wizards and warriors
debunked pizzagate conspiracy theory
Pizzagate is a debunked conspiracy theory that emerged during the 2016 presidential election and falsely claimed that hacked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, contained coded references to a child sex-trafficking ring operated by prominent Democrats out of a D.C. pizzeria.
Law enforcement agencies quickly dismissed the allegations, but the theory generated real-world violence. That same December, Edgar Maddison Welch, a 28-year-old man from Salisbury, North Carolina, drove to the restaurant and discharged an AR-15-style rifle three times inside the restaurant in an attempt to “self-investigate” the alleged ring. No one was injured.
Welch was sentenced to four years in prison by then-U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and was later killed by police in North Carolina in January 2025 after pointing a gun at officers during a traffic stop.
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