Were two star witnesses against Joe Biden found dead in Ukraine River? Fact Check

An article is spreading online that asserts two “star witnesses” against former Vice President Joe Biden were found dead floating in a river in Ukraine.

FALSE

The article claims that Trump’s personal lawyer – Rudy Giuliani – travelled to the Ukraine and found two witnesses willing to provide evidence against Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. The article goes on to claim that the two men were later found dead in the “River Ukraine”, and it was ruled a suicide despite both men being found with their wrists and ankles tied together.

The article is complete fiction. A sceptical glance of the article clearly reveals a number of giveaways. For example, there is no “River Ukraine”, and the two star witnesses appear to share names with a well-known novelist (Joseph Conrad)) and a famous Ukrainian boxer (Wladimir Klitschko.)

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Also the image used to illustrate the article actually shows two police officers recovering a body in the Hudson River in August 2009.

But perhaps more glaringly is the website in which the article was originally published, TatersGonnaTate.com. It’s a website that regularly publishes spoof news and labels it satire. The About Us page has the following disclaimer –

Tatersgonnatate.com is a subsidiary of the “America’s Last Line of Defense” network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery

The America’s Last Line of Defense network is a network of spoof news websites that are designed to “troll” conservative readers. All of the websites contain a “satire” label and a disclaimer, but they are frequently copied to other sites without such disclaimers.

Previous spoof articles to come from the same website include the claim that Trump agreed to pay for a July 4th parade out of his own pocket, and that congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had claimed soldiers get paid too much money.

Basically, if it’s published by a site with a title like Taters Gonna Tate, it’s probably not going to be a genuine news story.