Here Are All of Trump�s Wild Debate Falsehoods That Went Unchecked
LYIN' EYES

Moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis didn�t fact-check Trump on
everything. Here�s what slipped by.

During Tuesday night's presidential debate, Donald Trump made at least 30
false claims�and he got away with most of them, in spite of the ABC News
anchors' robust fact-checking of the president in real time.

The moderators stepped in four times to correct the record on the former
president�s more outlandish claims during his wild showdown with Kamala
Harris, including his assertion that illegal immigrants are eating pets and
that Democrats support killing babies after they are born. They also
flagged his claim that �crime is through the roof,� pointing out data
showing violent crime has fallen.

Trump spent much of Wednesday ranting and raving against ABC News on his
social media platform Truth Social, posting in rapid-fire succession links
from far-right news sources siding with the former president, who said he
got a �rigged deal� from the network. He told Fox News the moderators were
�correcting everything� he said while letting Harris off scot-free. Why?
�Because they�re dishonest," he said.

But the moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, didn�t fact-check Trump on
everything. In fact, many of his other lies went unchecked. Here�s what
slipped by.
Immigration

Trump repeated one of his favorite false claims about dangerous illegal
immigrants flooding the Southern border. �We have millions of people
pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions
and insane asylums,� he said, adding that �21 million people� were pouring
in.

In reality, there have been about 10 million encounters with migrants at
the border since Joe Biden took office. Though there�s no publicly
available data about prison time or residents of mental institutions, of
the 1.4 million migrants apprehended at the border this year, Border Patrol
has found only about 1 percent have criminal convictions.
The Economy

Trump lied about the state of the economy during his own presidency and Joe
Biden�s.

�I had no inflation, virtually no inflation,� he said. �They had the
highest inflation, perhaps in the history of our country.�

Though inflation fell at the end of Trump�s term, the cumulative rate over
the course of his presidency was about 7.8 percent, according to CNN. And
though inflation has been much higher since Biden took office, it has
fallen over the past two years and came nowhere close to previous historic
highs seen in the 20th century.

Trump also said the only jobs created under the Biden administration were
�bounce-back� jobs that were lost to the pandemic but have now appeared
again. However, employment totals passed their pre-pandemic levels in the
summer of 2022, and the U.S. has added millions more jobs since then.
Ukraine

On the topic of Russia�s war against Ukraine, Trump alleged that Harris met
with Vladimir Putin to try to stop him from invading Ukraine but that
�three days later, he went in, and he started the war because everything
they said was weak and stupid.�

Harris didn�t meet with Putin, but she did meet with U.S. allies at the
Munich Security Conference in the days before the war began.

Trump also said the U.S. has given over $100 billion more to Ukraine than
Europe has. According to a tracker from the German-based Kiel Institute,
Europe had allocated and committed tens of billions more.
Joe Biden

At times, Trump seemed to long for his old opponent, mentioning Biden
throughout the evening. In addition to the wild claim that the president
�hates� Harris, his handpicked successor, the former president accused
Biden of receiving �millions of dollars� from China and Ukraine and of
orchestrating the criminal cases against him.

There is no evidence for either claim.
Other Lies

Trump also falsely said the Central Park Five �pled guilty� and �killed a
person,� both of which are not true. They pleaded not guilty but served
years in prison after they were falsely accused of the brutal sexual attack
on a jogger, before they were exonerated years later. Trump took out full-
page ads in the city�s newspapers against the five teenagers, suggesting
they be put to death.

He said former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi �was responsible� for the
Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol because �she didn�t do her job.� Trump
was indicted for conspiracy to subvert democracy for his role in the deadly
insurrection, the day he invited unruly supporters to come to Washington
and �fight like hell� to prevent the certification of Joe Biden�s electoral
victory.

He also wasted no opportunity to lie about his opponent on the debate
stage, employing a familiar attack about her previous presidential bid.
�When she ran, she was the first one to leave because she failed,� he said.

In fact, more than a dozen candidates dropped out of the crowded Democratic
primary field before Harris in 2019, including several governors, New York
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and former Rep. Beto O�Rourke.

https://wreg.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2024/10/Travious-Fox_Mugshot.jpg?w=900
Travious Fox

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - The Memphis Police Department is searching for a murder suspect accused of shooting and killing a victim.

On September 11, around 8:09 p.m., officers responded to a shooting call on Ridgehill Drive.

Officers located victim Gabriel Burton suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.

Burton was transported to a nearby hospital by ambulance but succumbed to his wounds and later died at the hospital.

During the investigation, detectives developed Travious Fox as a suspect, and a warrant for Second Degree Murder was issued for his arrest.

Travious Fox is described as a Black male, 34 years old, with medium length dreadlock hair.

The public’s assistance is needed to locate Travious Fox, who is responsible

https://www.actionnews5.com/2024/10/13/murder-suspect-run-after-shooting-rigdehill-drive-police-say/

https://media.tegna-media.com/assets/WATN/images/2d99b9fa-9911-4065-a246-f75632cf7aa3/2d99b9fa-9911-4065-a246-f75632cf7aa3_1920x1080.jpg
Justin James

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (localmemphis.com) – A Memphis manis charged with rape, but reportedly told police it was “urban love” role play.

30-year-old Justin James is charged with rape after the victim told police that June 20th, James had blocked her in a doorway, pushed her down on a bed, held her down,and forced her to have sex.

The next day, officers were called back to the scene when James returned. They took him in for questioning, where according to court records, he denied it was assault. According to police, James told investigators that he and the victim would sometimes roleplay, saying “no means yes. It’s urban love. I know a judge won’t believe thisbecause they don’t understand urban love.”

James is out of jail on $50,000 bond.

https://www.localmemphis.com/article/news/crime/police-memphis-man-charged-with-rape-says-it-wasnt-assault-it-was-urban-love/522-17515790-2b6f-4935-b8f4-ed8a5a38c6c2

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A judge has set a trial date for a man accused of raping a woman a year before he was charged with kidnapping a school teacher during an early morning run and killing her. Shelby County Judge Lee Coffee scheduled an April 8 trial for Cleotha Abston, who is charged with kidnapping and raping a woman in September 2021. That’s a year before he was charged with abducting Eliza Fletcher as she jogged near the University of Memphis campus and killing her. He has pleaded not guilty in both cases. Authorities say Abston was not arrested on the rape charges before Fletcher’s killing because of a long delay in processing the sexual assault kit.

https://wpcdn.us-east-1.vip.tn-cloud.net/www.wbbjtv.com/content/uploads/2023/10/x/j/mgn-1280x960-20906p00-qedab-768x576.jpg

FULL STORY
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A judge on Thursday set a trial date for a man accused of raping a woman a year before he was charged with kidnapping and killing a school teacher who was on an early morning run.

Cleotha Abston was not arrested on the rape charges before Eliza Fletcher’s killing because of a long delay in processing the sexual assault kit, authorities have said. Abston, 39, has pleaded not guilty in both cases.

Shelby County Judge Lee Coffee scheduled an April 8 trial for Abston on the charges of kidnapping and raping a woman in September 2021. Abston is charged with snatching Fletcher from a street near the University of Memphis on Sept. 2, 2022, and forcing her into an SUV. Her body was found days later near a vacant duplex.

Abston, who also has used the name Cleotha Henderson, was charged with the 2021 rape days after he was charged with Fletcher’s killing.

The April rape trial will take place before the trial in the Fletcher case. Prosecutors say they will pursue the death penalty if Abston is convicted of first-degree murder, but no trial date has been set in that case.

The killing of Fletcher, a 34-year-old kindergarten teacher and mother of two, shocked the Memphis community led to a flood of support for her family. Runners in Memphis and several other cities held an early-morning running event in her honor a week after she was abducted. A second run honoring Fletcher was held this year.

Abston was arrested after police detected his DNA on sandals found near the location where Fletcher was last seen, an arrest affidavit said. An autopsy report showed Fletcher died of a gunshot wound to the head. She also had injuries to her right leg and jaw fractures.

After Fletcher’s death, the Legislature passed a law requiring the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to issue a quarterly report on sexual assault kit testing times.

Abston’s lawyer, Juni Ganguli, has filed a change of venue motion seeking to have jurors from the Nashville area hear the rape case. Ganguli says heavy media coverage and social media commentary threaten Abston’s ability to receive a fair trial if Memphis-area jurors are used.

Ganguli said social media comments about news stories in the Fletcher case have been overwhelmingly negative and toxic.

“I understand people are angry. That’s not lost on me,” Ganguli said. “With that said, in order to ensure that this man gets a fair trial, that the system works, you’ve got have a fair and impartial jury.”

https://www.wbbjtv.com/2023/10/13/trial-set-for-memphis-man-accused-of-raping-a-woman-a-year-before-eliza-fletchers-killing/

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Violent rapists have walked free for decades because Memphis authorities neglected to do anything with thousands of pieces of evidence that would lock them up.

But earlier this year, after hundreds of cases began moving through courts again, Memphis City Council members stopped getting regular updates on their progress.

The rape kit backlog has caused the Criminal Justice Center to be slammed with cases that should have been on the docket years, if not decades, ago.

One of those cases includes Terrell Jackson. He stood before a judge Tuesday after police arrested the registered sex offender in Louisiana.

https://wreg.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2019/11/terrell-jackson.jpg?resize=763,720

A jury recently convicted him of violently raping a young woman in Memphis in 1998. Jackson requested a new attorney for another rape charge he’s facing.

Jackson walked free all this time, because MPD never did anything with the key evidence.

That’s right — the sexual assault kit wasn’t processed until 16 years later.

It was one of 12,000 kits police left on a shelf to collect dust until WREG exposed the massive backlog in 2010.

“I woke up to somebody standing over me. I thought, I’m dreaming. I’m really going crazy,” said Terilyn Blockman, who was raped in her apartment in 1991.

“Next thing I knew, he had his hand over my face. He was strangling me. I was trying to peel his hand off me. I thought, if I don’t get this hand off of me, I’m going to die. I’m suffocating,” she said.

Blockman said the man then raped her and took off. He left her numb, just lying there as she tried to gain the courage to call 911.

“I’ve got to call police. If he still is somewhere in my condominium, I don’t want to call police, because what if he comes in and says, ‘You’re not calling police’ and kills me,” she said. “I never slept. I don’t remember sleeping at all. I still don’t sleep.”

https://wreg.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2019/11/victim.jpeg?resize=280,157
Terilyn Blockman

Blockman consented to a sexual assault examination, and evidence was collected, but she didn’t hear anything until May when she found out her kit was in that backlog and was finally headed to a lab.

“All of the kits have been tested. Now, the work turns to investigating those cases where the testing lead us somewhere,” Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich said .

Weirich said she’s added more people to her team as their work continues to ramp up.

“That next step is anything from locating a victim or finding out if the victim is still alive. Finding out if the defendant, the suspect, is still alive,” she said.

As of Oct. 25, there have been 83 guilty pleas or convictions.

Three hundred fifty-one kits made their way to the court system — two dozen await a grand jury, 88 await trial and 46 of the cases are dealing with a suspect accused of at least two or more rapes.

“The number is going to keep growing. The cases that land on our desk to prosecute and hold these defenders accountable,” said Weirich.

WREG investigators promised to track the progress, but the city, in spite of its commitment to transparency, made that job harder.

For the past several years, city leaders provided updates on the backlog to the council every month — that is, until April, when we found out those updates suddenly stopped.

We asked council members why.

“We got to a point that our responsibility with those kits had run its course. Now, it is in the hands of the justice system,” said Councilman Worth Morgan. “The reports all started sounding the same.”

We asked Councilman Martavious Jones about accountability.

“Well, I think there’s one of those things. There is an expectation. You do raise a good point. I guess we need to go through the trust then verify,” he responded.

WREG sat down with Deborah Clubb, executive director of the Memphis Area Women’s Council. She’s on the sexual assault kit task force overseeing the backlog.

“The council decided they don’t need monthly reports, after they were sure for a few years the momentum of lab work was underway,” Clubb said.

She said the task force has made major strides with new ordinances/laws, public service announcements and getting MPD a new storage facility.

“We have a few years of work, and we’re not giving up. We’re not stopping,” she said.

But again, how will we know if that work isn’t being made public?

“We do have concerns that the public isn’t seeing what progress is happening. We are just beginning to address that,” she said.

Blockman was frustrated to hear the updates stopped.

“Not letting us know what’s going on with the kits and not keeping us informed, that’s not fair. That’s not right,” she said.

She also wonders what about the rape kits taken since the backlog.

MPD says they ensure each kit now heads to a lab within 96 hours after its logged into the property and evidence room.

But the state has said the waiting period could be months due to funding and staffing issues.

Not to mention, the TBI says they “do not have an existing document or database tracking the total number of sexual assault kit submissions.”

“That upsets me a lot,” said Blockman.

She believes her concerns will eventually fade, once trust is built again.

“Are you afraid they’re going to forget about you again?” WREG asked.

“Yes. That scares me a lot,” she said.

Blockman said she has a meeting coming up with investigators, so she’s keeping a good thought. She also joined a class action lawsuit against the city.

The task force told WREG Tuesday they plan on having another update on the city’s website by the end of the year. We will let you know if that happens.

https://wreg.com/news/city-council-halts-updates-on-rape-kits-as-cases-ramp-up-in-court/

https://foxchattanooga.com/resources/media2/16x9/full/768/center/80/9bc46c10-716d-437c-ad41-f6d3d6272211-medium16x9_MemphisOfficerChargedWithRape.jpg
Al Bond (Photo: MPD)

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — An officer with the Memphis Police Departmentis charged with rape.

A sexual assault complaint was made to police on November 1. The victim tells police she was sexually assaulted by 28-year-old Officer Al Bond at a party.

Memphis Police Department Sex Crimes Bureau investigated the case. The Shelby County District Attorney General's Office Special Victims Unit reviewed the case and a warrant was issued for Bond of Rape.

Bond was reportedly off-duty at the time of the incident. He had been with the police department since 2017 but has since been let go.

Bond was booked into the Shelby County Jail on Nov. 2.

https://foxchattanooga.com/news/local/memphis-police-officer-charged-with-rape

Why is this animal still alive? Kill it and burn it.

https://media.tegna-media.com/assets/WATN/images/abc194ef-ba12-4028-bd1a-292b95767b9e/abc194ef-ba12-4028-bd1a-292b95767b9e_1920x1080.jpg
Credit: Shelby County Sheriff's Office
Donyel Thomas

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Memphis man has been convicted in a 2011 rape, and remains indicted in three more cases.

37-year-old Donyel Thomas was convicted Wednesday of raping the woman in Whitehaven July 17, 2011.

Prosecutors said the victim was walking back to her hotel after going to a party, and Thomas pulled over at Brooks Road and Millbranch, offering her a ride to the hotel. They said she accepted, but Thomas drove to a nearby park, threatened the woman with a knife, and then raped her. She said he drove off, taking her cell phone with them.

Prosecutors said a DNA sample from the rape kit was entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) in 2015, and a match came back linking Thomas to that rape, as well as four others.

Thomas was indicted in three of those cases, and they are still pending.

He will be sentenced in the 2011 case on November 8, 2021.

https://www.localmemphis.com/article/news/crime/memphis-man-convicted-in-2011-rape-also-indicted-in-three-more-cases/522-388b24e5-c8ab-40b0-b78f-b37fd9f8897d

As the suit over a backlog of 12,000 rape kits proceeds, two Democratic lawmakers work a bill that require processing of kits within 30 days of submission

Debby Dalhoff says she’s always been a happy, outgoing person around friends and family.

“What they don’t know is when I sit on my back porch at night, what goes through my mind,” said the 68-year-old retired FedEx manager. “It’s constant. It never ends. That inner demon that you can’t get rid of until we can get some closure.”

Dalhoff is one small step closer to closure — maybe — with last month’s ruling by a Shelby County Circuit Court judge that the lawsuit Janet Doe v. City of Memphis, over the decades-long mishandling of thousands of rape investigations, could proceed as a class action. This case began winding its way through the courts in 2014, not long after the Memphis Police Department revealed a backlog of more than 12,000 forensic rape exams, or rape kits.

Dalhoff is one of dozens who signed on to that lawsuit, and has been hoping for years that it would get a class-action certification. She calls the recent ruling a milestone, but only a “breather.”

She says she won’t celebrate yet, with all the work that still lies ahead. Attorneys have to track down as many survivors as they can to join the class action; that is, those who are still alive, because some of the mishandled cases date back nearly half a century.

“I’ve thought about volunteering my time from a clerical standpoint, see if there’s anything I could do to help [ attorneys] build a spreadsheet, and contacting these people,” said Dalhoff, over the phone from her home in Memphis.

What they don't know is when I sit on my back porch at night, what goes through my mind. It's constant. It never ends. That inner demon that you can't get rid of until we can get some closure.

– Debby Dalhoff, sexual assault survivor

She takes a deep breath. “I shouldn’t even have to be doing all this.”

Dalhoff is tired. She’s been seeking closure for 38 years, and for nearly a decade now has been doing the investigative legwork that police never did. When she was 29, Dalhoff and her roommate were blindfolded, gagged, hogtied, raped and tortured for hours, by a man who then washed off traces of himself on them and even vacuumed the house, taking the vacuum cleaner bag with him.

“Think about this, in 1985 DNA wasn’t that popular, but obviously this person was someone who knew something about a cleanup, DNA. Because of that I was told in the beginning of my investigation that they were looking for someone possibly in law enforcement, fireman, paramedic, policeman. So they always had that in the back of their mind.”

Years went by, though, without any new information. When she heard about the massive backlog in 2014, she started calling the police again, obtained her case files and had her case reopened. In 2015, an MPD officer told Dalhoff her evidence was tested, but no DNA was found.

“Well, that’s a bold-faced lie,” said Dalhoff, “because [former Shelby County District Attorney] Amy Weirich told me that my kit had never been found, had never been tested. In fact, I was able to then obtain the documents that showed where every piece of my evidence, not my sexual assault kit, but [other] evidence that could have had DNA on it…was all destroyed.”

Dalhoff’s rape took place before DNA testing became a widespread practice, and before the Memphis Police Department gained access to an FBI database of DNA records called CODIS, where samples can be matched. That explains some of the backlog, until about 20 years ago, but not the disorganized storage of thousands of kits across the city. Or the destruction of countless others, in part because of storage overcrowding, but also in the erroneous belief that the statute of limitations on the cases had passed.

Dalhoff saw documentation that everything from her bed linens to the bindings used in the attack were dumped in a Memphis landfill in the 1990s.

“I had so much high hopes when I found out about the backlog, to then find out [my kit’s] at the bottom of a dump. How much lower can it be?” said Dalhoff. “They let perpetrators run free that could’ve been in jail. They’ve destroyed so many women.”

Thousands of survivors never saw justice, and an untold number of rapists would continue to attack others. Based on the M.O. of Dalhoff’s assault, authorities told her they believed the same man — a former neighbor and firefighter who has since died — was responsible for raping at least four other women. And he grew increasingly vicious, even running a needle and thread through one victim’s nipple, to yank on it.

“One of the most heinous crimes”
What’s striking about a case like Dalhoff’s is that it’s not a he-said/she-said version of events reflective of most sexual assaults, which are committed by someone the victim knows and which police and legislators nationwide have been slow to even recognize as a crime.

Still, Dalhoff’s case languished, uninvestigated, for decades. It’s that kind of negligence that attorney Gary Smith, who is representing the class-action survivors, said helped them establish that while sexual assault is “one of the most heinous crimes that there is, [it] did not have a priority within the sexual crimes unit” of the Memphis Police Department.

Smith calls the recent ruling “a huge victory, but it doesn’t portend a quick end to the case by any means. Unless the city wants to see this thing come to an end.” So far, though, he said there’s been no talk of a settlement from the city.

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland declined to share his thoughts on the ruling, or the possibility of a settlement before the case goes to trial. A spokeswoman for the mayor told the Tennessee Lookout, “We can’t comment on litigation.”

How a system failure left a rapist free to attack again
Smith also represents Alicia Franklin, whose lawsuit against the city of Memphis was dismissed the same day that the class-action was certified, by a different judge. Franklin, who is Black, was raped at gunpoint, in 2021, by Cleotha Henderson, who in Sept. 2023 would kidnap, rape and kill Eliza Fletcher, a white kindergarten teacher whose case received national attention.

The DNA results from Franklin’s rape kit were reported after Fletcher went missing; indeed, Henderson was charged with Franklin’s rape after he was already in custody over Fletcher’s murder. Both women’s rape kits were submitted by MPD to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for processing. According to a TBI statement, Franklin’s was not expedited, nor was there any suspect information attached to it, even though she knew Henderson’s name. The rape happened on what was meant to be a dinner date; the two met through a dating app.

State Sen. London Lamar says Fletcher’s case “put the idea of rape kits back into the public eye and made it a pressing issue,” which is good. However, she added, it’s no secret that some rape kits get preferential treatment within an already flawed system.

“When black girls go missing and get kidnapped and raped, are we stopping the whole police force to go look for them? No,” said Lamar. “Are we the public marching and doing candlelight vigils for them? No. So we also as a society, as a legislative body, have got to realize that there are still lives that are more valuable than others in the way that we handle people’s cases and our criminal justice system.”

The Memphis Democrat has a bill (SB0014/HB0024) working its way through the General Assembly — it passed unanimously in the state Senate, but still has to clear the House — that would require the TBI to process all kits, once they’ve been submitted by law enforcement, within 30 days. According to the TBI, rape kit processing currently varies from 30 to 56 weeks, depending on the city.

If Lamar’s legislation, co-sponsored with Rep. Bob Freeman (D-Nashville) passes, it could help level the playing field, close the racial disparity gap and prioritize rape investigations overall.

Yet Lamar knows that neither race nor the clock are the biggest obstacles in Tennessee.

Processing rape kits takes much less time than know-how and people power. Training scientists to process a sexual assault kit takes at least 18 months, according to the TBI. Keeping them in Tennessee takes more competitive salaries than the state has been offering.

The TBI has not hidden its need for more money, to hire dozens more scientists, but the agency has not received the budget bump it requested from Gov. Bill Lee’s administration. However, since March, the TBI has secured $1,850,000 in grant funding, to outsource 858 kits to out-of-state labs. So far, they’ve sent 550 to Florida, and agency spokesman Josh Devine says they plan to outsource the remaining 308 in early July.

Deborah Clubb, who is part of the Memphis Sexual Assault Kit Task Force created by former Mayor A.C. Wharton, finds the never-ending struggle to process rape kits disheartening.

“I have worked these years with police leadership who really wanted to make amends, so it’s been very hard for me to see the new backlog,” said Clubb, a veteran reporter and longtime advocate for survivors of sexual and domestic violence, who also heads the Memphis Area’s Women’s Council.

“Whether it’s the investigating, or the testing of kids or the prosecuting, these sex crimes are just going to keep on keeping on and they’re going to be older and older,” said Clubb. “And people who are hurt are going to be less and less willing to get into that treadmill system and put themselves through the agony of having to think about it.”

According to the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), in the US someone is sexually assaulted every minute, with nearly half a million victims age 12 and up every year.