In January 2021, with President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration just weeks away, readers asked Snopes to look into the authenticity and origins of a widely shared, hyper-partisan open letter to Biden, which was attributed to the right-wing musician and commentator Ted Nugent.
The post often came with the following preface: "Ted Nugent wrote Joe Biden a letter via Facebook and it is going viral fast. Just in case it is censored, here it is in it’s [sic] entirety."
The letter was typically presented as follows:
Dear Vice President Biden [Mr. Biden],
Although I refused to listen to it, I understand that during your presidential acceptance speech, you were calling for the unity of Trump supporters. I remember four years ago my President Trump also called for unity. I remember how Congressional members of your Democratic Party responded by boycotting his inauguration. I remember how you and your Democratic party cheated and used the greatest law enforcement institution of this country to spy on my President Trumps campaign. I remember how you and your Democratic Party created a fake Russian dossier to try and impeach my President Trump. I remember how your speaker of the house ripped up my President Trumps beautiful State of the Union speach on National TV. I remember how you and your Democratic Party tried to impeach my President Trump over a Ukraine phone call. You accused my President Trump of pay to play. Come to find out Joe, it was really you and your son Hunter. I remember how you and your Democratic Party blamed my President Trump over a pandemic that he had nothing to do with. I remember how you and your Democratic Party encouraged rioting and looting of my great United States of America. I remember how you and your Democratic Party used the media to spread lie after lie about my President Trump. I remember how you and your Democratic Party stole the election from my President Trump. This Trump supporter remembers all that Joe and will NOT be unifying with your Democratic Party. This Trump supporter will be giving you the same respect you gave my President Trump.
Some examples of the missive ended with the following:
"Your abject criminal dishonesty is treasonous. You belong in prison along with the rest of the Swamp."
The letter was first shared online in November 2020, but enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in January 2021, at which time it was universally attributed to Nugent.
Although Nugent was the most prominent public figure to post the open letter, he was not the first person to do so. Nugent posted a version of the letter on Nov. 18, as shown below:
However, the letter was posted to Facebook by at least three users before Nugent: on Nov. 10; on Nov. 9 at 8:23am; and on Nov. 9 at 7:19am EST. None of those posts attributed the content to Nugent.
It's possible that Nugent posted the letter before them, and subsequently deleted it (only to later re-post it on Nov. 18), or that he uttered those words in a video or audio recording before Nov. 9, but we checked Nugent's website and social media channels and found no evidence that that sequence of events took place. However, since we can't rule it out, we're issuing a rating of "Unproven." It appears likely, though not certain, that Nugent saw the open letter to Biden, written and posted by someone else, and subsequently decided to published it himself.
Snopes asked a spokesperson for Nugent whether he had written the letter himself, but we did not receive a response in time for publication.