Fact Check

Nancy Pelosi's Daughters Arrested for Trafficking Cocaine?

Fake news sites reported that the House minority leader's daughters were caught attempting to smuggle cocaine across the Mexico border.

Published July 7, 2017

 (Tinxi / Shutterstock.com)
Image Via Tinxi / Shutterstock.com
Claim:
Two of U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's daughters were arrested for trafficking drugs, then turned state's evidence against their mother.

In July 2017, an assortment of unreliable web sites published articles reporting that two of U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's daughters were arrested and charged with trafficking cocaine.

That the reports were pure bunk was immediately evident from the inaccuracy and inconsistency of their "facts." For example, FreedomCrossroads.us named the arrested daughters as "Julie Marie" and "Nicole Lynn":

Nancy Pelosi’s two youngest daughters, Julie Marie and Nicole Lynn, were arrested and charged in Berkeley, California for drug trafficking. Their lawyer managed to keep the arrest quiet for the sake of an ongoing investigation and plea deal, but now that they were taken in full view of the public into federal court for arraignment, the cat is out of the bag.

The two women, 24 and 27-years-old, were caught at the border with more than 200 pounds of pure cocaine in their Winnebago. The girls tried to use their name to get through customs without being searched. It didn’t work.

According to Our Land of the Free, on the other hand, the daughters' names were "Louanne" and "Marissa":

Nancy Pelosi is now in more trouble than she ever bargained for. Her two adult daughters, Louanne and Marissa, caught red-handed at the Mexican border with enough cocaine to choke the Kentucky Derby, turned her over as the operation’s mastermind.

The two young women, aged 21 and 26, turned state’s evidence against the former Speaker of the House and walked out of jail with no charges against them, so their evidence must be strong. Pelosi was taken into custody at her California home without incident and posted $10 million bail less than an hour later.

As it happens, Nancy Pelosi does have four daughters, but their names are Nancy, Christine, Jacqueline, and Alexandra. There have been no reports in the mainstream media that any of them were arrested for smuggling drugs or anything else. Nor, needless to say, was the minority leader herself taken into custody at her California home.

Both Freedom Crossroads and Our Land of the Free are "satire" sites whose fictional content takes aim at conservative rumor-mongering and conspiracy web sites. According to a disclaimer on Freedom Crossroads:

The "About Us" page on Our Land of the Free states:

Ourlandofthefree.com makes no guarantee that anything you find here will be based at all in reality. All posts should be considered satirical and all images photoshopped to look like something they’re not.

Among the other untrustworthy web sites that reposted the articles were The Premium News, Waza News, Jew World Order, and America Daily News 24, and News Feed Hunter.

Sources

CNN Library.   "Nancy Pelosi Fast Facts."    17 March 2017.

Freedom Crossroads.   "Julie and Nicole Pelosi Dragged into Court in Handcuffs."    6 July 2017.

Our Land of the Free.   "Nancy Pelosi Taken From Her Home By DEA After Her Own Daughters Sold Her Out."    6 July 2017.

Our Land of the Free.   "Pelosi Daughters Drug Arrest: They Gave Up More Than Just Their Mom-More Arrests Coming."    7 July 2017.

David Emery is a West Coast-based writer and editor with 25 years of experience fact-checking rumors, hoaxes, and contemporary legends.