The popular claim that the CEO of UnitedHealth will testify against Nancy Pelosi is false

Have you seen claims that Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, who was shot to death on December 4 in New York, was killed because he was about to testify against Rep. Nancy Pelosi on insider trading charges? This has gone viral on several social media platforms over the past week. But this is not true.

The earliest example of this false claim is that Gizmodo was able to find dates dating back to the night of December 6, two days after the shooting. Account X HustleBitch books “BREAKING: Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was scheduled to testify against Nancy Pelosi on insider trading charges.

From this claim around 10:00 PM ET, it appears that other X accounts that went viral made posts about it a few hours later. political It also found that the allegation was made on Threads and Instagram, even though those posts were made on December 7, the day after the earliest tweets spreading the false story, which occurred well before the arrest. Luigi Mangionewho was charged with murder and is currently fighting extradition to New York from Pennsylvania.

But the claim that Thompson was killed because of this congressional motive is incorrect. There is no evidence that Thompson was going to testify against Pelosi for insider trading or anything else. But strangely enough, Thompson himself was accused of insider trading before his murder.

The Hollywood Firefighters Retirement Fund has filed a lawsuit against Thompson and other UnitedHealth executives Back in May. The lawsuit alleges that the executives sold about $120 million worth of UnitedHealth stock when they learned that the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating the company for anti-competitive practices. The stock fell only after it became publicly known that the Department of Justice had opened an investigation. The lawsuit states that Thompson sold about $15 million worth of stock.

Pelosi and other members of Congress have already received scrutiny over their stock trading activity, and some Democrats have called for a ban, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who wrote Again in 2021“There is no reason for members of Congress to hold and trade individual stocks when we write major policy and have access to sensitive information.”

Some versions of the false claim on social media also use a video that allegedly shows Thompson talking about Nancy Pelosi providing aid to UnitedHealth. The only problem, of course, is that the video doesn’t show Thompson being killed, as anyone with eyes could see.

Wallace dieda conspiracy theorist who often spreads misinformation on X, helped spread the misidentified video along with several others. Wallace also made a video about rumble The claim that Nancy Pelosi brainwashed the shooter using techniques from MKUltra, mind control experiments conducted by the CIA in the 1960s. There were also allegations that the man shot Donald Trump over the summer in Butler, Pennsylvania. Central Intelligence Agency Gizmodo said After these allegations became widespread, any claims about MKUltra’s involvement in the assassination attempt were “completely false, absurd and damaging.”

Why are people spreading this false story online about Pelosi? We can only assume they are either actively or inadvertently spreading false information to help Trump. Many of the accounts that were sharing the false claim in its first iteration appeared to contain biographies and photos promoting the former and incoming president.

HustleBitch, the account that appears to have shared the claim very early on (if not perhaps the first), has a history of sharing lies online. This account was also one of the first to share a claim that a double had actually been used to visit Trump to watch the SpaceX launch with Elon Musk. last month. But it’s not clear who is actually behind the account.

All we know for sure is that there is no evidence that Thompson was killed because he was going to testify. While Mangione’s lawyer has said his client intends to plead not guilty, all available evidence seems to suggest he may have been killed because his company makes billions of dollars in profits while depriving Americans of life-saving medical coverage who are fed up with it. Broken health care system.