Social media users share a screenshot of an NPR article entitled “Trump Supporters Storm US Capitol, Clash with Police”, claiming that the timestamp on the article, “January 6, 2021, 09:33 ET”, proves that the storming of the Capitol was a staged event planned by the so-called “Deep State.” This statement is untrue: at 9:33, the headline of the article “Diehard Trump supporters gathered in the capital of the Nations to protest the outcome of the election” was read and it was later updated to cover the storms of the Capitol again give.
Most of the reports (here, here, here) share a screenshot of a Parler message with the caption ‘NPR accidentally released an article at 9am about Trump supporters’ clash with the police election and the Congress of the votes that were stopped, HOURS before such a thing ever took place. Advice to the Deep State: if you’re going to carry a false flag, at least do it well. ‘
The Parler message contains a screenshot of the NPR article underlining the timestamp and surrounding the deadline, with the caption “It was posted on NPR today at 09:30. Think about what time the event took place at the Capitol today. Captions on some of the social media posts include: ‘It was a Deep State fake flag operation’ (here) and ‘Let’s write our news article before the event actually happened. Why? Because we have already performed everything and we know what is going to happen. ”(Here)
Hundreds of pro-Trump protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 (here) as part of protests against the outcome of the presidential election, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden. A timeline of events compiled by The New York Times shows that protesters broke into the Capitol building only after 2pm ET on January 6 (here).
‘Deep State’ and ‘False Flag’ are terms often used in conspiracy theory narratives, the most popular being QAnon (here). A core principle of the conspiracy theory is that US President Donald Trump secretly includes a cabal of predators with child sex that includes prominent Democrats, Hollywood elites and ‘deep state’ allies (here).
The image of the NPR article is authentic and can still be seen on the NPR website here with the timestamp on January 6, 09:33 ET and the caption “Trump Supporters Storm US Capitol, Clash with Police”. It also states that it was “Updated 15:08 hours ET”.
Ben Fishel, a spokesman for NPR, told Reuters that the original story was posted at 09:33 under the headline: “Diehard Trump supporters gather in Nations Capital to protest election results.” He said the title ‘Trump Supporters Storm US Capitol, Clash with Police’ was published on January 15, January 6.
This original title can be seen here in an archived version of the article. It can also be seen in the text of the URL of the article, which contains the original heading and the word “updates”, seen here.
The headline of the article changed over the course of the day, including ‘We Are Patriots’: Trump Supporters Gather In DC to Protest Biden’s Win’ at 13:16 ET, as seen in this archived version of the webpage here.
Fishel added: ‘This is standard practice in an evolving story. I can confirm that NPR is not clairvoyant and that we were not part of a (false) conspiracy of people who staged the events on Wednesday 6 January. ”
VERDICT
Untrue. The headline of the article has been updated as the events unfold in the Capitol.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.