Prior to the inauguration of President Joe Biden, some users shared on social media hilarious messages that were allegedly posted by General John Hyten, Vice President of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a Telegram channel. The channel, whose rhetoric refers to key principles of the conspiracy theory QAnon, does not belong to Hyten. A Hyten spokesman told Reuters the general had no social media accounts.
Videos on YouTube have been viewed tens of thousands of times youtu.be/uTcqLpIG2qU, here, youtu.be/M3Njds6cT-Q, shows a collection of the posts allegedly posted by Hyten, with references to various terms used by fans of the QAnon conspiracy theory, including: “The Great Awakening”, “Nothing can stop what is coming” and “the truth will shock the world” (here, here).
Messages on Facebook, including screenshots of Hyten’s alleged Telegram messages, can be seen here.
Major Trisha Guillebeau, public affairs adviser and speechwriter of the joint chief of staff, told Reuters in an email that all social media accounts attributed to Hyten were fake.
“The Telegram and all other social media reports containing the parable of General John Hyten are false,” she said. “Gen Hyten has no personal or professional social media accounts”.
Reuters found at least three different Telegram channels posing as General Hyten and sending similar messages.
Two of these channels, reviewed by Reuters on January 20, have a red “fraud” label and have a warning message with the following words: “Warning: many users have reported this account as a scam or fake account. Please be careful when it charges your money. ”As of January 20, 6:17 (ET), these channels have 124,715, 19,745 and 16,689 subscribers.
VERDICT
Untrue. General Hyten does not have a Telegram account. The channels that use his name and distribute messages that correspond to the conspiracy theory QAnon have been imitating him.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to actually check social media posts.