Social media users are sharing a screenshot of a ‘press release’ of ‘First Dogs Champs and Major Biden’, tweeted from an account called ‘The Oval Pawffice’. Some users seem to be interpreting this as an official ‘statement’ from the Biden administration. This is untrue: it was posted by a fan account not managed by Biden’s communications team.
Facebook posts with the screenshot of the tweet are visible here and here.
Although some users acknowledge that it is not a government account, other people seem to think it is, with one comment that reads: ‘What are we … 5 years old !! What’s next? A dollhouse and balloon animals! […] It must be one of the dumbest things to get out of the white house … except for Joe! ‘
Some iterations contain a screenshot with a corresponding tweet here it reads: “If anyone within the Trump administration had tweeted this, we would have had a litany interruption in how they waste time with this as the deadliest pandemic in a century rages. But I think we are good now? ‘
The relevant tweet can be seen here , posted on January 25, 2020 by the @TheOvalPawffice account, which is identified in their description as a fan page ( twitter.com/TheOvalPawffice ).
There are further clues that indicate that the account is not official: none of their social media pages on Twitter ( twitter.com/TheOvalPawffice ), Instagram (here) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/OvalPawffice/) have been verified, as have the accounts of the new administration ( twitter.com/WhiteHouse , twitter.com/POTUS , twitter.com/VP , twitter.com/FLOTUS , twitter.com/SecondGentleman ); Their website theovalpawffice.com/ does not use a .gov address. The email on their Facebook page (www.facebook.com/OvalPawffice/) is a Gmail address, not a White House address.
This is not the first time that the content of ‘The Oval Pawffice’ as ‘official content’ is incorrect. Reuters had earlier dropped another claim regarding their Instagram account @first_dogs_usa (here).
At the time, the administrator of the Instagram page via Instagram Direct Message confirmed to Reuters that the fan account “is in no way related to the Biden transition team”. The administrator was recently contacted by Reuters and assured that their social media pages are not related to Biden’s ‘commission team’.
Since at least January 27, the Twitter account has added the word “Fans” to their name (archive.vn/Alf58, archive.vn/h0Cfh).
VERDICT
Untrue. The social media accounts of ‘The Oval Pawffice’ are unofficial fan pages.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.