Pro-Trump GOP Candidate Claims George Floyd Died In 2016, Video Of His Death Was ‘Deep Fake’

A Republican candidate running for Congress has claimed that George Floyd’s murder was a hoax, reports The Independent.

Dr. Winnie Heartstrong, who is running to represent Missouri’s 1st Congressional district, shared the debunked conspiracy theory online last week which denied Floyd was murdered on May 25th by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

She wrote on Twitter that Floyd, the unarmed black man who died in Minneapolis police custody and ignited demonstrations against racism worldwide, had instead “died in 2016”.

“George Floyd is dead! He died in 2016,” Heartstrong wrote on Twitter earlier this month. “The images of George Floyd that we saw on camera on May 25, 2020 were created using deepfake technology — digital composites of two or more real persons.”

Heartstrong then links to a website called “Investigate Deep Fake Floyd” that claims to offer definitive “proof” that Floyd wasn’t really killed by police, despite the fact that multiple witnesses and videos of his death, show that Floyd died last month after Chauvin knelt on top of his neck for nearly nine minutes.

“However, the person in the arrest video is neither Floyd nor Jackson but rather a digital composite of both men using deep fake technology”, wrote Dr. Heartstrong, who concluded that “no one in the video is really one person”.

According to Ballotpedia, Heartstrong will face off in the Republican primary this August against candidate Anthony Rogers.