Dr Anthony Fauci has not been arrested by Special Forces

14 April 2022
What was claimed

Dr Fauci has been arrested by US Special Forces.

Our verdict

This is not true. It appears to be a complete fabrication.

An Instagram post has falsely claimed that Dr Anthony Fauci has been arrested by US Special Forces.

The post appeared on 11 April 2022, and shows a screenshot of an article from 10 April 2022. But Dr Fauci, who is Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Chief Medical Advisor to the US President, Joe Biden, has appeared publicly since then, including on MSNBC on the evening of 11 April.

The article from which the screenshot was taken comes from Real Raw News, a website which is a common source of misinformation. It claims that the charges against Dr Fauci include “treason, mass medical malpractice, and seditious conspiracy, and criminal homicide”. A post sharing an image from the same article has previously been debunked by Politifact, a fact checker in the US.

We have checked misinformation about Dr Fauci before.

Photo credit: Andrew Propp for Fogarty/NIH

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