Rumours online claim that Pete Buttigieg, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, was arrested during his teenage years on suspicion for killing at least 5 dogs.
The rumour is circulating in the form of a newspaper clipping dated August 30th 1998 next to a photo purportedly of Buttigieg when he was a teenager. See below.
However the image is fake. In fact the newspaper clipping is clearly from a popular fake newspaper clipping generator that’s free to use on the Internet.
The generator, housed at the website Fodey.com, allows visitors to create a whole host of fakery, among them fake newspaper stories that are imposed on the same newspaper clipping. Visitors can chose the headline, date, story and even the name of the fake publication. See the screenshot below.
For the sake of thoroughness, we searched for any online stories that matched the supposed dog killing headline, and turned up nothing.
As such. We rank the claim that Pete Buttigieg was arrested on suspicious of killing 5 dogs as false.