Update January 20: Including statement by the Federal Bureau of Prisons in paragraph 10.
Social media users share a day before the inauguration of Pres. Joe Biden photos and videos of a bus driving outside the Capitol, describing it as a ‘prison bus’. However, a National Guard spokesman said the bus looked like one of their standard troop transport buses.
The posts (here, here, here , here) shows a video of a bus driving outside a fence with the Capitol dome in the background and then coming to a stop, or a still image from the end of this video clip.
Captions include: “BREAK! A prison bus was allowed near the capital building in the restricted area today. Who knows exactly why, but it happened and it is there ”; “What looks like a prison bus was spotted at the Washington capital”; and “a prison bus arrived at the Capitol”. Some of the reports are apparently snapshots of a Telegram message t.me/CapitolNews/127, which endorses the video, ‘Since Washington DC is in full lock in the ancestor (sic) of the inauguration, a prison bus to the Capitol. Note: DC is completely closed to traffic, only authorized personnel may enter. ”
Biden is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on Wednesday, January 20, during a ceremony held in front of a heavily fortified U.S. Capitol in Washington DC, with thousands of National Guard troops sent to provide security (here) . There are several road closures around the Capitol and the White House for the inauguration (here , here).
The video shared in the social media posts was footage from Ruptly obtained from a January 18, 2021 live broadcast here (timestamp 3:30:47). There is nothing in the Ruptly broadcast, entitled ‘BREAKING: Smoke seen behind the American Capitol building in the midst of the evacuation’, which indicates that the bus is a prison bus.
Laura Lucchini, head of News at Ruptly, told Reuters in an email: “Ruptly certainly never claimed it was a prison bus. This appears to be a malicious use of our content. ‘
The bus is most likely a National Guard bus. Nahaku McFadden, head of media operations at the National Guard Bureau of Public Affairs, told Reuters in an email that the bus “looks like a standard troop transport bus”. She explained: “The military uses buses similar to the one in the photo, and it is probably one that members of the National Guard transported to support inauguration claims.”
The bus in the video is almost identical to a bus carrying members of the National Guard in Lansing, Michigan, seen at the beginning of this Ruptly video (for example, the same lights, shape, and front window).
A section of the front of a similar bus carrying National Guard troops can be seen in this Reuters photo.
Justin Long of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Office of Public Affairs told Reuters in an email that the bus in these claims “is not a federal Bureau of Prisons.”
Reuters recently dismissed other false claims related to Biden’s inauguration (here, here).
VERDICT
Untrue. The bus shown in the photos and videos looks like a National Guard bus transporting troops to support inauguration sessions, not a “prison bus”.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.