair of the foundation's board.

Based on internet archive records, the imposter account, @HallieBiden, was suspended sometime in the fall of 2022 and remains suspended as of this date.

Before it was suspended, the @HallieBiden account called Joe Biden's other son, Hunter, a "crackhead" in the biography section and posted numerous tweets accusing Joe Biden of crimes.

Another purported tweet from the account claimed that former President Donald Trump won the election. USA TODAY also found that this purported tweet was inauthentic.

Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election, winning 306 electoral votes compared to Trump’s 232. There was no evidence of widespread fraud.

This most recent inauthentic tweet was also debunked by the Associated Press.

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Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that Hallie Biden tweeted about a Biden family effort to rig the presidential election. The tweet is not from the president's daughter-in-law, who does not have a Twitter account, according to a spokesperson for the Beau Biden Foundation. The handle shown on the purported tweet was used by an imposter account before it was suspended.

Our fact-check sources:

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Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Hallie Biden tweet about election fraud inauthentic