False posts about Sen. Chuck Schumer originated as satire
CLAIM: Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had an “affair” in 1977 with his daughter’s best friend from high school when the girl was 16.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Versions of this baseless story have been circulating since a satire site first made up the rumor in late 2017.
THE FACTS: The satire site America’s Last Line of Defense invented a story in December 2017 about Schumer’s daughter “Lisa” disclosing a sex scandal involving her father. Schumer does not have a daughter named Lisa and the details described in the story are not true.
The satire website is no longer online, but an internet archive shows in 2018 the “about” section read, “America’s Last Line of Defense is a whimsical playland of conservative satire” and “Everything on this website is fiction.”
At the time the satire piece ran, Alabama voters were days away from voting in a special Senate election. Republican candidate Roy Moore was under fire after allegations surfaced that he had engaged in sexual misconduct with underage girls in the late 1970s.
Ever since the satire site published its false story about Schumer, versions of the story have continued to circulate on social media and right-wing websites as if the story was true.
The most recent version, a Facebook post with tens of thousands of views, shows a photo of Schumer and suggests “the alleged affair” happened in 1977 with “his daughter’s best friend from high school” and that Schumer’s “own wife, Kaitlyn, paid the girl’s mother nearly $2 million to go away.” The post said Schumer paid for the girl to have two abortions, and that the girl later killed herself.
All details in the post are false, but the timeline is particularly implausible since neither of Schumer’s two daughters had been born by 1977. Nor is Schumer’s wife named “Kaitlyn.” She is named Iris.
One Facebook user shared the false post with the comment, “FACEBOOK FACT CHECKERS are leaving this PHOTO up for a GOOD REASON! It’s 100% TRUE!”
In fact, the post is completely false.