Florida teen accused of abduction hoax faces justice — and alleged ruse appears even more elaborate than initially thought



Late last month, Blaze News reported about a Florida teen who authorities said carried out a jaw-dropping hoax featuring his own supposed kidnapping as well as texts to his family claiming he'd been shot and was being followed by four Hispanic men.

The Marion County Sheriff's Office and surrounding agencies pulled out all the stops, committing personnel and resources over the course of about 24 hours to find 17-year-old Caden Speight.

'While continuing the investigation, detectives additionally learned that Speight had mentioned running away before, and they located ChatGPT searches on his laptop about collecting his blood without causing pain and Mexican cartels.'

But things began looking suspicious with every update, and finally the kid was found. But it was far from a happy reunion.

Turns out authorities said Speight shot himself in the leg. And his claim about Hispanic men following him? Made-up. But that was just for starters.

It now appears that his alleged hoax was even more elaborate than authorities first thought.

How it began

An Amber Alert was issued on the night of Sept. 25 stating that Speight was last seen about four hours earlier in the 12800 block of SW Highway 484 in Dunnellon, which is about an hour south of Gainesville.

RELATED: Racist signs found above water fountains in Georgia high school. Turns out student of color is behind hate hoax.

Image source: Marion County (Fla.) Sheriff's Office

As time wore on and the crisis heightened, Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods noted that he had dedicated all of his available resources in an effort to find the teen, and his personnel worked through the night of Sept. 25 and through most of the next day on the case. In fact, Woods later said "federal agencies" as well as reinforcements "from around the state" turned out to help.

Many observers also were worried; one replied to the alert on Facebook with the following: "Oh, dear Jesus, please bring this young man back to his family safe and unharmed."

But after the Hispanic men claim was debunked, authorities combed the scene where both Speight's truck had been found and a shooting had been reported. The teen wasn't there — but a bullet hole in the truck reportedly was.

The dominoes kept falling. An updated alert added that it was possible Speight "left the incident location on a black bicycle with a red and grey tent, which he purchased at Walmart on SW 19th Avenue Road in Ocala just prior to this incident being reported." Ocala is about 40 minutes northeast of Dunnellon.

Finally the sheriff's office said on the afternoon of Sept. 26 that Speight had "been located safe in Williston," which is about 35 minutes northwest of Ocala.

Authorities say it was a hoax

Sheriff Woods a few days later announced in a video update that Speight made it all up.

Woods said, "We had witnesses that contradicted the initial information. Caden simply rode away towards Williston while the rest of us were left to think the worst, and my team was working in overdrive to solve this case."

As for the teen's claim that he'd been shot, the sheriff said, "Content to continue the ruse, Caden — who had a handgun with him since the beginning of all of this — chose to shoot himself in the leg, causing a non-life-threatening injury just prior to walking out to the roadway where he would be located by citizens in Williston. There is zero chance that Caden's gunshot wound came from any type of an assailant."

Woods added that numerous people asked if Speight would face consequences, and this week that has come to pass.

RELATED: 'Noose' found at Obama Presidential Center building site in Chicago — but some conservatives are skeptical: 'I’ll take 'hate crime hoaxes' for $3,500, Alex'

Facing justice

The sheriff's office said Major Crimes Detective Jason Williams on Tuesday arrested Speight for presenting false evidence, shooting into a conveyance, making a false report of a crime, and possession of a firearm by a minor.

In its announcement, the sheriff's office added that during the all-out search for Speight, crime scene technicians noticed a bullet hole through the windshield of his vehicle, suspected blood, Speight's severely damaged cell phone, drag marks in the dirt, and bicycle tracks leading away from his truck.

But authorities soon said he went much further than that in an attempt to solidify the hoax:

Further investigation and testing revealed that Speight had fired the shot through the windshield, splattered a mixture of blood in the truck, and destroyed his cell phone. Speight then fled the area on a bicycle with camping supplies he purchased at Walmart just before reporting this incident. An eyewitness also advised that he saw Speight leaving the area on a bicycle.

While continuing the investigation, detectives additionally learned that Speight had mentioned running away before, and they located ChatGPT searches on his laptop about collecting his blood without causing pain and Mexican cartels. On September 26, 2025, Williston Police Department (WPD) officers located Speight during a call for service at 727 W Noble Avenue in Williston. Speight was found with a handgun and the bicycle still in his possession. He attempted to continue the ruse and had a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his leg, which shattered his femur and required medical treatment.

The sheriff's office said that after Speight's arrest, he was taken to the Department of Juvenile Justice.

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Missing Florida teen texted family that he got shot, was pursued by 4 Hispanic men — but cops say nothing was what it seemed



Law enforcement in Florida went into overdrive mode late last week when it was reported that 17-year-old Caden Speight was missing.

The Marion County Sheriff's Office issued an Amber Alert Thursday night stating that Speight was last seen around 4 p.m. Thursday in the 12800 block of SW Highway 484 in Dunnellon, which is about an hour south of Gainesville.

'Oh, dear Jesus, please bring this young man back to his family safe and unharmed.'

The alert also stated that "law enforcement believes he may be with four unknown men, possibly Hispanic, who are driving a light-colored van. If you have any information about his whereabouts, or if you see him, please do NOT approach and call 911 immediately."

RELATED: Racist signs found above water fountains in Georgia high school. Turns out student of color is behind hate hoax.

Image source: Marion County (Fla.) Sheriff's Office

As time wore on and the crisis heightened, Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods noted that he had dedicated all of his available resources in an effort to find the teen, and his personnel worked through Thursday night and into Friday on the case. In fact, Woods later said "federal agencies" as well as reinforcements "from around the state" turned out to help.

It was a big operation, indeed.

Many observers also were worried; one replied to the alert on Facebook with the following: "Oh, dear Jesus, please bring this young man back to his family safe and unharmed."

But the original story soon got a bit hinky.

In an updated alert Friday, the sheriff's office said that "detectives obtained information and collected evidence that are unsupportive of the initially reported facts" and that "there is no evidence to indicate that he was taken by four Hispanic men in a light-colored van."

Officials added that they arrived at this determination after an initial investigation of the teen's disappearance as well as a shooting reported in the 12800 block of SW Highway 484 around 4:10 p.m. Thursday. It was the same time when — and place where — the teen was last seen.

The updated alert added that it was possible the teen "left the incident location on a black bicycle with a red and grey tent, which he purchased at Walmart on SW 19th Avenue Road in Ocala just prior to this incident being reported." Ocala is about 40 minutes northeast of Dunnellon.

"Since Caden is still a missing endangered juvenile, MSCO is asking anyone who may have seen a male matching his description with a dark-colored mountain bike and a tent to call 911," the sheriff's office added.

RELATED: 'Noose' found at Obama Presidential Center building site in Chicago — but some conservatives are skeptical: 'I’ll take 'hate crime hoaxes' for $3,500, Alex'

WESH-TV reported that when deputies arrived at the scene of the reported shooting, they found a car belonging to Speight, but he was not there. A separate WESH video report indicated that a bullet hole was found in that vehicle.

But a witness named Jackson McClure also spoke to the station Friday morning, and WESH reported he had the following to say: "I passed by here around 4 o'clock, and there was a boy, young man, believed to be the guy they're looking for, getting something out of the truck and shoving it into a book bag, and then about 10 to 15 [minutes] later, I believe he drove by my house on a bicycle. I called [the] Marion County non-emergency line and told them what I had seen, and they said, 'Thank you very much, that's very helpful.'"

WESH noted that McClure also said police "did ask me if he was bleeding as he went by, and I told them no, he looked normal, and he wasn't struggling to ride his bicycle."

Finally, by late Friday afternoon, the sheriff's office said Speight "has been located safe in Williston," which is about 35 minutes northwest of Ocala.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave

Sheriff Woods soon announced in a video some major developments in the case — but they cast a decidedly negative light on the teen whom law enforcement worked so hard to find.

First off, the sheriff's office on Tuesday told Blaze News that Speight was the one who made the claim about the four Hispanic men. In fact, the sheriff's office added to Blaze News that Speight in a text message "claimed that four Hispanic men in a white van were following him, and that he was shot."

Woods addressed this issue and didn't hold back, revealing that "the initial details that Caden texted to his family were proven to be false. Completely made up."

Woods added that evidence indeed was found "of a single gunshot where Caden left his truck. However, his claims that he had been shot and abducted were quickly disproven. We then learned that he had purchased a bicycle, tent, and camping supplies just prior to him reporting this."

The sheriff's office on Tuesday added to Blaze News that "based on the information he provided to his family and the evidence located on scene, MCSO was working his disappearance as a possible shooting and abduction. It was clear that Caden made an effort to leave the scene in such a state that, in the context of his last text, it would appear he was shot and kidnapped."

Woods added that "we had witnesses that contradicted the initial information. Caden simply rode away toward Williston while the rest of us were left to think the worst, and my team was working in overdrive to solve this case."

Then came the kid's outrageous coup de grace, which Woods detailed: "Now, content to continue the ruse, Caden — who had a handgun with him since the beginning of all of this — chose to shoot himself in the leg, causing a non-life-threatening injury just prior to walking out to the roadway where he would be located by citizens in Williston. There is zero chance that Caden's gunshot wound came from any type of an assailant."

RELATED: Facebook user threatens to kill black people at Alabama fair, adds 'white power' message and Confederate flag. Cops say black man is behind post.

Woods added in his video update that many people have wondered if Speight will face any charges and what the cost to taxpayers will be after this "large-scale investigation and search."

"Trust me," the sheriff said. "It is on my mind. I can tell you those items are not off the table at this point. Right now, we are still processing all of the evidence in this case. I don't want to make any statements on that until we have fully examined it all."

However, despite detectives having "a lot of questions for Caden," the sheriff added that "his parents refuse to allow my detectives to speak with him so that we could come to a true, final conclusion in all this."

"Again, thank you citizens for your tips and information that you sent in," Woods concluded, "and when we do have any updated information on this case, I promise you, we will provide it to you."

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Disgraced Russiagate hoaxer Peter Strzok gets some bad news regarding his federal case



Peter Strzok, the former FBI agent who launched the bureau's Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign, was fired in 2018.

This termination took place several months after his removal from special counsel Robert Mueller's team over Strzok's damning text messages to then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page, which denigrated the very people the bureau was investigating, including President Donald Trump.

'The Court finds that there is no genuine dispute of material fact that would preclude the entry of summary judgment in the defendants' favor.'

When Page texted Strzok ahead of the 2016 election for assurance that Trump was "not ever going to become president," the FBI agent replied, "No. No he's not. We'll stop it."

The bureau noted at the time of his termination that Strzok, whom President Donald Trump has labeled a "fraud" and a "sick loser," "was subject to the standard FBI review and disciplinary process after conduct highlighted in the IG report was referred to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility."

While his firing appeared to be justly deserved, Strzok nevertheless filed a lawsuit in August 2019, challenging his dismissal and claiming that the Department of Justice and FBI violated his rights to free speech and privacy — even though his damning messages were exchanged on his FBI-issued device.

An Obama judge just delivered Strzok some bad news.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in a ruling Tuesday that after a review of years-worth of evidence and testimony, "The Court finds that there is no genuine dispute of material fact that would preclude the entry of summary judgment in the defendants' favor and that [Strzok's] motion for summary judgment should be denied."

RELATED: Durham annex proves Russiagate was a coordinated smear

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Jackson noted that it was not up to her to decide "whether it was unnecessarily harsh to end plaintiff's career after a long, unblemished record of outstanding service to the agency, or whether a severe sanction was necessary to address the lack of professionalism and appearance of bias in the messages."

The question before her was instead whether the bureau's firing of Strzok "comported with the Constitution."

When considering Strzok's First Amendment claim, Jackson noted that the Russiagate hoaxer's "interest in expressing his opinions about political candidates on his FBI phone at that time was outweighed by the FBI’s interest in avoiding the appearance of bias in its ongoing investigations of those very people, and in protecting against the disruption of its law enforcement operations under then-Director Wray's leadership."

Jackson noted further that Strzok proved unable to point to evidence that the DOJ and FBI treated him any "more harshly than they would have treated employees in similar circumstances because the viewpoint expressed in the texts was critical of President Trump."

Apparently, there was no point of comparison as the FBI officials deposed said the situation was unprecedented.

Jackson's full opinion was filed under seal "because it contains references to materials, such as deposition transcripts, that were filed under seal in an abundance of caution at the request of at least one of the parties at the time."

While Strzok lost this battle, the DOJ under former Attorney General Merrick Garland entered into a $1.2 million agreement with the Russiagate hoaxer in the final months of the Biden administration to settle his privacy-invasion claims.

FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed earlier this month that Garland and former FBI Director Christopher Wray decided to give Strzok the money.

Politico indicated that Strzok's attorney did not respond to its request for comment.

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Al Gore wrong again: Study delivers good news for Arctic ice trends, bad news for climate hucksters



Failed presidential candidate Al Gore claimed in his 2007 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech that the previous year, "as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is 'falling off a cliff.' One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years."

Two years later, the climate alarmist told the Copenhagen Climate Conference that new research indicated there was "a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice free within the next five to seven years."

It turns out Al Gore, whose fearmongering reportedly nets him $200,000 per speaking engagement, was not only wrong about a 20-foot rise in the global sea level "in the near future," polar bear drownings, and the snows of Kilimanjaro, but also about the future of Arctic ice.

A paper published this month in the American Geophysical Union's biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters indicated that over the past 20 years, "Arctic sea ice loss has slowed considerably, with no statistically significant decline in September sea ice area since 2005."

This slowdown in the loss of Arctic sea ice was pronounced across all months of the year and could "plausibly" continue over the next decade.

The researchers behind the paper — from Columbia University and the University of Exeter — indicated that even with relatively high global temperatures, "climate modeling evidence suggests we should expect periods like this to occur somewhat frequently."

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Photo by PABLO PORCIUNCULA/AFP via Getty Images

Natural factors, variations in ocean currents in particular, have a tremendous impact in this arena — accelerating, slowing, or reversing ice loss — and have apparently served in recent decades to offset the impact of relatively high global temperatures.

This natural corrective is all the more critical as humans reduce their emissions.

'Now the [natural] variability has switched to largely cancelling out sea ice loss.'

While the authors take for granted that ice loss over the past 50 years has been driven in part by "human-induced climate change," they acknowledged that there was actually significant Arctic sea ice expansion during at least one other period of increasing anthropogenic greenhouse emissions — from the 1940s to the 1970s.

An increase in industrial aerosol emissions from North America and Europe reportedly helped cool the Arctic in the mid-20th century. The very phase-out of exhaust — particularly sulfur emissions — from ships that some environmentalists advocated for appears to have "contributed to enhanced global and Arctic warming since 2020," said the paper.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Program Office indicated that in 2020, new international shipping regulations "drastically" cut sulfur emissions from ships. The exhaust they previously created — reflective clouds called "ship tracks" — had long reflected sunlight back into space, thereby cooling the planet.

"It is surprising, when there is a current debate about whether global warming is accelerating, that we’re talking about a slowdown," Mark England, the researcher who led the study, told the Guardian.

While willing to admit the alarmism of yesteryear was bunkum, England still was sure to tinge his forecast with pessimism.

RELATED: The climate cult is brainwashing your kids — and you’re paying for it

Photo by Sebnem Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images

"The good news is that 10 to 15 years ago when sea ice loss was accelerating, some people were talking about an ice-free Arctic before 2020," said England. "But now the [natural] variability has switched to largely cancelling out sea ice loss. It has bought us a bit more time, but it is a temporary reprieve — when it ends, it isn't good news."

England emphasized the need to maintain a sense of urgency and alarm, stating, "Climate change is unequivocally real, human-driven, and continues to pose serious threats. The fundamental science and urgency for climate action remain unchanged."

While Arctic ice loss has slowed, the Antarctic has been gaining ice in recent years.

According to a 2023 study published in the European Geosciences Union's peer-reviewed journal the Cryosphere, the Antarctic ice shelf area grew by 2048.27 square miles between 2009 and 2019, gaining 661 gigatonnes of ice mass "with 18 ice shelves retreating and 16 larger shelves growing in area."

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When a hoax teaches the oldest lesson: Courage first



On Thursday, August 21, at 4:30 p.m., my wife, my youngest daughter, and I stood in the soft light of an overcast day at Villanova University’s welcome Mass. She had earned the right to call herself a freshman. The class of 2029 also carries a distinction: the first freshman class to attend the alma mater of a pope.

Pride did not fully prepare us for what came next.

Everything is an education. Courage, the first of the virtues, does not mean reckless bravado. I learned something about it.

At 4:34 p.m., phones around us buzzed with a NOVA Alert:

ACTIVE SHOOTER Incident Warning
ACTIVE SHOOTER on VU campus. Move to secure location.
Lock/Barricade doors. More info to follow.

My daughter showed my wife the text. As they puzzled over it, the crowd shifted. Chairs toppled with a sound like rain. I briefly imagined a cloudburst pushing people indoors.

The murmur swelled into a surge. People dove to the ground. I had not yet seen the alert. Gunfire? I heard none. A vehicle attack? Lightning? A tornado? A wild animal?

Ancient Greeks saw their gods and the gods of their enemies amid the terror of battlefields. In that instant, the mind supplied its own agents of terror in the convulsing crowd at Villanova.

“Dad, run!” my daughter shouted. She and my wife had already bolted. I jogged after them, but the walkways churned like rapids and they disappeared in the current. I moved into the open at Connelly Plaza to search. Moments later, my daughter called from inside the Connelly Center, urging me to stop standing outside and get to cover. I geolocated my wife’s phone; it registered inside Dougherty Hall.

A heavily armed officer and several others strode past, asking for the library. I pointed as best I could. Someone inside Dougherty waved me in with insistence.

Inside, I found my wife’s purse and phone. Some thoughtful person had picked it up and brought it in. She soon called from a stranger’s phone to say she had reached the Ithan parking garage a little further off. I took up a post with four or five other dads at the glass entrance to Dougherty and waited for the all-clear. It came an hour and a half later.

Everything is an education. Courage, the first of the virtues, does not mean reckless bravado. I learned something about it that afternoon.

Panic spreads faster than any bullet. Faces around me looked as if they had witnessed a threat firsthand. The truth is that most had only read the alert and then seen fear and panic in other people’s faces. That fear became the source of multiplying bad information.

RELATED: America can’t survive on lies and make-believe morality

invincible_bulldog via iStock/Getty Images

“Tune our hearts to brave music,” St. Augustine prayed. Villanova’s staff did exactly that. They acted with calm and helped people reach safety. Even so, the hoaxer exposed vulnerabilities. If you have not witnessed immediate danger, move safely and deliberately to a secure place. Don’t fuel the stampede.

Augustine may have also said, “Hope has two beautiful daughters: anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain as they are.” The hoaxing continued that weekend — one call to the University of South Carolina, another to Villanova. The intent is obvious: inflict physical and psychological harm by weaponizing the consensus response — run and shelter in place.

The threat, paradoxically, comes from hijacking the security system by crying wolf. The remedy must make that hijacking harder, verify and communicate information faster, and reduce harm when the system gets abused. That requires careful thinking about methods and messages — and about courage.

Courage steadies the hands that send the alerts, guides parents and students to act with discipline, and keeps us from trampling one another in a fog of rumor. I watched it in real time from Dougherty Hall. It will be needed again.

The deep state is no longer deniable — thanks to Tulsi Gabbard



The term “deep state” has long been dismissed as the province of cranks and conspiracists. But the recent declassification of two critical documents — the Durham annex, released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and a report publicized by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — has rendered further denial untenable.

These documents lay bare the structure and function of a bureaucratic, semi-autonomous network of agencies, contractors, nonprofits, and media entities that together constitute a parallel government operating alongside — and at times in opposition to — the duly elected one.

The ‘deep state’ is a self-reinforcing institutional machine — a decentralized, global bureaucracy whose members share ideological alignment.

The disclosures do not merely recount past abuses; they offer a schematic of how modern influence operations are conceived, coordinated, and deployed across domestic and international domains.

What they reveal is not a rogue element operating in secret, but a systematized apparatus capable of shaping elections, suppressing dissent, and laundering narratives through a transnational network of intelligence, academia, media, and philanthropic institutions.

Narrative engineering from the top

According to Gabbard’s report, a pivotal moment occurred on December 9, 2016, when the Obama White House convened its national security leadership in the Situation Room. Attendees included CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Secretary of State John Kerry, and others.

During this meeting, the consensus view up to that point — that Russia had not manipulated the election outcome — was subordinated to new instructions.

The record states plainly: The intelligence community was directed to prepare an assessment “per the President’s request” that would frame Russia as the aggressor and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as its preferred candidate. Notably absent was any claim that new intelligence had emerged. The motivation was political, not evidentiary.

This maneuver became the foundation for the now-discredited 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference. From that point on, U.S. intelligence agencies became not neutral evaluators of fact but active participants in constructing a public narrative designed to delegitimize the incoming administration.

Institutional and media coordination

The ODNI report and the Durham annex jointly describe a feedback loop in which intelligence is laundered through think tanks and nongovernmental organizations, then cited by media outlets as “independent verification.” At the center of this loop are agencies like the CIA, FBI, and ODNI; law firms such as Perkins Coie; and NGOs such as the Open Society Foundations.

According to the Durham annex, think tanks including the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment, and the Center for a New American Security were allegedly informed of Clinton’s 2016 plan to link Trump to Russia. These institutions, operating under the veneer of academic independence, helped diffuse the narrative into public discourse.

Media coordination was not incidental. On the very day of the aforementioned White House meeting, the Washington Postpublished a front-page article headlined “Obama Orders Review of Russian Hacking During Presidential Campaign” — a story that mirrored the internal shift in official narrative. The article marked the beginning of a coordinated media campaign that would amplify the Trump-Russia collusion narrative throughout the transition period.

Surveillance and suppression

Surveillance, once limited to foreign intelligence operations, was turned inward through the abuse of FISA warrants. The Steele dossier — funded by the Clinton campaign via Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS — served as the basis for wiretaps on Trump affiliates, despite being unverified and partially discredited. The FBI even altered emails to facilitate the warrants.

RELATED: Durham annex proves Russiagate was a coordinated smear

Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images

This capacity for internal subversion reappeared in 2020, when 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter labeling the Hunter Biden laptop story as “Russian disinformation.” According to polling, 79% of Americans believed truthful coverage of the laptop could have altered the election. The suppression of that story — now confirmed as authentic — was election interference, pure and simple.

A machine, not a ‘conspiracy theory’

The deep state is a self-reinforcing institutional machine — a decentralized, global bureaucracy whose members share ideological alignment and strategic goals.

Each node — law firms, think tanks, newsrooms, federal agencies — operates with plausible deniability. But taken together, they form a matrix of influence capable of undermining electoral legitimacy and redirecting national policy without democratic input.

The ODNI report and the Durham annex mark the first crack in the firewall shielding this machine. They expose more than a political scandal buried in the past. They lay bare a living system of elite coordination — one that demands exposure, confrontation, and ultimately dismantling.

'Pure fiction': CNN shamed for 'fake news' story about a Vance-hosted Epstein strategy session



Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe provided damning insights last month into the apparent role that the liberal media played in perpetuating the Russian collusion hoax on the American people.

The revelations do not appear to have chastened the outlets that vigorously pushed the false narrative for years.

For example, when confronted with the newly declassified Durham annex — which detailed credible intelligence indicating that the Clinton campaign manufactured the Russian collusion hoax, seeded its talking points to the media, and ultimately furnished the FBI with a pretext to hound her opponent — the New York Times spun the declassified report as a distraction from the Epstein files; misled readers about its key findings; and downplayed its significance.

The article has neither aged well nor stood up to scrutiny.

Whereas the Times recently tried to gaslight about an old hoax, CNN — which has not covered the Durham annex — set to work this week on a new story that turned out to be a hoax.

On Tuesday, CNN published a piece titled "Top Trump officials will discuss Epstein strategy in Wednesday meeting at Vice President JD Vance's residence." The article has neither aged well nor stood up to scrutiny.

CNN claimed in the initial version that Vance, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were expected to meet at the vice president's residence to discuss "the administration's handling of the Epstein case, as well as the need to craft a unified response."

RELATED: From Obama to CNN: How the liberal media helped facilitate the 'treasonous conspiracy' about Russian collusion

Kypros / Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

Citing two anonymous sources, the liberal publication further claimed that "the White House considers those officials the leaders of the Trump administration's ongoing strategy regarding the Epstein files."

CNN has since edited its article to note that Vance is not actually among those whom the White House supposedly considers leaders of the admin's ongoing Epstein strategy.

'Any reporting to the contrary is false.'

"The CNN story is pure fiction," William Martin, communications director to the vice president, said in a statement obtained by Blaze News. "There was never a supposed meeting scheduled at the vice president’s residence to discuss Epstein strategy."

When pressed for comment, the White House referred Blaze News to Martin's statement.

Alayna Treene, the CNN White House reporter on the apparently fake story, began to backpedal on Wednesday, noting first that "administration officials familiar with the meeting said the dinner was now in flux, given its intense coverage, & it was unclear whether it would ultimately be called off, moved to another location or rescheduled."

An hour later, Treene shared the following comment from Martin: "As we've said publicly, there was never a supposed meeting scheduled at the vice president’s residence to discuss Epstein strategy. Any reporting to the contrary is false."

RELATED: House Republicans subpoena Clintons, ex-DOJ officials in Epstein probe

Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The story continued to unravel, now at an accelerated pace.

Citing her anonymous sources once again, Treene indicated on X that the dinner might not be happening, but if it were, it might be happening elsewhere and would not actually be an Epstein strategy session.

"Despite talks of canceling the dinner, two officials said it could still take place, though the location may change," wrote Treene. "They argued the focus of the meeting would likely be broader than solely discussing the administration’s handling of the Epstein case."

'I saw that reported today, and it's completely fake news.'

CNN then rushed out a follow-up piece incorporating Treene's narrative revisions — an article the liberal network also ended up having to alter.

The follow-up article, first titled "Vance dinner seen as potential way to clear the air between Bondi and Patel on Epstein scandal" and now appearing on the CNN website as "Planned dinner for Trump officials to discuss Epstein appears to have been moved amid media scrutiny," states as a fact that the dinner was planned for Wednesday night at Vance's residence and "was seen as an opportunity for Trump administration officials to realign amid the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal."

Whereas previously CNN sold the supposed dinner as an Epstein strategy session, now the publication suggested it was an opportunity for Vance "to reprise his peacemaker role" and smooth things over between Bondi, Bongino, and Patel, who apparently had a falling out following the Justice Department's conclusion that child sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein did not have a client list that could implicate deep-pocketed elites.

"It’s a way to get everyone together in an informal, low-stakes situation," an unnamed source told CNN.

Fielding a question about the supposed gathering posed to President Donald Trump on Wednesday, Vance said, "I saw that reported today, and it's completely fake news. We're not meeting to talk about the Epstein situation, and I think the reporter who reported it needs to get better sources."

— (@)

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