President Donald Trump, in a lengthy interview on Fox News, made several statements that were false, misleading or not supported by the evidence:

• Trump claimed Joe Biden, as vice president, pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who “was after his son,” Hunter Biden. There’s no evidence that Biden was under investigation, although he was a board member for a company whose owner was under investigation.
• Trump said of North Korea: “They haven’t had any tests over the last two years — zero.” It’s true that they haven’t had any nuclear tests or long-range missile tests, but North Korea has tested short-range missiles twice this month.
• The president said he will provide $15 billion in assistance to U.S. farmers hurt by the trade war, because that’s “the most money that China has ever paid” for U.S. agricultural goods. But federal data show that China purchased nearly $27.2 billion in U.S. agricultural goods in 2012.
• Trump boasted that Honda is “coming in [to the U.S.] with $14.5 billion” in investments. A Michigan-based automotive research group says that Honda has announced $1.7 billion in U.S. vehicle manufacturing investments over the last five years.
• The president said he has “tremendous poll numbers now.” Trump’s average approval rating is currently below 43 percent.

In a wide-ranging interview that aired May 19 on “The Next Revolution,” Trump and the show’s host, Steve Hilton, discussed foreign policy, international trade, the economy, politics and more.

Hunter Biden and Ukraine

At one point, Hilton raised Trump’s campaign promise to “drain the swamp,” asking the president whether former White House aides should be allowed to lobby for foreign companies. The president pivoted to 2020 — implying that a potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, intervened while he was vice president to halt an investigation in Ukraine of his son, Hunter.

Trump twisted the facts when he said that the then-vice president threatened to withhold $2 billion in U.S. loan guarantees unless Ukraine dropped its investigation into Hunter and fired the prosecutor. There’s no evidence that Hunter was under investigation.

Trump: Biden, he calls them and says, “Don’t you dare prosecute, if you don’t fire this prosecutor” — the prosecutor was after his son. Then he said, “If you fire the prosecutor, you’ll be OK. And if you don’t fire the prosecutor, we’re not giving you $2 billion in loan guarantees,” or whatever he was supposed to give. Can you imagine if I did that?

Let’s review what we know — and don’t know — about the Bidens and Ukraine.

As vice president, Biden went to Ukraine and told the government that the U.S. would withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees if Ukraine failed to address corruption and remove its prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin. We know this because Biden boasted about it last year during an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The former vice president, who is now running for president, said the incident occurred during a visit to Kiev.

Biden, Jan. 23, 2018: I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from [then-Ukraine President Petro] Poroshenko and from [then-Ukraine Prime Minister Arseniy] Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t.

So they said they had — they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to — or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said — I said, call him. I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.

The U.S. wasn’t the only one critical of Ukraine’s anti-corruption efforts. A month earlier, the International Monetary Fund threatened to withhold $40 billion unless Ukraine undertook “a substantial new effort” to fight corruption.

At the time, Hunter Biden was a board member for the Burisma Group, one of the biggest private gas companies in Ukraine. He joined the board in May 2014, instantly raising concerns about a potential conflict of interest. An Associated Press article called Biden’s hiring “politically awkward.”

“Hunter Biden’s employment means he will be working as a director and top lawyer for a Ukrainian energy company during the period when his father and others in the Obama administration attempt to influence the policies of Ukraine’s new government, especially on energy issues,” the AP wrote.

However, there is no evidence that Hunter Biden was under investigation or that his father pressured Ukraine on his behalf.

A few days before Fox News aired the Trump interview, Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine’s current prosecutor general, gave his own interview to Bloomberg News and said: “Hunter Biden did not violate any Ukrainian laws at least as of now, we do not see any wrongdoing.”

Lutsenko told Bloomberg that the prosecutor general’s office in 2014 — before Shokin took office — opened a corruption investigation against Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, and numerous others. He said the probe’s focus was Serghi Kurchenko, who owned a number of gas companies, and a transaction that occurred in November 2013, months before Biden joined Burisma.

Bloomberg News, May 16: As part of the 5-year-old inquiry, the prosecutor general’s office has been looking at whether Kurchenko’s purchase of an oil storage terminal in southern Ukraine from Zlochevksy in November 2013 helped Kurchenko launder money. Lutsenko said the transaction under scrutiny came months before Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board.

“Biden was definitely not involved,” Lutsenko said. “We do not have any grounds to think that there was any wrongdoing starting from 2014.”

The investigation is still active, he said.

North Korea and Nuclear Tests

The president also spoke about North Korea and its nuclear weapons program. Trump met with North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un in June of last year, and the two leaders agreed to “promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

During Kim’s reign, North Korea has conducted numerous nuclear tests and missile launches — including four nuclear weapons tests and three test launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs.

Trump: But, they haven’t had any tests over the last two years — zero. There’s a chart and it shows 24 tests, 22 tests, 18 tests. Then I come, and once I’m there for a little while you know, we went through a pretty rough rhetorical period. Once I’m there for a little while, no tests, no tests, no tests.

It’s true that North Korea has not conducted a nuclear test since Sept. 3, 2017, and it hasn’t launched an ICBM since Nov. 29, 2017. (See details in the Arms Control Association timeline.) But North Korea has conducted short-range missile tests twice this month, and it continues to actively pursue a nuclear weapons program.

The U.S. intelligence community released a threat assessment report in January that said, “We continue to observe activity inconsistent with full denuclearization.”

The report didn’t detail what kind of activity. But a week earlier, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington issued a report that said it found “approximately 20 undeclared missile operating bases,” including one that serves as a missile headquarters.

A month later, three Stanford University researchers issued a report that said North Korea “continued to operate and, in some cases, expand the nuclear weapons complex infrastructure. It continued to operate its nuclear facilities to produce plutonium and highly enriched uranium that may allow it to increase the number of nuclear weapons in its arsenal from roughly 30 in 2017 to 35-37.”

China and Trade

Another subject that the president addressed was the ongoing trade war with China.

The Trump administration last year imposed tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods, and China responded with tariffs on $110 billion of U.S. goods. The trade dispute escalated this month. First, the Trump administration on May 10 raised tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on about $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. China responded three days later when it announced that it would increase tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on roughly $60 billion worth of U.S. goods, beginning June 1.

The dispute has hurt U.S. agricultural exports in particular, and the administration responded by authorizing up to $12 billion in aid to U.S. farmers. Trump said he would increase financial assistance to $15 billion and explained how he arrived at that number.

Trump: I said to Sonny Perdue, Department of Agriculture — secretary of Agriculture – “Sonny, what’s the most money that China has ever paid toward agriculture, toward buying food product?” He said $15 billion a number of years ago. I said “Is that the most?” He said “Yes.” Some people will say close to (inaudible) but $15 billion was about the most. I said “Good. I’m going to take $15 billion out of the $100 billion, and I’m going to give that to our farmers.”

Trump told a similar story in a recent speech to the National Association of Realtors.

Trump, May 17: So I called Sonny Perdue, our great Secretary of Agriculture, and I said, “Sonny…” — (applause) — I said, “Sonny, what’s the biggest amount they’ve ever spent in this country?” He said, “About $15 billion. People could say 18, 19. But basically $15 billion.” And I said, “So let’s take $15 billion, set it aside out of the 100 or 125 billion [in annual tariffs imposed on all imports].”

We asked the White House and the Department of Agriculture about this conversation. Neither responded. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative referred us to the White House.

But this much we know based on available data and emails from two federal agencies: $15 billion isn’t “the biggest amount” that China has spent on U.S. agricultural exports.

In its annual reports on shifts in U.S. merchandise trade, the United States International Trade Commission reported that China purchased $27.2 billion in U.S. agricultural products in 2012 – the most in one year from 2010 to 2017.

The most recent USITC report covers 2013 to 2017, and a commission spokeswoman told us a new report covering 2018 would not be released until November. However, according to the Department of Agriculture, agricultural exports to China fell dramatically to $9.2 billion in 2018. That was “almost all due to retaliatory tariffs” imposed by China, Wallace E. Tyner, who teaches agricultural economics at Purdue University, told us in an email.

We also know that, as of the morning of May 20, the U.S. has paid $8.54 billion to farmers through three aid programs, a USDA spokesperson said.

The Market Facilitation Program — the largest of the three programs — can provide up to $10 billion to producers of corn, cotton, sorghum, soybean, wheat, dairy, hogs, almonds and sweet cherries, according to a December report by the Congressional Research Service on the trade aid programs. The top five commodities that received assistance through the program were soybeans, corn, wheat, cotton and sorghum, the USDA spokesperson told us.

We found that, from 2009 through 2018, the most that China imported of those five commodities in any one year totaled nearly $20 billion, according to Census Bureau export data. That occurred in 2012, when China’s agricultural purchases included nearly $14.9 billion in soybeans, $3.4 billion in raw cotton and $1.3 billion in corn, according to Census data.

As we said, we don’t know what the president meant when he said that $15 billion was “the biggest amount they’ve ever spent in this country.” We will update this item if the White House responds.

Honda and U.S. Investments

In talking about the U.S. economy, Trump boasted about companies coming to the United States — singling out one car company in particular.

Trump: Well, really very simply, we have companies coming in here, as you know, by the dozens and by the hundreds and big ones, car companies, Honda’s coming in with $14.5 billion.

We don’t know how many companies have relocated to the U.S. or have left the U.S. But the president overestimates Honda’s future investment in the U.S.

On its website, Honda said that its total capital investment in the U.S. (not just auto manufacturing) has been $21 billion over the last 60 years, including $5.6 billion in the last five years. We could not find any new automotive investments that would equal $14.5 billion, so we reached out to the Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research Group, which tracks new investments in the United States.

Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labor and economics, told us that she, too, could not match the $14.5 billion figure cited by Trump, and “we try to keep very close tabs on these things.” She said Honda has announced auto manufacturing investments totaling $1.7 billion over the last five years.

In February, Honda announced that it would close a manufacturing plant in Swindon, England, in 2121, when it stops production of its current Civic model. Honda Chief Executive Officer Takahiro Hachigo told Automotive News that the next generation Civic will be manufactured in North America, but the company has yet to say where the plant or plants will be located.

Update, May 24: “We have not provided any further detail other than we are considering production of Civic for North America in North America,” Honda corporate spokesman Chris Abbruzzese told us in an email. He provided us with a list of $712 million worth of vehicle manufacturing investments that Honda had made in the United States in 2017 and 2018. 

“We do not disclose our future investment plans publicly,” Abbruzzese said.   

Honda currently has five vehicle manufacturing plants in the United States, including one in Indiana that builds the current Civic models. It also manufactures Civic models in Ontario, Canada.

Trump’s Approval Rating

The president also boasted that he has “tremendous poll numbers now.”

It’s subjective, of course, to describe one’s poll numbers as “tremendous.” But Trump’s average job approval rating — based on polling data assembled from dozens of polls by Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight — is currently below 43 percent.

As of May 22, Trump’s average job approval rating on Real Clear Politics was 42.5 percent, and FiveThirtyEight put it at 41.1 percent. By contrast, those who disapproved of Trump’s job performance averaged 53.7 percent, according to Real Clear Politics, and 53.8 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight.

As for individual polls taken this month, Trump’s job approval rating reached a peak of 51 percent in the Zogby Poll, which was conducted May 2 to May 9 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percent. The low point was a Morning Consult poll, which showed the president at 37 percent. That poll was taken May 17 to 19, and had an error margin of plus or minus 2 percent.

Trump Repeats

As we often find, the president also repeated some false claims that we have previously debunked:

China Trade Deficit: The president said, “We have a trade deficit with China of $500 billion.” That’s false. As we have written before, the U.S. trade deficit with China in goods and services was a record $378.7 billion in 2018, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (see table 3). The U.S. had a $419.3 billion deficit with China in goods (table 6) and a $40.5 billion surplus in services (table 9).

Tariff Revenue: Trump said that, as a result of tariffs he has placed on Chinese goods, “we are going to be taking in possibly $100 billion, possibly more than that in tariffs. We never took in 10 cents from China.” It’s not true, as we have previously said, that the U.S. has never collected tariffs on Chinese goods. The amount of tariff revenue has increased, but the U.S. did collect billions of dollars each year since at least 2000. For example, the U.S. collected about $13.4 billion in 2016, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission database. As we also wrote, tariffs are taxes paid by U.S. importers in the form of customs duties, not by the Chinese government or its companies. 

Liquefied Natural Gas Exporting. The president said, “I was in Louisiana opening up a $10 billion LNG plant that would’ve never been approved under another type of administration, never,” and, “They’ve been trying for years to get it built, but we got approvals very quickly for the big LNG.” That’s false. As we wrote before, the plant in question, Sempra Energy’s Cameron LNG plant, was approved in 2014 by the Obama administration, a fact Sempra Energy confirmed.

Update, Sept. 27: An earlier version of this story said that Biden’s threat to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine occurred in March 2016. We could not verify the exact date when Biden issued his ultimatum. 

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In a wide-ranging interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” President Donald Trump repeated several false and misleading claims, while putting a new twist on some of them:

• Trump falsely claimed Russia “wouldn’t be able to help me at all,” even if he had called Russia “to help me with an election” in 2016. Russian companies financed and carried out an extensive social media campaign, and Russian government agents hacked into Democratic computers to obtain and stage the release of damaging documents, U.S. prosecutors allege.
• Trump said “nobody really knows” if North Korea has continued to build more missiles, even after Trump’s summit with Kim Jong Un in June. But the Washington Post, citing unnamed U.S. officials, reported in July that North Korea was doing just that, and Fox News confirmed the report.

The president also repeated his false claim that the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy that caused the controversial separation of families at the Southern border was “the same as the Obama law.” He again wrongly stated that the U.S. pays “almost the entire cost of NATO to protect Europe,” and he overstated the U.S. trade deficit with China. 

Russia’s 2016 Election Interference

In his interview with CBS’ Lesley Stahl, the president repeated his unsubstantiated claim that China interfered in the 2016 U.S. election (“I think China meddled too”) and offered a new twist regarding Russia’s role during the presidential campaign. He falsely claimed Russia “wouldn’t be able to help me at all,” even if he had sought out the U.S. adversary for help.

Trump, Oct. 14: Do you really think I’d call Russia to help me with an election? Give me a break. They wouldn’t be able to help me at all. Call Russia. It’s so ridiculous.

The special counsel’s investigation into the 2016 election is ongoing. But, contrary to the president’s claim, there is evidence that Russia helped Trump’s election chances in multiple ways.

In July, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III filed an indictment against 12 members of a Russian military intelligence agency known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, or GRU. The officers “engaged in a sustained effort to hack into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic National Committee, and the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, and released that information on the internet under the names ‘DCLeaks’ and ‘Guccifer 2.0’, and through another entity,” a Justice Department press release said.

“The object of the conspiracy was to hack into the computers of U.S. persons and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, steal documents from those computers, and stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” the indictment said.

For example, WikiLeaks, identified as “Organization 1″ in the indictment, released Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta’s emails on Oct. 7 less than an hour after the Washington Post reported that Trump once bragged about groping women. 

“In order to expand their interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Conspirators transferred many of the documents they stole from the DNC and the chairman of the Clinton Campaign to Organization 1,” the indictment said. “The Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, discussed the release of the stolen documents and the timing of those releases with Organization 1 to heighten their impact on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

In addition to the damaging releases of hacked emails, three Russian organizations and 13 Russian nationals were indicted in February for their role in an extensive pro-Trump social media advertising campaign.

The indictment alleges that the Internet Research Agency, a Russian-based online propaganda company, oversaw the pro-Trump influence campaign, which was financed by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a man described as “Putin’s cook” or “Putin’s chef,” and his two companies, Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering.

“From at least April 2016 through November 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, while concealing their Russian identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation through false personas, began to produce, purchase, and post advertisements on U.S. social media and other online sites expressly advocating for the election of then-candidate Trump or expressly opposing Clinton,” according to the indictment, which referred to the Internet Research Agency as the “organization.”

Colin Stretch, Facebook’s general counsel, told a Senate panel last year that “approximately 126 million people may have been served content from a Page associated with” the Internet Research Agency. At the same hearing, Sean J. Edgett, Twitter’s acting general counsel, said the company identified 36,746 automated accounts, known as bots, that “generated approximately 1.4 million automated, election-related Tweets, which collectively received approximately 288 million impressions.”

In addition, Internet Research Agency mobilized Trump supporters for political rallies, focusing on so-called “purple states like Colorado, Virginia & Florida,” according to the indictment, quoting from documents, such as emails and private Facebook messages, obtained during the investigation. Trump, who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, captured the Electoral College votes and the election by narrowly winning in key swing, or “purple,” states, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In a Jan. 6, 2017, report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016″ to “undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency,” as well as “help President-elect Trump’s election chances.” The report “did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcomes of the 2016 election,” because it “does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.”

North Korea’s Missiles

As he has done in the past, Trump boasted about the relationship he has developed with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The president said Kim “understands denuclearization and he’s agreed to it.”

That’s not quite accurate. Trump and Kim issued a joint statement in June saying that North Korea will “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” but they have yet to come to an agreement on the terms of a denuclearization plan.

“He doesn’t wanna go to war, and we don’t wanna go to war, and he understands denuclearization and he’s agreed to it,” Trump said. “And you see that, he’s agreed to it. No missiles.”

When Stahl pressed Trump, asking if North Korea “may actually be building more missiles,” Trump responded, “Well, nobody really knows.”

Stahl: But is it true that they haven’t gotten rid of a single weapon, and they may actually be building more missiles-

Trump: They want to–

Stahl: With nuclear–

Trump: And I will tell you that they’re closing up sites.

Stahl: But–

Trump: Setting it up.

Stahl: Is what I said true, that they haven’t? Gotten–

Trump: Well, nobody really knows. I mean, people are saying that. I’ve actually said that.

Stahl: What? That they’re still building missiles, more missiles?

Trump: We don’t really know, Lesley. We really don’t know. But I assume–

Stahl: Suspect that?

Trump: Let’s say the answer is yes, okay? In the meantime, they haven’t tested a missile. They haven’t tested a rocket. They definitely haven’t done a nuclear test because you know about them real fast. It sort of moves the earth. And we have a relationship now.

The Washington Post, citing unnamed U.S. officials, reported on July 30: “Newly obtained evidence, including satellite photos taken in recent weeks, indicates that work is underway on at least one and possibly two liquid-fueled ICBMs at a large research facility in Sanumdong, on the outskirts of Pyongyang, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe classified intelligence.” That was a month and a half after the meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un.

A day after the Post article was published, Fox News confirmed the reports “that North Korea is now busy once again building more missiles.”

“U.S. officials telling Fox News, this is a quote, ‘It is business as usual’ at a factory near Pyongyang that builds ICBMs capable of reaching the United States,” reported Greg Palkot, a senior foreign affairs correspondent for Fox News Channel. “Analysis of satellite photography showing, quote, ‘There is no evidence of a halt of work.’ We’re talking about the long-range liquid-fueled missiles used three times last year in test firings that could, potentially, reach the East Coast of the United States. Recent work activity visible.”

Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution, told us, “President Trump is technically correct because we aren’t completely sure about what is built at each factory or whether construction will conclude for each missile now in the works.”

“But,” he told us via email, “the circumstantial evidence is very strong that North Korea does in fact continue to build more long-range missiles (and nuclear weapons) and that should be the presumption upon which US policy is based.”

Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, said in an email to FactCheck.org: “North Korea did not commit to halt missile production, so it is very likely that Pyongyang is continuing to build nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. Kim Jong Un made clear in his January 2018 address that the mass production of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles was a goal for the upcoming year. Recent satellite imagery indicating activity at missile production sites also points toward the conclusion that North Korea continues to quantitatively expand its nuclear arsenal.”

During the Jan. 1, 2018, address referenced by Davenport, Kim Jong Un said, “The nuclear weapons research sector and the rocket industry should mass-produce nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.”

Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and editor of the Nonproliferation Review, told us that for the the Washington Post story, some of his CNS colleagues used commercial space imagery and confirmed that “the Sanumdong missile R&D facility is active, although they could not independently establish what activities were underway inside.”

“The intelligence community clearly has better resources than CNS does, so I assume that they are in a better position to make such determinations,” Pollack added.

“Separately, CNS did independently discover this year that North Korea has pressed ahead with the construction of new production facilities at a different plant, the Chemical Materials Institute, which makes missile components.” Pollack said.

That’s consistent, he said, with statements Kim Jong Un made during a visit to the site in August 2017.

“So by the available indications, we have concluded that missile production is underway, consistent with plans declared in Kim Jong Un’s Jan 1, 2018 speech — the same speech in which he unveiled his new diplomatic initiative,” Pollack said.

Trump Repeats

The president repeated several claims we’ve written about before:

On the administration’s “zero tolerance” border policy: Trump repeatedly claimed that the “zero tolerance” policy that caused the controversial separation of families at the Southern border was “the same as the Obama law. You know, Obama had the same thing.” That’s misleading. There were some family separations under previous administrations, experts told us when we examined this claim in June, but there was no blanket policy to prosecute parents and, therefore, separate them from their children. 

Members of the Trump administration have claimed that there’s nothing new about this, yet a new policy was announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in early April to refer all illegal border crossings for criminal prosecution. Since children can’t be held in adult detention facilities, the referral resulted in parents being separated from their children.

The Department of Homeland Security wasn’t able to provide any figures for family separations under the Obama administration, but it said 2,342 children had been separated from their parents from early May to early June of this year. Trump signed an executive order to end the separations in late June.

On NATO: Trump said the United States “shouldn’t be paying almost the entire cost of NATO to protect Europe.” It doesn’t. The U.S. pays just over 22 percent of NATO’s commonly funded budget, which includes civil, military and security investment expenses and is funded through a formula based on the gross national income of each member country.

The president has repeatedly complained about indirect NATO spending — what each country spends on its own national defense. But even there, the U.S. share of total defense spending by member countries in 2017 was 67 percent, according to inflation-adjusted figures from NATO.

On Christine Blasey Ford: The president was asked why, in a campaign-style rally in Mississippi, he had made fun of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were in high school. Trump said: “What I said is the person that we’re talking about didn’t know the year, the time, the place.” But that’s incorrect. Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the alleged attack occurred in the summer of 1982 in an upstairs bedroom of a house in the Bethesda area of Maryland. What she could not provide was the exact date and address of the alleged attack.

On trade with China: Trump repeated his claim that China takes “$500 billion a year out of the United States in the form of trade and others things.” As we wrote in “Trump’s Numbers,” the goods-and-services trade deficit with China was $351 billion for the most recent 12 months on record. In 2017, the U.S. trade deficit in goods with China was $376 billion, but that was partially offset by a trade surplus of $40 billion in services, such as software, legal and communications services, for a total trade balance of negative $336 billion.

Correction, Oct. 18, 2018: The story was updated to reflect that CNS used commercial space imagery to confirm activity at the Sanumdong missile R&D facility for the Washington Post story, not after it ran.

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In refusing to certify the Iran nuclear deal, President Donald Trump said Iran “has committed multiple violations of the agreement.” But that’s not the finding of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The IAEA has issued eight reports since the agreement was implemented in January 2016, and all eight have found Iran is implementing the agreement — most recently on Aug. 31.

Trump himself has certified to Congress on two occasions that Iran has complied with the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. The president must issue a certification every 90 days.

On Oct. 13, Trump announced that he would not once again certify Iran’s compliance with the JCPOA. His decision “gives Congress the option to introduce legislation reimposing U.S. sanctions waived or suspended under the JCPOA on an expedited schedule,” the Arms Control Association says.

Trump said Iran committed “multiple violations” of the JCPOA, which was negotiated by the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom, as well as representatives of the European Union and Iran.

Trump, Oct. 13: Iranian regime has committed multiple violations of the agreement. For example, on two separate occasions, they have exceeded the limit of 130 metric tons of heavy water. Until recently, the Iranian regime has also failed to meet our expectations in its operation of advanced centrifuges.

The Iranian regime has also intimidated international inspectors into not using the full inspection authorities that the agreement calls for. Iranian officials and military leaders have repeatedly claimed they will not allow inspectors onto military sites, even though the international community suspects some of those sites were part of Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Let’s take a look at each of the three issues Trump raised, beginning with the limits on heavy water.

Under the agreement, Iran is limited to 130 metric tons of heavy water — which is a concern to nuclear arms inspectors, as the Associated Press explains, because it is “used to cool reactors that can produce substantial amounts of plutonium,” which “can be applied to making the fissile core of nuclear warheads.”

On two occasions, Iran has slightly exceeded the limits. The first time was in February 2016, a month after the agreement was implemented, and again in November. So Trump is right, although he was aware of these violations when he agreed twice before to certify Iran’s compliance.

Iran also is now in compliance with the heavy water limits, according to the eighth and most recent IAEA report. “Throughout the reporting period, Iran had no more than 130 metric tonnes of heavy water,” the report says.

“Iran exceeded the heavy water limits briefly but is now in compliance,” Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told us in an email. “It is important to note that the heavy water is now useless for Iran given that its heavy water reactor at Arak has been reconfigured so that it cannot produce plutonium.”

Iran filled the core of the heavy-water reactor at Arak with concrete in January 2016.

Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, told us that there was a misunderstanding about the 130 metric tons.

Iran “interpreted language in the deal setting the cap differently than” the other countries, believing that the “130 ton limit was an estimate, not a hard cap.” But that difference has been resolved, and there have been no violations since.

As for Trump’s concern about advanced centrifuges, David Albright, an IAEA weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, said that issue has been resolved.

“The issue is the number of advanced centrifuges Iran had,” said Albright. “I would call it a violation that has been corrected, inadvertently I would add. The extra ones broke.”

Trump’s reference to inspections at military sites refers to Section T of the JCPOA that covers the development of dual-use equipment that has civilian and military applications, according to Albright, an adviser to the Trump administration. Albright said the IAEA needs access to military sites in order to verify Iran’s compliance with Section T of the agreement.

Under the JCPOA, the IAEA has daily access to declared nuclear sites for 15 years and continuous electronic monitoring of those sites for at least 15 years, as explained in a 67-page guidebook published by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. There is a separate confidential agreement covering the Parchin military site, which has been the site of past activity that the IAEA has suspected was connected to nuclear weapons development. Critics have claimed that that agreement amounts to self-inspections, a claim that the IAEA has denied, as we have written before.

“This is the most egregious of Trump’s claims,” Davenport, of the Arms Control Association, told us. “The IAEA clearly stated that Iran has granted inspectors all of the access the agency has requested. If Iran had blocked access, the P5+1, including the United States, would not have been able to say that Iran is complying with the accord.”

In a statement issued in response to Trump’s speech, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said that “the IAEA has had access to all locations it needed to visit.”

“As I have reported to the Board of Governors, the nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under the JCPOA are being implemented,” Amano said in his statement.

Albright, who agrees with the president that Iran is “not in full compliance,” says the IAEA has not asked for access to the military sites for fear it would “bring down the entire deal.”

“The IAEA can ask to go and if Iran refuses, the JCPOA contains a mechanism to allow one party to snapback all sanctions,” Albright said. “But the IAEA is not likely to want to bring down the entire deal by asking to go to a military site.”

He said the issue of access to military sites “will be a centerpiece of fixing the JCPOA.”

We take no position on Trump’s desire to renegotiate aspects of the Iran deal that he does not like. The issue, though, is whether Iran has complied with the existing agreement, and even those within his own administration have said that Iran is in compliance.

In September, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Iran is in “technical compliance” with the deal, and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that “Iran is adhering to its JCPOA obligations,” and the agreement is working as intended.

“The JCPOA,” Dunford said, “has delayed Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.”

Correction, Oct. 14: We originally wrote that Trump was referring to the Parchin military site when he criticized Iran for not allowing IAEA inspections of military sites. Albright, an adviser to the president, told us that Trump was referring to inspections at all military sites, not just Parchin, to ensure that Iran is in compliance with Section T of the JCPOA. That section covers the development of dual-use equipment that can be used for civilian and military purposes. The revised version of this story reflects that change. 

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CIA Director Mike Pompeo misrepresented the facts when he suggested the Trump administration was responsible for changing China’s policy on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Pompeo said that “the Chinese now … believe the correct answer has to be a denuclearized peninsula.” In fact, China has supported “the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” since at least 2005.

Pompeo, a former Republican congressman who was appointed CIA director by President Donald Trump, discussed North Korea’s nuclear weapons program on “Fox News Sunday.” He praised Trump and top administration officials for their handling of the issue, singling out Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.

He said the administration has made “real progress” in trying to stop North Korea from moving ahead with its nuclear weapons program. Pompeo then went on to discuss the impact of the Trump administration’s efforts on China (at about 50 seconds into the video).

Pompeo, Aug. 13: My hats off to the president, Secretary Tillerson, Ambassador Haley. They have united the world with [U.N.] sanctions against North Korea, 15-0 vote. That’s real progress.

We’ve seen the Chinese now say for among the first times that they believe the correct answer has to be a denuclearized peninsula. And that’s exactly the policy of the Trump administration.

The director is right about the 15-0 U.N. Security Council vote on Aug. 5, but he gets the facts wrong about China’s support for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.

China is a member of the six-party talks – which are “a series of multilateral negotiations held intermittently since 2003 and attended by China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea, and the United States for the purpose of dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program,” as described by the Arms Control Association. As a party to those talks, China has embraced a nuclear weapons-free Korean Peninsula.

“China has long supported denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula (by which it means no nuclear weapons),” James M. Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told us. “This was spelled out explicitly in, for example, the 2005 joint statement” issued after the fourth round of six-party talks held in China.

Six-party talks joint statement, Sept. 19, 2005: The Six Parties unanimously reaffirmed that the goal of the Six-Party Talks is the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner.

Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, said there has been no change “in China’s positioning on denuclearization” since then.

“There are countless examples of China condemning North Korea’s nuclear weapons program as illegal and reiterating that denuclearization of North Korea remains the ultimate objective,” she told us in an email. “China’s support for the goal of denuclearization is not new and not inspired by Trump’s approach to North Korea.”

The U.N. Security Council, which includes China, has adopted seven major resolutions in response to North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions since 2006, Davenport said. All seven resolutions reiterated the U.N. Security Council’s support for a verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Resolution 1718 — the first of the seven — called for resumption of the six-party talks “with a view to the expeditious implementation of the Joint Statement issued on 19 September 2005 by China, the DPRK, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the United States, to achieve the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

In Resolution 2371 — the most recent one cited by Pompeo, the U.N. Security Council “reiterates its support for the commitments set forth in the Joint Statement of 19 September 2005 issued by China, the DPRK, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States, including that the goal of the Six-Party Talks is the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner.”

All the U.N. resolutions in between — Resolutions 1874 (2009), 2087 (2013), 2094 (2013), 2270 (2016) and 2321 (2016) — took the same position on denuclearization of the peninsula.

Pompeo has every right to express his opinion that the Trump administration is making “real progress” on North Korea. But he’s wrong when he says “the Chinese now … believe the correct answer has to be a denuclearized peninsula.” That has been the policy for more than a decade.

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In this week’s fact-checking video, CNN’s Jake Tapper and FactCheck.org review the accuracy of President Donald Trump’s tweet about the modernization of the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

The president tweeted that his “first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal” and “it is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before.” But, as we wrote, Trump’s “first order” was not about nuclear weapons, and the modernization plans now underway were started during the Obama administration.

Trump issued a presidential memorandum on Jan. 27 that, among other things, directed the secretary of defense to initiate a Nuclear Posture Review “to ensure that the United States nuclear deterrent is modern, robust, flexible, resilient, ready, and appropriately tailored to deter 21st-century threats and reassure our allies.” It was his 13th order, not his first. And that review did not start until April and is not scheduled to be completed until the end of the year.

There is an ongoing modernization of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, but it was initiated under President Barack Obama, not Trump. The modernization plans — which the Congressional Budget Office says will cost $400 billion over 10 years — were initiated after the Obama administration completed its Nuclear Posture Review in April 2010. The Defense Department is now in the early stages of modernizing its fleet of nuclear submarines, Navy bombers and land-based missiles, as well as extending the life of existing nuclear programs.

In the post-Cold War era, all U.S. presidents since Bill Clinton have undertaken Nuclear Posture Reviews at the beginning of their administrations.

This week’s video is based on our story “Trump Misfires on Nuclear Weapons Boast.” Previous videos can be found on our website.

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A day after he threatened North Korea with “fire and fury,” President Donald Trump distorted the facts when he boasted that his “first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal” and “it is now far stronger and more powerful than ever.”

It’s true that Trump directed his secretary of defense to initiate a Nuclear Posture Review. But that review was not his “first order”; it was not unexpected; and it won’t be done until the end of the year, so it has yet to result in any improvements.

All U.S. presidents since Bill Clinton have undertaken Nuclear Posture Reviews, or NPRs, at the beginning of their administrations. The Obama administration’s review, which was completed in April 2010, resulted in a $400 billion modernization plan that includes new nuclear submarines, intercontinental ballistic missiles and Air Force bombers.

“The renovation and modernization of the arsenal that is going on now is all the result of decisions that were made by the Obama administration,” Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told us. “The Trump administration NPR might decide to adjust or increase capabilities but that is yet unclear.”

Trump’s Tweet

Trump appeared to be alluding to U.S. nuclear weapons on Aug. 8, when he was asked about North Korea’s missile tests and nuclear ambitions. “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Trump told reporters (at about the 4:30 mark). “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

A day later, Trump boasted that he has taken steps to “renovate and modernize” the nation’s nuclear weapons program, which he said is “now far stronger” than ever.

My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2017

First, let’s look at the order that Trump issued “to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal.”

Trump issued a presidential memorandum on Jan. 27 that, among other things, directed the secretary of defense to initiate a Nuclear Posture Review “to ensure that the United States nuclear deterrent is modern, robust, flexible, resilient, ready, and appropriately tailored to deter 21st-century threats and reassure our allies.”

Such a review is not unusual. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, every incoming U.S. president has conducted a Nuclear Posture Review at the beginning of their administrations. So Trump is no different in that respect.

The Defense Department officially began its review on April 17, and it is expected to be completed by the end of the year — so Trump’s order has not made the U.S. nuclear arsenal “far stronger and more powerful than ever.”

It also wasn’t his “first order.” Trump’s first executive order was on the Affordable Care Act, and the first presidential memorandum was about regulations. Both were issued on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20. That first presidential memo was issued by his chief of staff. The first presidential memo signed by Trump came three days later on Jan. 23, and it dealt with abortion.

Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst who heads the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview that he did not see “how there is any factual basis to support” the president’s tweet.

“Clearly this was not, literally, his first order … and nothing has changed in the nuclear arsenal,” Harrison said. “To be fair, even if he wanted to make changes nothing would have changed by now.”

Modernization of U.S. Nuclear Arsenal

There is an ongoing modernization of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, but it was initiated under Obama, not Trump.

Robert Gates, Obama’s defense secretary, released his department’s Nuclear Posture Review on April 6, 2010. The report called for “much-needed investments to rebuild America’s aging nuclear infrastructure.” It also concluded that the United States will maintain a triad of nuclear weapon systems on land (intercontinental ballistic missiles), sea (submarine-launched ballistic missiles) and air (nuclear-capable heavy bombers).

After the report was issued, the Obama administration began making plans to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons program. In 2013, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the modernization program would cost about $355 billion over 10 years, from 2014-2023. It has since increased that estimate to $400 billion over 10 years, from 2017 to 2026. Those estimates include maintenance and operation costs, as well as modernization costs. Over 30 years, the cost could reach $1 trillion, according to the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

The Defense Department is now in the early stages of modernizing its fleet of nuclear submarines, Air Force bombers and land-based missiles:

• In January 2011, the Navy began a program to replace its Ohio-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines with a new fleet dubbed the Columbia that will cost more than $100 billion, according to a March 2017 report (page 117) by the Government Accountability Office.
• In October 2015, the Defense Department announced that Northrop Grumman won the contract to build a new long-range bomber — the B-21 — that is capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear weapons. The new fleet will replace the aging B-52 and B-1 bombers under a contract that is expected to exceed $55 billion, according to Defense News.
• In July 2016, the Air Force issued a request for proposal for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missile weapon system to replace the aging land-based Minuteman III ICBMs.

Kristensen told us that the Obama administration’s nuclear review also resulted in plans to extend the life of existing programs, such as the B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb, and modernize “key early-warning and nuclear command and control facilities and capabilities.”

“The Obama administration set in motion an incredibly ambitious and expensive set of programs to maintain and upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal,” Kingston Reif, director for Disarmament and Threat Reduction Policy at the Arms Control Association, told us in an email. “Most of these programs are still in their early stages of development.”

Reif added that “the Trump administration’s first budget request submitted in May for fiscal year 2018 largely continues the existing Obama programs of record.”

As for whether the U.S. nuclear arsenal is “now far stronger and more powerful than ever,” as Trump said, Kristensen responded: “The arsenal has just about the same capability today as it did when Trump took office. Same weapons. Same readiness level. Same strike plans.”

Correction, Aug. 11: An earlier version of this article misidentified the military branch that operates the long-range bombers. It is the Air Force. 

The post Trump Misfires on Nuclear Weapons Boast appeared first on FactCheck.org.

In his final press conference, President Obama falsely claimed that a treaty he signed with Russia in 2011 “has substantially reduced our nuclear stockpiles, both Russia and the United States.” The U.S. has decreased its deployed strategic nuclear warheads since the treaty took effect, but Russia has not.

Also, the nuclear arms treaty does not require either country to destroy nuclear weapons or reduce their nuclear stockpiles. Instead, it limits the number of warheads that can be deployed on strategic (or long-range) launchers and bombers.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a similar claim during the 2016 presidential campaign. In a TV ad, Clinton boasted that, as secretary of state, she was responsible for “securing a massive reduction in nuclear weapons.” That was in April last year. It wasn’t true then, and, since that time, Russia has increased its deployed warheads.

At his final press conference as president, Obama was asked about President-elect Donald Trump’s statement that Trump would consider lifting the sanctions against Russia if the country agrees to reduce its nuclear weapons. In response, Obama boasted that the New START Treaty has “substantially reduced” Russia’s nuclear weapons. (In his remarks, Obama referred to New START as START II, because it followed START, which took effect in 1994 and ended in 2009.)

Obama, Jan. 18: On nuclear issues, in my first term we negotiated the START II Treaty and that has substantially reduced our nuclear stockpiles, both Russia and the United States.

Obama signed the New START Treaty on Feb. 2, 2011. The treaty limits the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 each for Russia and the United States, and limits their “deployed and non-deployed strategic launchers and heavy bombers” to 800, as explained in a State Department fact sheet.

In the initial exchange of data on Feb. 5, 2011, Russia reported having 1,537 nuclear warheads on 521 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and heavy bombers. In an Oct. 11, 2016, report, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said that “analysts expressed surprise that Russian forces were already below the treaty limits in New START when the treaty entered into force.”

In the most recent exchange of data, Russia reported that it had 1,796 nuclear warheads on 508 deployed ICBMs, SLBMs and heavy bombers, as of Sept. 1, 2016. That’s an increase of 259 deployed nuclear warheads, or 17 percent, for Russia, even as its number of deployed launchers have declined slightly.

So, Obama is wrong to say that the treaty “has substantially reduced” Russia’s “nuclear stockpiles.” Not only has Russia increased its deployed nuclear warheads, but the treaty does not require the U.S. or Russia to destroy any nuclear warheads, as Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told us in an email when we wrote about this in April 2016.

“The treaty itself does not require destruction of a single nuclear warhead,” Kristensen wrote. “Nor does it have any direct impact on how many nuclear warheads Russia and the United States may have in their total stockpiles.”

The U.S., on the other hand, has reduced its deployed nuclear warheads from 1,800 in February 2011 to 1,367 in September 2016 — a 24 percent decrease.

We asked the White House to explain how the treaty has “substantially reduced” Russia’s nuclear stockpile. In response, we were referred to a written statement that Admiral Mike Mullen gave to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during hearings on the treaty in 2010 and before the treaty took effect. Mullen was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the treaty was ratified by the Senate on Dec. 22, 2010.

But Mullen’s statement does not support Obama’s claim.

The committee asked Mullen, “What did the United States get in return from Russia for agreeing to these limits in view of the fact that all of the reductions appear to be on the U.S. side?” His response was that the treaty “sets equal, but lower, aggregate limits on the number of deployed strategic delivery vehicles and associated warheads” and “will provide predictability, transparency, and stability in the United States-Russian strategic relationship.”

We don’t take issue with the benefits of the New START Treaty. And Russia could reduce its deployed nuclear weapons before the treaty expires in February 2018. But Russia has not “substantially reduced” its nuclear stockpile.

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With the presidential election just a few days away, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are making their final appeals with multiple stops in key swing states.

In our experience, we have found that facts are stretched more than usual in the final, desperate days of a close presidential campaign. And that is certainly the case this year. In stump speeches this week, the messaging was clear. Clinton stuck to the theme that Trump is “unqualified and unfit to be president,” while Trump hammered at the theme that Clinton is “corrupt.”

In this story, we will look at a sampling of the misleading claims made by Clinton during speeches this week.

In a separate story, we have a sampling of misleading statements by Trump (which you can read here). Some academics argue that politically motivated reasoning may lead you to only read one of these stories. Prove them wrong.

Clinton’s Final Push

In speeches this week, Clinton laid out the case for her contention that Trump is “unqualified and unfit to be president.” But in many cases, Clinton twisted Trump’s words to make her point.

On nuclear weapons:

“I am running against a man who says he doesn’t understand why we can’t use nuclear weapons. He actually said, ‘then why are we making them?’” — Oct. 31 in Kent, Ohio.

As we wrote after the last debate, that’s according to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and based on an anonymous source, not a verified quote from Trump. Scarborough said in early August that an anonymous source, “a foreign policy expert” who “went to advise Donald Trump” several months earlier, had said that Trump three times asked “if we had them why can’t we use them.” The Trump campaign denied that account.

Update, Nov. 7: A reader pointed us to a Trump interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on March 30 in which Trump did, in fact, use the words “then why are we making them?” in reference to nuclear weapons. But Clinton’s claim that it was evidence that Trump “doesn’t understand why we can’t use nuclear weapons” is a matter of interpretation. In the interview, Trump poses the hypothetical of responding to a nuclear attack on the U.S. with a nuclear weapon. Trump says that he would be “the last one to use the nuclear weapon,” but that the option shouldn’t be taken off the table, because doing so would mean being “a bad negotiator.” Here’s a fuller transcript of the exchange:

Matthews: Where would we drop — where would we drop a nuclear weapon in the Middle East?

Trump: Let me explain. Let me explain. Somebody hits us with a nuke …

Matthews: ISIS.

Trump: … you wouldn’t fight back with a nuke? … First of all, you don’t want to say “Take everything off the table,” because you’re a bad negotiator if you do that.

Matthews: No, just nuclear. Just nuclear.

Trump: Look, nuclear should be off the table. But would there be a time when it could be used? Possibly. Possibly.

Matthews: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in ’45, heard it. They’re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.

Trump: Then why are we making them? Why do we make them? We have nuclear weapons — why would we make them?

Matthews: Because of the old mutually assured destruction, which Reagan hated.

Trump: Just so you understand, I was against Iraq. I’d be the last one to use the nuclear weapon. That’s sort of like the end of the ballgame.

“But even the prospect of an actual nuclear war doesn’t seem to bother Donald Trump. ‘Good luck, enjoy yourselves, folks,’ was what he had to say about a potential nuclear conflict in Asia. I wonder if he knows that a single nuclear warhead can kill millions of people. These are weapons today far more powerful than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. To talk so casually, so cavalierly about mass annihilation is truly appalling.” — Oct. 31 in Kent, Ohio.

That’s twisting Trump’s words a bit, as we also explained in our fact-check of the last debate.

Here’s what Trump said on April 2: “We’re protecting Japan from North Korea. … I would say to Japan you gotta help us out. … And I would rather have them not arm. But I’m not going to continue to lose this tremendous amount of money. And frankly, the case could be made, that let them protect themselves against North Korea. They’d probably wipe them out pretty quick. And if they fight, you know what, that would be a terrible thing, terrible. ‘Good luck folks, enjoy yourself.’ If they fight, that would be terrible, right? But if they do, they do.”

On multiple occasions, Trump did say perhaps Japan and South Korea should have nuclear weapons to protect themselves. But it isn’t clear — as Clinton suggests — that Trump was talking about a nuclear war between Japan and North Korea when he said, “Good luck folks, enjoy yourself.” In that instance, Trump was focusing on his argument that Japan should pay the U.S. more for providing protection for that country.

On 9/11:

“After the world watched with horror as the twin towers fell, he called in to a New York TV station, and even on that horrible day when thousands of people lost their lives, he couldn’t stop himself from pointing out that now, because the towers had fallen, a building he owned was the tallest in lower Manhattan. What kind of person brags at a moment like that?” — Oct. 31 in Kent, Ohio

Trump did say that, though we’ll leave it to readers to decide if he was “bragging,” as Clinton put it. It seems to us a more plausible interpretation, given the fuller context of the interview, that Trump was lamenting the dramatic change to an iconic New York City skyline.

Trump’s comments came in a nearly 10-minute interview with WWOR-TV in New York after he was asked first about whether he had increased security at Trump Tower, and then whether his landmark building at 40 Wall Street had been damaged.

Trump responded, “Forty Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was, actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest. And then when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second-tallest, and now it’s the tallest.”

He then went on to describe how debris — brick, mortar and steel — was piled 2 feet high outside the building, even though it is several blocks from the World Trade Center.

“I think one of the very sad things is going to be when you look at the skyline of New York, which has become so emblazoned in your memory, and you are looking at the skyline of New York and you see … these two buildings, whether you loved them or you don’t love them, they were a great part of the skyline,” Trump said “It’s hard to believe.”

You can listen to the entire interview via Politico, which included a quote from Alan Marcus, who was working that day for WWOR, commenting that even on 9/11 Trump couldn’t get away from being the “brand manager of Trump.” But as we said, it is equally plausible that Trump was putting into perspective the dramatic change to the New York skyline.

On praising China:

“He even praised the Chinese government for massacring protesters in Tiananmen Square.” – Oct. 31 in Kent, Ohio.

This is another example of Clinton and Trump disagreeing over the interpretation of what Trump said. In a 1990 interview with Playboy, Trump said, “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it, then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.”

During a Republican debate in March, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Trump about those comments.

“That doesn’t mean I was endorsing that,” Trump explained. “I was not endorsing it. I said that is a strong, powerful government that put it down with strength. And then they kept down the riot. It was a horrible thing. It doesn’t mean at all I was endorsing it.”

On Russian influence:

“The U.S. intelligence community has now confirmed that the Russian government, which means Putin, is directing cyberattacks against targets in the United States to influence the outcome of our election. So ask yourself, why would Putin be trying to get Donald Trump elected president? Could it be because of all the nice things Donald has said about him or the fact that he has promised to adopt pro- Kremlin policies? Or maybe because of the extensive business dealings with Russian oligarchs with ties to Putin?” — Oct. 31 in Kent, Ohio.

Clinton is right that U.S. intelligence officials have pointed a finger at Russia for recent cyberattacks affecting the Democratic Party. The Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security issued a joint statement on Oct. 7 saying they were “confident” that recent hacks into the email systems of the Democratic Party were directed by the Russian government. And, they wrote, “These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.”

But Clinton, so far, has no proof that the Russians “are trying to get Donald Trump elected president.”

According to a New York Times story published on Oct. 31, after Clinton made her remarks, “And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.”

Twisting Trump’s words:

“You see I don’t think I have all the answers. I don’t think anybody has all the answers. When Donald Trump, at his convention, said he alone could fix everything in America.” — Nov. 2 in Tempe, Arizona.

As we have written before, Clinton is misrepresenting remarks Trump made during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. Trump never said he’d be the only one to fix absolutely everything. He said that ​as a political outsider, only he can fix a “rigged” system. And, in fact, he talked about working with others in that same speech.

“He doesn’t believe in equal pay.” — Nov. 1 in Dade City, Florida.

As we’ve written, Trump doesn’t support equal pay legislation, but he has said that he believes in paying people based on performance, not gender.

“And you know Donald Trump’s strategy’s pretty simple. He says he wants to suppress young people from voting, women from voting, people of color from voting. I mean that’s a lot of people.” — Nov. 1 in Dade City, Florida.

The Clinton campaign pointed us to articles in Bloomberg Businessweek, New York magazine and the Wall Street Journal  — all of which cite anonymous Trump campaign officials talking about efforts to depress Democratic voter turnout.

For example, the Bloomberg story quotes  a “senior official” saying, “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” including efforts to lower voting among Clinton strongholds: “idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans.”

None of the stories quotes Trump directly. We can’t independently verify the accuracy of accounts given by anonymous Trump campaign officials. But even in these press accounts, Trump himself did not say those things, meaning that — at best  — Clinton goes too far when she claims, “He [Trump] says …”

On Muslims:

“He [Trump] wants to ban every Muslim in the world from coming to the United States.” — Nov. 3 in Raleigh, North Carolina.

That was Trump’s initial proposal in December. At the time, he called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” By July, in his convention speech, he dropped the reference to religion and said, “we must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place.”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” after the convention, Trump explained why he was no longer targeting Muslims: “I’m looking now at territories. People were so upset when I used the word Muslim. Oh, you can’t use the word Muslim. Remember this. And I’m okay with that, because I’m talking territory instead of Muslim. ”

During the second presidential debate, Trump said, “The Muslim ban is something that in some form has morphed into extreme vetting from certain areas of the world.” Asked to explain “whether or not the Muslim ban still stands,” Trump responded, “It’s called extreme vetting.” He then went on to discuss the vetting of refugees.

Many questions remain about the details of how Trump would implement his plan, which countries would be included among those that would be subject to “extreme vetting,” and how that would apply to visitors to the U.S. Nonetheless, Trump has clearly changed his initial call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

The post The Final Push: Clinton appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Q: Did Hillary Clinton disclose classified information when she said it takes four minutes to launch a nuclear missile after a presidential order?

A: The U.S. Strategic Command said it does not “disclose operational timelines.” But it is common knowledge that it takes about four minutes. 

FULL QUESTION

Hillary Clinton mentioned in the third debate that there is a 4 minute nuclear response time. Is that true and is that considered common knowledge or a government secret?

FULL ANSWER

During the third and final presidential debate, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton warned that her opponent, Donald Trump, cannot be trusted “to have his finger on the nuclear button.” To make her point, Clinton said that it takes “about four minutes” for the U.S. to launch a nuclear weapon after a president’s order is issued.

Clinton, Oct. 19: The bottom line on nuclear weapons is that when the president gives the order, it must be followed. There’s about four minutes between the order being given and the people responsible for launching nuclear weapons to do so. And that’s why 10 people who have had that awesome responsibility have come out and, in an unprecedented way, said they would not trust Donald Trump with the nuclear codes or to have his finger on the nuclear button.

Her response triggered a debate over whether she divulged state secrets. She didn’t. In fact, there has been a public debate for decades, since the end of the Cold War, about taking ground-based U.S. and Russian nuclear missiles off “high alert” to prevent an accidental or unauthorized launch — precisely because of the short time needed to launch an attack.

However, the U.S. Strategic Command — which maintains the readiness of the nation’s nuclear arsenal — declined to confirm that it takes just four or five minutes to launch a nuclear missile after the president issues the order. When we asked, we were told: “‘We do not disclose operational timelines.”

Nuclear Weapons on High Alert

The fact that Russia and the United States have land-based nuclear weapons capable of being launched within minutes of a president’s order is hardly news. The high level of alert — sometimes called “hair-trigger alert” — is a remnant of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, when both sides armed themselves to counter a nuclear attack on a moment’s notice.

The Minuteman, in fact, is named after its ability to launch quickly when on high alert. “From the time keys were turned to execute a positive launch command, until the missile left the silo, only took about a minute. Hence the name Minuteman,” the National Park Service says.

“De-alerting” — that is, taking nuclear missiles off high alert — is something that arms-control experts have been advocating for decades.

In 1997, three nuclear arms experts wrote an article for Scientific American that made the case “to end the practice of keeping nuclear missiles constantly ready to fire.” The article, “Taking Nuclear Weapons off Hair-Trigger Alert,” cited a 1995 incident in which Russian President Boris Yeltsin had just minutes to determine if a “mysterious rocket” fired from off the coast of Norway was a U.S. nuclear attack on Russia. It turned out to be a false alarm, but it was the first time that the “nuclear briefcase” was activated, and it illustrated the dangers of Russia and the U.S. being on high alert, the authors wrote.

“Although international relations have changed drastically since the end of the cold war, both Russia and the U.S. continue to keep the bulk of their nuclear missiles on high-level alert,” the authors wrote. “So within just a few minutes of receiving instructions to fire, a large fraction of the U.S. and Russian land-based rockets (which are armed with about 2,000 and 3,500 warheads, respectively) could begin their 25-minute flights over the North Pole to their wartime targets.”

The article included a “timeline for catastrophe” that showed the launch of land-based nuclear missiles just five minutes after a U.S. president issues an order.

One of the authors of that article, Bruce G. Blair, was a U.S. Air Force Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile launch control officer who is now a professor at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. In September, Bloomberg Politics consulted with Blair on a graphic illustration of the step-by-step nuclear launch process that is similar to what the Scientific American article described nearly 20 years ago for land- and sea-based missiles.

“About five minutes may elapse from the president’s decision until intercontinental ballistic missiles blast out of their silos, and about fifteen minutes until submarine missiles shoot out of their tubes,” Bloomberg Politics wrote.

We found several instances of similar language used by other nuclear-arms experts.

A 2013 report by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research said that ICBMs are “capable of launching within five minutes” of a president’s order.

“We estimate that the United States deploys approximately 920 warheads on alert, split almost evenly between intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs),” the U.N. report said. “Yet the two legs of the US alert nuclear forces are postured very differently. Of the ICBM force, nearly all (98%) of the 450 missiles are on high alert at any given time, capable of launching within five minutes of the president issuing the launch codes.”

In a 2016 report, the Union of Concerned Scientists also said that the ICBMs “can be launched within a couple minutes of a presidential decision to do so,” and the submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) can be launched “within 15 minutes.”

So, Clinton was talking about land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles when she said that nuclear weapons can be launched “about four minutes” after a president’s order is issued.

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, was a co-author of the U.N. report. He told us in an email, “I don’t have access to classified information so my assessment and writings are entirely based on public material and conversations.”

He added that “what Clinton said appears to reflect what has been said in public for years by various experts and analysts.”

While that seems abundantly clear, it still doesn’t answer the question of whether what Clinton said was classified.

Fox News quoted military experts after the third debate saying the length of time it takes to launch a nuclear attack is classified information and that the former secretary of state has now confirmed what the media and academics have written.

The Washington Post in 2007 also reported that nuclear launch times are classified, citing an unnamed “senior U.S. official” in the Bush administration. The Post article was about a statement made by Christina Rocca, the U.S. representative to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, who told U.N. delegates that “U.S. nuclear forces are not and have never been on hair-trigger alert” – which arms-control experts described then and now as inaccurate.

Washington Post, Nov. 1, 2007: A senior U.S. official said the claim that thousands of U.S. nuclear weapons can be launched within minutes is incorrect, but added that the information on launch time is classified. “The idea we are on Cuban-missile-crisis posture, sitting on the silo ready to push the button, is false,” said the official, who was unauthorized to speak publicly. “The essence of deterrence strategy is having some element of ambiguity.”

We sent an email to the U.S. Strategic Command and asked if it could confirm that intercontinental ballistic missiles are capable of being launched within five minutes of a president’s order, as stated in the U.N. report. Initially, we did not get a response, so we called and spoke to a woman in the U.S. Strategic Command media office who told us, “We would not give out security information such as the length of time.”

A short time later, we got an official response from the Strategic Command. “I would refer you to the reported comments of our chief spokesperson, U.S. Navy Capt. Brook DeWalt: ‘We do not disclose operational timelines, but we do work to provide the President as much decision space as possible.'”

The Clinton campaign told us that the information on the short time for a nuclear launch came from Clinton’s debate prep material, which was gathered from publicly available information — not from classified briefings. But Clinton did have access to such information as secretary of state.

Obama Administration Rejects ‘De-Alerting’

As secretary of state in the Obama administration, Clinton was involved in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which among other things considered whether to take land- and sea-based nuclear missiles off high alert. “De-alerting,” as it is known, would increase the amount of time needed to prepare the missiles for launch and, arms-control experts argue, would reduce the possibility of accidental launches.

But in an NPR report issued in April 2010, the Defense Department rejected “de-alerting” — concluding that it could escalate a crisis as both sides race to “re-alert” their missiles.

“The NPR considered the possibility of reducing alert rates for ICBMs and at-sea rates of SSBNs [strategic ballistic missile nuclear submarines], and concluded that such steps could reduce crisis stability by giving an adversary the incentive to attack before ‘re-alerting’ was complete,” the report said.

In making that decision, Obama was breaking a promise he made during the 2008 election, said Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists.

During his 2008 campaign for president, then-Sen. Obama criticized President George W. Bush for breaking a promise made in the 2000 Republican platform, which said the U.S. should “remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status.” Obama vowed to keep the promise that Bush had broken.

“Finally, if we want the world to deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons, the United States and Russia must lead by example,” Obama said in an April 23, 2007, speech in Chicago. “President Bush once said, ‘The United States should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status — another unnecessary vestige of Cold War confrontation.’ Six years later, President Bush has not acted on this promise. I will. We cannot and should not accept the threat of accidental or unauthorized nuclear launch. We can maintain a strong nuclear deterrent to protect our security without rushing to produce a new generation of warheads.”

Kristensen told us in an email that Obama quickly “abandoned” that campaign promise.

“The de-alerting goal was present on the White House website for the first few months of 2009 as part of the new administration’s policy. But it disappeared in the spring of 2009 around the New Prague speech,” Kristensen wrote, referring to an April 5, 2009, speech in which Obama called for a world without nuclear weapons. “Since then, the Obama administration has not only abandoned that part of its policy but also argued forcefully against it.”

In fact, the Obama administration has even rejected the use of the term “hair-trigger” that Obama used during the 2008 campaign. A 2015 State Department fact sheet argued that U.S. nuclear forces “are not on hair-trigger alert,” calling the term inaccurate — just as the “senior U.S. official” in the Bush administration had done in 2007, as we noted earlier.

“A hair trigger is deliberately calibrated to fire a weapon with only the slightest pressure applied to the trigger. This is not an accurate description of U.S. nuclear forces,” the fact sheet says. “U.S. ‘alert’ posture simply means a portion of our forces (those on ‘alert’) are ready to launch upon receipt of an authenticated, encrypted, and securely transmitted order from the President of the United States.”

Kristensen said, “The administration’s attempt to describe alert as different than ‘hair-trigger’ seems more like an attempt to [put] a human face on the uncomfortable fact that the administration has gone back on its word.”

To recap: The U.S. Strategic Command does not disclose nuclear launch timelines, and Clinton was in position to know the launch times as secretary of state in the Obama administration.

But it is common knowledge that it takes about four or five minutes, and other presidential nominees — including the last two presidents — have campaigned on the need to take nuclear weapons off “hair-trigger status,” a reference to the short time that it takes for the U.S. to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles after the president issues an order.

Sources

“Final Presidential Debate at UNLV.” Transcript. FactCheck.org. 19 Oct 2016.

“Minuteman ICBM.” National Park Service. Undated. Accessed 26 Oct 2016.

“Bruce G. Blair.” Biography. Princeton University, Science and Global Security. Undated, accessed 26 Oct 2016.

Blair, Bruce G., et. al. “Taking Nuclear Weapons off Hair-Trigger Alert.” Scientific American. Nov 1997.

Merrill, Dave, et. al. “To Launch a Nuclear Strike, Clinton or Trump Would Follow These Steps.” Bloomberg Politics. 7 Sep 2016.

Kristensen, Hans M. and Matthew McKinzie. “Reducing Alert Rates of Nuclear Weapons.” United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. Jan 2013.

Wright, David et al. “Reducing the Risk of Nuclear War.” Union of Concerned Scientists. Jan 2016.

“Hans Kristensen.” Biography. Federation of American Scientists. Undated, accessed 26 Oct 2016.

Kristensen, Hans. Director, Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. Email sent to FactCheck.org 21 Oct 2016.

Kristensen, Hans. Director, Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. Email sent to FactCheck.org 25 Oct 2016.

Herridge, Catherine. “Clinton’s debate reference to nuclear response rekindles judgment questions.” Fox News. 20 Oct 2016.

Lynch, Colum. “U.S. Official Is Faulted for Nuclear Weapons Claim.” Washington Post. 1 Nov 2007.

Crawford, Jamie. “Did Hillary Clinton reveal classified intel at debate?” CNN. 21 Oct 2016.

O’Donnell, Martin L. Public Affairs Current Operations Chief, U.S. Strategic Command. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 25 Oct 2016.

Department of Defense. Nuclear Posture Review web page. Undated, accessed 26 Oct 2016.

Department of Defense. Nuclear Posture Review report. Apr 2010.

“2000 Republican Party Platform.” The American Presidency Project. University of California, Santa Barbara. 31 Jul 2000.

Obama, Barack. “Remarks to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.” 23 Apr 2007.

White House. “Remarks By President Barack Obama In Prague As Delivered.” Hradcany Square, Prague, Czech Republic. 5 Apr 2009.

Harnden, Toby. “President Barack Obama calls for a nuclear free world in Prague speech.” The Telegraph. 5 Apr 2009.

State Department. “U.S. Nuclear Force Posture and De-Alerting.” Fact sheet. Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance. 14 Dec 2015.

The post Clinton and Nuclear Launch Times appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Summary

LAS VEGAS — The third — and final — presidential debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump was held Oct. 19 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and moderated by Fox News’ Chris Wallace. We found plenty of factual inaccuracies:

• Trump defended his recent claims about rampant voter fraud by citing a Pew Charitable Trust report that found millions of errors in voter registration rolls but didn’t allege any actual voting violations.
• Trump falsely claimed that allegations of sexual harassment against him “have been largely debunked.” Trump has eight female accusers. In one case, a man claiming to be an eyewitness offered a conflicting account without providing evidence.
• Trump also denied calling any of his accusers unattractive. But he implied it when he told his supporters, “Yeah, I’m gonna go after her. Believe me, she would not be my first choice.”
• Clinton accused Trump of threatening to deport “undocumented workers” during the Trump Tower project in 1980. There is no evidence that Trump made such threats.
• Clinton claimed she opposed a 2008 Supreme Court decision striking the Washington, D.C., handgun ban, because the city was trying “to protect toddlers from guns.” But she didn’t make that distinction last year in speaking at a private fundraiser.
• Trump wrongly said that $6 billion was “missing” from the State Department when Clinton was secretary of state. The State Department Office of the Inspector General said that department records of $6 billion in contracts — not the money — were missing or incomplete.
• Trump said the federal debt had doubled to $20 trillion under Obama. Clinton said annual deficits had been cut by two-thirds. Both were straining the facts.
• Clinton and Trump disagreed about what Trump had said about more countries getting nuclear weapons. Clinton was closer to the truth. Trump did say perhaps Japan and South Korea should have nuclear weapons to protect themselves.
• Trump falsely claimed that billionaire investor Warren Buffett, a Clinton supporter, did “the same thing” Trump did to avoid paying federal income taxes. Buffett said that’s not true and that he has “paid federal income tax every year since 1944.”
• Trump and Wallace disagreed over whether Trump used money from his own foundation to settle his lawsuits. Trump did.
• Each candidate misrepresented the other’s position on abortion. Trump suggested Clinton supported abortions on the “final day” of pregnancy, when she’s open to some late-term restrictions. Clinton said Trump favored “some form of punishment for women who obtain abortions.” He quickly walked back that comment months ago.
• Trump implied a link between Chicago’s tough gun laws and gun violence in the city. But the opposite correlation — fewer gun laws and higher rates of gun deaths — has been shown, and a causation between the two factors is impossible to prove.

And there were more claims that we have fact-checked before: on NAFTA, NATO, hacking, Iraq and more. An annotated transcript of the debate with our fact-checks can be found here.

Note to Readers: Staff writer D’Angelo Gore was at the debate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. This story was written by Gore with the help of the entire staff, based in the Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., areas.

Analysis

Voter Fraud

Trump defended his recent claims about rampant voter fraud by citing a Pew Charitable Trust report that found millions of people whose voter registrations contained errors. But that’s not evidence of voter fraud, nor does the report allege wrongdoing. Rather, the Pew report said that it is evidence of the need to upgrade voter registration systems.

In fact, numerous voting experts told us that in-person voter fraud is rare.

In light of Trump’s recent comments about a “rigged” election process, Wallace asked Trump if he would accept the results of the election. Trump responded that he would ” look at it at the time.” Trump then went on to cite the Pew report as evidence of voter fraud.

Trump: If you look at your voter rolls, you will see millions of people that are registered to vote, millions. This isn’t coming from me, it’s coming from Pew report and other places. Millions of people that are registered to vote, that shouldn’t be registered to vote.

In a speech in Wisconsin on Oct. 17, Trump cited the same report as evidence that “people that have died 10 years ago are still voting.” That’s not what the report says.

The report, “Inaccurate, Costly and Inefficient: Evidence That America’s Voter Registration System Needs an Upgrade,” found that approximately 24 million voter registrations in the United States “are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.” It also found that “more than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters” and “approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.” The report found that these inaccuracies could feed the “perception” that the system “could be susceptible to fraud.” But it did not allege that such voter fraud was occurring.

Indeed, researchers say voter fraud involving ballots cast on behalf of deceased voters is rare, as are instances of people voting in numerous states. In the case of “dead people” voting — typically determined by matching voting records to Social Security death records — a bit of digging almost always reveals these cases to be due to clerical errors or as a result of people who legally voted via absentee ballots or the early voting process but later died before Election Day, said Lorraine Minnite, a professor at Rutgers University and author of “The Myth of Voter Fraud.”

“There are a handful of known cases in which documentation shows that votes have been cast in the names of voters who have died before the vote was submitted,” wrote Justin Levitt in a 2007 report, “The Truth About Voter Fraud,” for the Brennan Center for Justice. “It is far more common, however, to see unfounded allegations of epidemic voting from beyond the grave.”

Many election experts say the kind of voter fraud Trump is talking about — voter impersonation — is extremely rare, and not enough to tip even a close presidential election. And there is plenty of research to back that up.

A December 2006 report by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission interviewed more than two dozen researchers and experts on voter fraud and intimidation, including Minnite. That report concluded that “impersonation of voters is probably the least frequent type of fraud because it is the most likely type of fraud to be discovered, there are stiff penalties associated with this type of fraud, and it is an inefficient method of influencing an election.”

We took an in-depth look at this issue and others raised by Trump regarding voter fraud in our story “Trump’s Bogus Voter Fraud Claims.”

Trump’s Female Accusers

Trump has been accused by eight women of sexual harassment — all of them stepping forward after an Oct. 8 story in the Washington Post about a video that shows Trump boasting of groping women and forcing himself on them.

During the debate, Trump denied the allegations and claimed “those stories have been largely debunked.”

Trump: Well, first of all, those stories have been largely debunked. Those people — I don’t know those people.

First of all, Trump does know some of his accusers. They include Natasha Stoynoff, a People magazine writer who wrote that Trump pushed her against a wall and forcibly kissed her on the mouth during a 2005 interview, and Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant who claimed Trump “very aggressively” kissed her and “placed his hand on my breast” at a hotel in 2007. (CNN has compiled a list of his accusers.)

We asked the Trump campaign what evidence it has that the allegations made by the eight women “have been largely debunked.” But the campaign had a response for only two of the eight cases, including the allegations made by Zervos.

In Zervos’ case, the Trump campaign put out a statement by John Barry, who said he is a first cousin of Zervos. The statement does not debunk Zervos’ allegations; it merely questions them. Barry said he was “completely shocked and bewildered” by Zervos’ allegations, because in the past “she has had nothing but glowing things to say about Mr. Trump.”

The Trump campaign also pointed us to a man who challenged the story of Jessica Leeds, who claimed that Trump kissed and groped her on a plane more than three decades ago. In that case, the New York Post reported that the Trump campaign arranged an interview with Anthony Gilberthorpe, a 54-year-old British man who claimed to be on the plane with Trump and Leeds.

Gilberthorpe told the Post that he saw nothing inappropriate between the two during the flight and that Leeds “was the one being flirtatious.”

The New York Post also wrote, “Gilberthorpe has no evidence to back up his claim — just his self-described excellent memory.” It also noted that Gilberthorpe “made headlines in 2014, when he went public with a claim that as a 17-year-old he procured boys (some who “could have been” underage”) for sex parties with high-ranking British politicians.”

We also note that six people have stepped forward to corroborate Stoynoff’s story of Trump’s unwanted sexual advances and contact. One of those people — Stoynoff’s former journalism professor Paul McLaughlin — “says that the writer called him in tears looking for advice the very night of the harrowing encounter. However, he cautioned her to remain quiet in fear of how Trump may retaliate,” People wrote in a follow-up story.

The accusations by Leeds and Stoynoff also factored into another debate exchange when Trump denied that he ever described any of his accusers as “not attractive.”

Clinton: Well, he held a number of big rallies where he said that he could not possibly have done those things to those women because they were not attractive enough for them to be assaulted.

Trump: I did not say that. I did not say that.

Trump may not have used the words “not attractive,” but in denying their accounts he told supporters that Leeds “would not be my first choice” and urged them to visit Stoynoff’s Facebook page if they did not believe his denials. “Check out her Facebook page — you’ll understand,” he said.

Trump Tower Laborers

In a discussion about people who live and work illegally in the U.S., Clinton made the unsupported claim that Trump threatened to deport “undocumented workers” who complained about low wages during the construction of Trump Tower.

Clinton: Now, what I am also arguing is that bringing undocumented immigrants out from the shadows, putting them into the formal economy will be good, because then employers can’t exploit them and undercut Americans’ wages.

And Donald knows a lot about this. He used undocumented labor to build the Trump Tower. He underpaid undocumented workers, and when they complained, he basically said what a lot of employers do: “You complain, I’ll get you deported.”

Clinton gets her facts wrong.

As we have written before, Trump was sued in 1983 by union workers who accused him of shortchanging their welfare fund by hiring undocumented workers to help demolish a building in New York City as part of the Trump Tower project.

The New York Times wrote that Trump testified in 1990 that he did not know the workers were in the country illegally and he did not hire them. He said the demolition project and the hiring for it was handled by a subcontractor, Kaszycki & Sons Contractors.

The Times article said the subcontractor hired about 200 undocumented workers and paid them $4 to $5 per hour — far less than the $11 per hour minimum wage that should have been paid to union workers.

The Clinton campaign refers on its website to a story last year by the Daily Beast that says some undocumented workers complained to Trump about not being paid. But the story also said that Trump testified that he did not recall speaking to the demolition workers, and it does not support Clinton’s claim that Trump threatened to deport the workers.

“During the 16-day non-jury trial, a number of the Polish workers testified that Trump underlings had threatened them with deportation if they caused trouble,” the Daily Beast wrote.

The website did not explain the term “Trump underlings” and whether they were Trump employees or subcontractors. Either way, there is no evidence that Trump himself told workers, “You complain, I’ll get you deported.”

Footnote: A federal judge in 1991 ruled against the Trump Organization and its partner in the project, the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. The judge ordered the plaintiffs to be paid $325,415 plus interest. Trump appealed that decision, and the case was settled in 1999 for an undisclosed sum.

Not Just Toddlers

Clinton claimed she was just sticking up for “toddlers” when she said in 2015 that “the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment. And I am going to make that case every chance I get.”

Clinton: [W]hat I was saying … was that I disagreed with the way the court applied the Second Amendment in that case, because what the District of Columbia was trying to do was to protect toddlers from guns and so they wanted people with guns to safely store them. And the court didn’t accept that reasonable regulation, but they’ve accepted many others.

The core holding in the court’s landmark 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller was that the city’s total ban on possession of handguns violated the Second Amendment, and that the amendment conferred on individuals a right to bear arms for self-defense.

“In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the 5-4 majority.

As a secondary matter, the decision also struck down a D.C. requirement than any lawful firearms kept at home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock at all times. Scalia wrote that this prohibition rendered any lawful firearm in the home inoperable for the purpose of immediate self-defense, and also violated the Second Amendment.

But Clinton made no such fine distinction when she spoke in 2015 at a small, private fundraising event in New York City, when she simply said the Supreme Court was “wrong on the Second Amendment.”

Audio of her remarks later was made public. In that private event, she said, “I’m going to speak out, I’m going to do everything I can to rally people against this pernicious, corrupting influence of the NRA [National Rifle Association] and we’re going to do whatever we can.”

That was when she was facing an unexpectedly stiff primary challenge from the left by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom she criticized for voting against gun legislation opposed by the NRA.

State Department ‘Missing’ $6 Billion?

Trump said that $6 billion was “missing” from the State Department when Clinton was secretary of state. That’s inaccurate.

Trump: The problem is you talk, but you don’t get anything done, Hillary. You don’t. Just like when you ran the State Department. $6 billion was missing. How do you miss $6 billion? You ran the State Department, $6 billion was either stolen — they don’t know, it’s gone — $6 billion! If you become president, this country is going to be in some mess. Believe me.

We reached out to the Trump campaign to get the source of his claim, but we did not hear back.

Trump may be referring to reports about a management alert issued by the State Department Office of the Inspector General in March 2014. The alert said that the OIG found that, in the previous six years, the State Department had failed to maintain the complete records of more than $6 billion in government contracts.

Office of Inspector General, March 20, 2014: The Office of Inspector General (OIG), in recent audits, investigations, and inspections, has identified significant vulnerabilities in the management of contract file documentation that could expose the Department to substantial financial losses. Specifically, over the past 6 years, OIG has identified Department of State (Department) contracts with a total value of more than $6 billion in which contract files were incomplete or could not be located at all. The failure to maintain contract files adequately creates significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions.

But State Department Inspector General Steve Linick said that his office’s report did not say that $6 billion was “missing.”

In a letter to the editor of the Washington Post in April 2014, Linick wrote:

Linick, April 13, 2014: The April 3 news article “State Department’s IG issues rare alert” reported on the management alert issued recently by my office. In the alert, we identified State Department contracts with a total value of more than $6 billion in which contract files were incomplete or could not be located. The Post stated, “The State Department’s inspector general has warned the department that $6 billion in contracting money over the past six years cannot be properly accounted for . . . .

Some have concluded based on this that $6 billion is missing. The alert, however, did not draw that conclusion. Instead, it found that the failure to adequately maintain contract files — documents necessary to ensure the full accounting of U.S. tax dollars — “creates significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions.”

So it was the records of the $6 billion that were either incomplete or missing, not the money.

Furthermore, the Washington Post Fact Checker found that most of the faulty paperwork concerned contracts that were issued when George W. Bush was president.

Debt and Deficit

Trump said the federal debt had doubled to $20 trillion under Obama. Clinton said annual deficits had been cut by two-thirds. Both were straining the facts.

Trump: [D]uring President Obama’s regime, we’ve doubled our national debt. We’re up to $20 trillion.

Clinton: When President Obama came into office, he inherited the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. He has cut the deficit by two-thirds.

First, the debt. Total federal debt hasn’t quite yet reached $20 trillion, and it hasn’t doubled.

It was just under $19.77 trillion as of Oct. 18. That is 86 percent higher than it was when Obama took office. That figure includes money the government essentially owes to itself.

The figure that has doubled — but only to $14.3 trillion — is the more economically important sum that the federal government owes to the public. It’s up 126 percent.

Clinton’s claim is also inflated. The deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 went onto the Treasury Department’s books officially at $587.4 billion.

And that’s a reduction of less than 59 percent — not 66 percent — from the fiscal year 2009 deficit of $1.417 trillion

Furthermore, as we’ve documented elsewhere, Obama didn’t inherit all of that FY 2009 deficit from his predecessor. During his first months in office, he signed spending measures that contributed as much as $203 billion to FY 2009’s red ink. Adjusting for that, we calculate that the deficit last fiscal year was down only 51 percent from the amount Obama inherited.

Nuclear Quotes

Clinton claimed that Trump “advocated more countries getting” nuclear weapons, including “Japan, Korea, even Saudi Arabia.” Trump countered that “all I said is, we have to renegotiate these agreements, because our country cannot afford to defend Saudi Arabia, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and many other places.” But Trump did say that perhaps Japan and South Korea should have nuclear weapons to protect themselves.

Here’s that exchange, edited:

Clinton: I find it ironic that he’s raising nuclear weapons. This is a person who has been very cavalier, even casual about the use of nuclear weapons. He’s …

Trump: Wrong.

Clinton: … advocated more countries getting them, Japan, Korea, even Saudi Arabia. He said, well, if we have them, why don’t we use them, which I think is terrifying. …

Trump: All I said is, we have to renegotiate these agreements, because our country cannot afford to defend Saudi Arabia, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and many other places. We cannot continue to afford — she took that as saying nuclear weapons. …

Look, she’s been proven to be a liar on so many different ways. This is just another lie.

Clinton: Well, I’m just quoting you when you were asked …

Trump: There’s no quote. You’re not going to find a quote from me.

Clinton: … about a potential nuclear — nuclear competition in Asia, you said, you know, go ahead, enjoy yourselves, folks. That kind…

Trump: And defend yourselves.

Clinton: … of language — well…

Trump: And defend yourselves. I didn’t say nuclear. And defend yourself.

Let’s start with what Trump did say about Japan and South Korea and nuclear weapons. He’s wrong to claim that “there’s no quote” from him on that topic, and he has gone beyond saying only “we have to renegotiate these agreements.” Clinton “took that as saying nuclear weapons,” as Trump says, because Trump in fact mentioned nuclear weapons.

In an April 3 interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Trump said:

Trump, April 3: So, North Korea has nukes. Japan has a problem with that. I mean, they have a big problem with that. Maybe they would in fact be better off if they defend themselves from North Korea.

Wallace: With nukes?

Trump: Maybe they would be better off — including with nukes, yes, including with nukes.

The New York Times had reported about a week prior that Trump had told the newspaper that “he would be open to allowing Japan and South Korea to build their own nuclear arsenals rather than depend on the American nuclear umbrella for their protection against North Korea and China.”

On March 29, Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “I don’t want more nuclear weapons,” but also said, “wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?” Here’s more of that exchange:

Trump, March 29: At some point we have to say, you know what, we’re better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea, we’re better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself, we have…

Cooper: Saudi Arabia, nuclear weapons?

Trump: Saudi Arabia, absolutely.

Cooper: You would be fine with them having nuclear weapons?

Trump: No, not nuclear weapons, but they have to protect themselves or they have to pay us.

Here’s the thing, with Japan, they have to pay us or we have to let them protect themselves.

Cooper: So if you said, Japan, yes, it’s fine, you get nuclear weapons, South Korea, you as well, and Saudi Arabia says we want them, too?

Trump: Can I be honest with you?  It’s going to happen, anyway. It’s going to happen anyway. It’s only a question of time. They’re going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely.

But you have so many countries already, China, Pakistan, you have so many countries, Russia, you have so many countries right now that have them.

Now, wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons? And they do have them. They absolutely have them. They can’t – they have no carrier system yet but they will very soon.

Wouldn’t you rather have Japan, perhaps, they’re over there, they’re very close, they’re very fearful of North Korea, and we’re supposed to protect.

Cooper: So you’re saying you don’t want more nuclear weapons in the world but you’re OK with Japan and South Korea having nuclear weapons?

Trump: I don’t want more nuclear weapons.

So, yes, there are plenty of quotes from Trump suggesting that he would be OK with other countries, specifically Japan and South Korea, having nuclear weapons.

But the one quote that Clinton mentions in this exchange isn’t as clear. She said that Trump said of “nuclear competition in Asia”: “Go ahead, enjoy yourselves, folks.”

Trump said that in an April 2 campaign appearance in Wausau, Wisconsin, in talking about Japan and North Korea potentially fighting.

Trump, April 2: We’re protecting Japan from North Korea. … I would say to Japan you gotta help us out. … And I would rather have them not arm. But I’m not going to continue to lose this tremendous amount of money. And frankly, the case could be made, that let them protect themselves against North Korea. They’d probably wipe them out pretty quick. And if they fight, you know what, that would be a terrible thing, terrible. “Good luck folks, enjoy yourself.” If they fight, that would be terrible, right? But if they do, they do.

Clinton also said that Trump said of nuclear weapons, “Well, if we have them, why don’t we use them.” That’s according to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and based on an anonymous source, not a verified quote from Trump. Scarborough said in early August that an anonymous source, “a foreign policy expert” who “went to advise Donald Trump” several months earlier, had said that Trump three times asked “if we had them why can’t we use them.” The Trump campaign denied that account.

Trump’s and Buffett’s Taxes

Trump falsely claimed that billionaire investor Warren Buffett — who supports Clinton — did the same thing Trump did to avoid paying federal income taxes.

Clinton first said Trump “has not paid a penny in federal income tax,” a statement Trump did not deny during the debate. Instead he tried shifting the blame to Clinton:

Trump: So let me just tell you very simply, we’re entitled because of the laws that people like her passed to take massive amounts of depreciation on other charges, and we do it. And all of her donors — just about all of them — I know Buffett took hundreds of millions of dollars. … Most of her donors have done the same thing as I do.

What Trump did of course, as recently reported, was to claim a $916 million loss on his 1995 tax returns, which could erase any federal income-tax liability for as many as 18 years through what are called loss carryforwards. Trump refuses to release his own federal income-tax returns, but he hasn’t denied that he was able to pay zero federal income taxes for many years while amassing a net worth he claims to be over $10 billion.

But he’s wrong to accuse Buffett of doing “the same thing.” Buffett has said publicly that’s not true, and that he has never claimed a loss carryforward like Trump’s in any of his tax returns since the first one he filed as a teenager in 1944. He also said he’s never reduced his tax bill to zero.

Buffett, Oct. 10: I have paid federal income tax every year since 1944, when I was 13. (Though, being a slow starter, I owed only $7 in tax that year.) I have copies of all 72 of my returns and none uses a carryforward.

Trump Foundation

Trump and Wallace disagreed over whether Trump used money from his own foundation to settle his lawsuits. Trump did.

Trump claimed that the money from his foundation “goes 100 percent — 100 percent goes to different charities.” Wallace responded, “Wasn’t some of the money used to settle your lawsuits, sir?”

Wallace went on to explain that Trump settled a lawsuit with Palm Beach with money from his foundation. Trump replied that “the money that you’re talking about went to Fisher House, where they build houses for veterans and disabled vets.”

In fact, the lawsuit Trump faced from Palm Beach is one example of him using foundation money to settle his business legal issues. In 2007, he paid $258,000 from his foundation to settle various lawsuits, one of which was a settlement with the town of Palm Beach, Florida, over the height of a flagpole at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, the Washington Post reported.

Here are other ways that Trump spent his foundation’s money on noncharitable causes and groups, according to the Post‘s reporting:

• In 2013, the foundation gave $25,000 to a political group connected to Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi. This year Trump paid a $2,500 penalty to the IRS because of the improper gift, according to Jeffrey McConney, a senior vice president and controller at the Trump Organization.
• The foundation also famously paid $10,000 for a portrait of Trump, which ended up on the wall of a Florida golf course he owns outside Miami. (A spokesman said Trump was doing the foundation a favor by “storing” it there.)
• The foundation also paid $20,000 for another, six-foot-tall portrait of Trump reportedly shipped to another of Trump’s golf courses in Briarcliff Manor, New York.

Positions on Abortion

Each candidate misrepresented the other’s position on abortion.

Trump claimed that “based on what [Clinton’s] saying … you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day.” But Clinton has said she’s open to restrictions on late-term abortions, with exceptions for cases involving the mother’s health issues. Clinton claimed Trump said “there should be some form of punishment for women who obtain abortions.” He said that, but quickly walked back the comment.

We’ll start with the issue of late-term abortions. First off, they are rare. As we wrote in September 2015, 1.2 percent of all the abortions in the United States occur after 20 weeks gestation, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research on reproductive health.

Second, Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco told our fact-checking colleagues at Politifact: “Nobody would talk about abortion on the woman’s due date. If the mother’s life was at risk, the treatment for that is delivery, and the baby survives.” He added, “Medically, it does not compute.”

Trump repeated his claim during the debate three times, first claiming, “If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.”

But as we wrote during the eighth GOP debate in February, “It is certainly true that Clinton has been a staunch defender of abortion rights. But Clinton has said she’s open to restrictions on late-term abortions, provided exceptions would be given when the health and life of the mother are an issue.”

So Trump skewed Clinton’s position on late-term abortions.

But Clinton also misrepresented Trump’s current position. She claimed that Trump said “there should be some form of punishment for women who obtain abortions.”

He did say that, but he also walked back that statement only hours later.

On March 30, Trump told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that women who get abortions should receive “some form of punishment” if the procedure is banned in the United States. He also added that the man who impregnates the woman should not be responsible under the law for the abortion.

But on the same day, he put out a statement recanting the punishment claim.

Trump, March 30: If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb. My position has not changed — like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions.

Gun Laws and Gun Violence

When asked about his opposition to gun control measures, Trump said that Chicago “has the toughest gun laws in the United States” and yet “more gun violence than any other city.” That implies a causation between gun laws and gun violence that’s impossible to prove. And even such a correlation is disputed by statistics showing the opposite: that states with fewer gun laws have more gun deaths.

The relationship between gun laws and gun crimes isn’t clear-cut, as Trump suggests.

Moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump about his opposition to measures such as limits on assault weapons and limits on high capacity magazines. Trump responded:

Trump: Well let me just tell you before we go any further, in Chicago, which has the toughest gun laws in the United States — probably you could say by far — they have more gun violence than any other city. So we have the toughest laws and you have tremendous gun violence.

We looked at this issue of gun laws and gun violence last year, when GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina also singled out Chicago, saying: “That is why you see in state after state after state with some of the most stringent gun control laws in the nation also having the highest gun crime rates in the nation. Chicago would be an example.” And we looked at the research again when Sen. Ted Cruz claimed that most “jurisdictions with the worst murder rates” have “the very strictest gun control laws.”

We found both were wrong in stating there was such a clear correlation.

Using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on firearm death rates for 2013, we found nine of the 10 states with the highest firearm death rates got an “F” for their gun laws, and one got a “D-” from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. And seven of the 10 states with the lowest gun death rates got a “B” or higher.

But homicide rate statistics — with 70 percent of homicides by firearm — didn’t show the same pattern. Eight of the 10 states with the highest homicide rates and eight of the 10 states with the lowest homicide rates all got “D” or “F” grades from the Brady Campaign analysis.

Some research has found a correlation between more gun laws and lower gun fatalities — but not a causation. For instance, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health looked at all 50 states from 2007 to 2010, concluding: “A higher number of firearm laws in a state are associated with a lower rate of firearm fatalities in the state, overall and for suicides and homicides individually.” But the study said that it couldn’t determine cause-and-effect.

In fact, it’s likely impossible to determine causation, as we’ve also written before. A scientific random study, in which one group of people had guns or permissive gun laws, and another group didn’t, can’t be done.

As for a correlation between gun laws and gun deaths in cities, an August 2013 CDC report found that for 2009-2010, the top gun murder rate areas, among the 50 most populous metropolitan areas, were: New Orleans, Memphis, Detroit, Birmingham, St. Louis, Baltimore, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Philadelphia and Chicago. Six of those cities are in states with poor scores for their gun laws, while the other four get a “C” or better. Chicago — the last among the top 10 at the time — had a ban on handguns then, so its gun laws were even tougher then than they are now.

In other words, there’s no discernible pattern among those cities.

Also, while Chicago is often noted for a high number of murders, other cities have a higher murder rate — adjusted for population. The city ranked 35th in 2014 in terms of its murder rate among cities with a population of 100,000 or more.

And There Were Repeats — Again

As in all the other general election debates, the candidates repeated claims we’ve checked before:

NAFTA: Trump repeated again, like in the last debate, that the North American Free Trade Agreement was “signed by her husband,” referring to President Bill Clinton. NAFTA was negotiated and signed by President George H.W. Bush. Clinton signed the implementing legislation. Trump also said “jobs are being sucked out of our economy” because of the trade agreement, but a 2015 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service called the net impact “relatively modest,” saying “NAFTA did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters.”

Father’s loans to Trump: Trump and Clinton disagreed on the size of the loan Trump took from his father to start his business. Trump said, “I started with a $1 million loan,” while Clinton claimed he borrowed “$14 million from his father to start his business.” As we noted when this was brought up during the first debate, Clinton is right and Trump is wrong. According to the Wall Street Journal, “a casino-license disclosure in 1985 … shows Mr. Trump taking out numerous loans from his father and his father’s properties near the start of his career in the late 1970s and early 1980s,” which totaled around $14 million. As Politico points out, that’s $31 million in today’s dollars. And as we wrote during the 11th GOP debate, these loans included more than $3 million illegally transferred to the Trump Castle Casino in Atlantic City in poker chips in 1990. To top it off, Trump’s father also co-guaranteed the construction loan on his first Manhattan project, the Grand Hyatt. So Trump sells his father’s contributions short by a long shot.

Iraq War: As he did in the first and second debates, Trump denied that he supported the invasion of Iraq before it began — interjecting “Wrong!” — when confronted by Clinton. Trump indicated his support for war in a radio interview with Howard Stern on Sept. 11, 2002 — a little more than six months before the war started. Stern asked Trump directly if he supported going to war with Iraq, and Trump hesitantly responded, “Yeah, I guess so.” Trump has in the past cited a January 2003 TV interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto. In the TV interview, Trump told Cavuto that President Bush needed to make a decision on Iraq. “Either you attack or you don’t attack,” he says. But he offered no opinion on what Bush should do. We have found no evidence that Trump was publicly against the Iraq War before it began.

Hacked emails: As she did in the second presidential debate, Clinton claimed that “cyberattacks” on email systems, including that of the Democratic National Committee “come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election.” And Trump again contested her assessment, saying, “She has no idea whether it’s Russia, China, or anybody else” and that “our country has no idea.” As we wrote after the second debate, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security issued a joint statement on Oct. 7 saying they were “confident” that recent hacks into the email systems of the Democratic Party were directed by the Russian government. And, they wrote, “These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.” A senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News that both Clinton and Trump have been briefed extensively about the U.S. intelligence community’s evidence pointing to culpability by the Russian government. “To profess not to know at this point is willful misrepresentation,” the official said.

Clinton’s tax plan: Trump said there would be a “massive, massive tax increase” under Clinton’s tax plan that would “raise taxes and even double your taxes.” But the tax increases Clinton has proposed would fall almost entirely on the top 10 percent of taxpayers, according to analyses by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center and the pro-business Tax Foundation. Hardest hit would be the less than 0.1 percent of taxpayers who earn more than $5 million per year. “Nearly all of the tax increases would fall on the highest-income 1 percent; on average, low- and middle-income households would see small increases in after-tax income,” the Tax Policy Center concluded.

Trump on health care premiums: Trump said that Obamacare “premiums are going up 60, 70, 80 percent,” predicting that they would “go up over 100 percent” next year. These are cherry-picked facts. Some insurers have requested high 2017 premium rates, but the rates vary across states. The Kaiser Family Foundation analyzed preliminary rates in cities in 16 states and Washington, D.C., and found the second-lowest cost silver plan would increase by a weighted average of 9 percent from this year if the rates hold. Additionally, 80 percent of people buying exchange plans receive government subsidies that lower their premium costs.

Open borders: Trump repeatedly claimed Clinton “wants to have open borders,” which Clinton called “a rank mischaracterization.” Wallace asked Clinton to explain comments she made to a Brazilian bank — revealed via WikiLeaks — that “My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders.” But as Clinton noted, that wasn’t the whole quote. It continues: “… some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.” Clinton said she was “talking about energy. … And I do want us to have an electric grid, an energy system that crosses borders.” In fact, Clinton said at the debate, “I have been for border security for years. I voted for border security in the United States Senate. And my comprehensive immigration reform plan of course includes border security.” We have found all of that to be true. Her campaign website says she supports “humane, targeted immigration enforcement,” and that she would “focus enforcement resources on detaining and deporting those individuals who pose a violent threat to public safety.”

NATO: Clinton claimed that Trump is “willing to … break up NATO.” Trump did say NATO is obsolete or may be, because it does not focus enough on terrorism. He also previously suggested in an interview with the New York Times in July that he would not automatically defend NATO allies that do not pay their share of defense costs. But he hasn’t said that the international security alliance should be eliminated, even though he once said that he would “certainly look at” leaving NATO. More recently, during the first presidential debate, Trump said that he is “all for NATO.” And Trump has since said, “When I am president, we will strengthen NATO.”

ISIS: Trump claimed that Hillary Clinton “gave us ISIS” — referring to the terrorist Islamic State. He claimed Clinton and President Obama “created this huge vacuum” when the U.S. left Iraq in 2011. That may be a contributing factor, but as we have written the origin of ISIS dates to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the decision to immediately disband the Iraqi army and ban the Baath Party. Experts also cite the rule of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who alienated and radicalized the Sunnis, and the Syrian civil war that provided the space for ISIS to grow in 2011.

Clinton emails: Trump repeated his claim from the second debate that Clinton “destroyed 33,000 emails criminally, criminally, after getting a subpoena from the United States Congress.” Trump is referring to 31,830 emails that Clinton’s lawyers had deemed personal and, as a result, did not have to be turned over to the government. As we have written, the department’s policy allows its employees to determine which emails are work-related and must be preserved. It is true that the emails were deleted after Clinton received a subpoena on March 4, 2015, from a Republican-controlled House committee investigation into the 2012 deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. But there is no evidence that Clinton knew that the emails were deleted after the subpoena was issued. According to FBI notes of its investigation, an employee of Platte River Networks – which at the time was managing Clinton’s private server – deleted the emails in March. Clinton told the FBI that she was not aware that they were deleted in late March 2015. The FBI did not say when Clinton learned when the emails had been deleted.

Correction, Oct. 20: This article has been updated to correct the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s title. He never served as chief justice.

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