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By Lynn Arditi June 26, 2017
Joshua Gillin
By Joshua Gillin June 26, 2017

Saga of bodies found in barrels on Clinton property is fake news

A series of posts that say more than a dozen sets of human remains have been found on Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Chappaqua, N.Y., property are fake news.

"Breaking: Barrels removed from Clinton property contained parts from 3 missing women," read the headline on a June 20, 2017, post on FreedomCrossroads.us. Facebook users flagged that post and others related to it as part of the social media site’s efforts to curb fake news.

The June 20 article said that investigators had unearthed a 55-gallon steel drum from the Clintons’ yard. The barrel contained the remains of three women who went missing in Arkansas in 1974, the story said.

There was no date or context on the post, but it did note that "the barrel, which contained the arms, legs and heads of the three women, was filled with what the medical examiner calls a ‘crude preservative.’ "

The story is fake, as are subsequent stories about the same investigation that followed the June 20 post. There is no corroborating evidence any of this happened. The photo used with the story is from 2012, when a man and a woman were found in a barrel in a South Carolina lake.

FreedomCrossroads.us posted more stories about the fake Clinton storyline over subsequent days.

One story added to the site on June 21 said 11 more drums were found on the grounds, while "the Clintons sat rocking in their chairs on the front porch sipping coffee or tea while the home they’ve lived in more than 15 years was exposed as a graveyard."

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By June 23, the website was declaring Bill Clinton even went to high school with two of the victims, but neither Clinton would be facing any charges over the 14 sets of remains, for lack of evidence (and bribing the FBI).

These stories have spread online, showing up on other websites, but they still aren’t real.

FreedomCrossroads.us said on its page footer that the site fabricates its content. "Here we gather a boatload of bullhonkey, works of pure satirical fiction, to give the fist-shakers of the world a reason to hate," it reads.

The site featured a similar page design to TheLastLineOfDefense.org, a parody site responsible for literally hundreds of fake news stories popping up across the Internet.

That site was run by a man named Christopher Blair, a self-described liberal troll living in Maine. He told us in the past that his aim was to trick conservatives with fake news stories that exposed how gullible they were.

A Whois lookup showed that FreedomCrossroads.us is registered to Blair, and lists information PolitiFact had previously used to contact him (although the email address has changed since we first checked the site). The site was registered on Aug. 18, 2016.

We have tried to reach Blair to verify he was the site’s owner but didn’t get any response.

We rate this claim Pants On Fire!

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Pants on Fire
Says investigators have found remains of missing women in steel barrels buried on Bill and Hillary Clinton’s property.
in Internet posts
Tuesday, June 20, 2017

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Saga of bodies found in barrels on Clinton property is fake news

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