A Gabrielle Giffords hoax lawsuit supposedly filed by Jared Loughner, the man who shot her in 2011, was reported as real by two television stations and a daily newspaper in Phoenix before another TV news outlet confirmed the suit was fake, according to
Politico and
KPNX-TV.
Fox News also said the lawsuit was thought to be a hoax, based on new reporting by
Tucson News Now, which updated its Wednesday story and also suggested it was a hoax.
Politico reported that two stations connected to Tucson News Now – KOLD-TV and KMSB-TV – and owned by Raycom Media, posted stories on Wednesday that the former U.S. representative was being sued by Loughner for $25 million.
KPNX-TV said a federal court official confirmed the lawsuit is a fake and actually from a mentally disturbed prisoner in Philadelphia who is impersonating Loughner. And it may not be the first time he's done it.
The television station noted that Loughner is serving his sentence at the federal medical center in Rochester, Minnesota, and the fake suit was postmarked in Philadelphia where the other prisoner is being held.
The supposed suit sought $25 million in damages and was filed in the U.S. District Court of Arizona on Friday. Tucson News Now reported it was similar to a hoax court filing that Jason Brian Dalton — the Uber driver accused of killing six people in a shooting rampage in Kalamazoo, Michigan — allegedly filed on March 15.
Tucson News Now reported that Dalton’s fake lawsuit and Loughner’s supposed suit both bare similar traits. They both have the same three stamps in the right corner, similar handwriting styles, and are postmarked in Philadelphia.
Loughner was sentenced to life in prison for shooting Giffords, along with killing six people and injuring 12 others during a shooting spree outside of a Tucson grocery store on Jan. 8, 2011, reported
CBS News.
Loughner received medical treatment for mental illness after the shooting so he could stand trial, wrote
CNN. He eventually pleaded guilty in 2012 to 19 charges in exchange for the government not seeking the death penalty.
The lawsuit that was supposedly filed by Loughner, which accused Giffords and the FBI of violating his Eighth Amendment rights, was postmarked March 15 from Philadelphia and received March 18 by the Clerk of Court for the U.S. District Court in Arizona, a source told
KPNX-TV.
The
Arizona Republic posted a story on the lawsuit on Thursday. While the newspaper did not mention in its online story that the lawsuit could be fake, it did mention the discrepancy in the postmark and where Loughner was being held.
"My incarceration is illegal," the fake lawsuit said. "I am actually innocent. I was Framed. I am a victim of project mk-ultra the govt. put a chip in my head to control my mind. The Zeitgeist is part of a new world order to create false flag attacks."
The Republic said Project MKUltra was a CIA program during the mid-1900s, before Loughner was born, which employed drugs, chemicals, and other methods for interrogations and mind control — sometimes with unwitting suspects.
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