Fact Check
Shortly after former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated on July 8, 2022, he became the target of a hackneyed conspiracy-theory meme.
The meme comprises fake screenshots or posts supposedly authored by high-profile people who have recently died. The gist of the conspiracy theory is that those people supposedly had incriminating information on Hillary or Bill Clinton, and, because of that, they were killed as part of a Clinton cover-up scheme.
In the days after Abe's death, this fake screenshot was shared on social media:
The text of the fake tweet read, "I have information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton." Several social media users questioned whether the post was real.
Screenshots supposedly showing tweets written by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Halyna Hutchins, a cinematographer killed by a prop gun misfire shot by actor Alec Baldwin, made the same claim — verbatim — after their deaths.
Also, the Twitter handle shown in the image above (@ShinzoAbe) was not the handle for Abe's official Twitter account (@AbeShinzo).
Although the entire Clinton family is a favorite target of conspiracy theorists, Hillary Clinton became a prominent obsession among them when she launched a presidential campaign against Donald Trump in 2016, and after she lost that race.
Abe was assassinated while delivering a speech in the Japanese city of Nara. He served as Japan's prime minister from 2012 to 2020.