A plane that took off from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Sunday crashed, killing all 71 people onboard.
Conspiracy theorists immediately did their thing. Your News Wire shared a titillating story on Monday claiming that “Two Russian citizens set to testify against Hillary Clinton have been killed in an ‘inexplicable’ plane crash in Moscow.”
Your News Wire was not the only one to claim Sergei Millian (who conspiracy theorists believe is “Sergei Panchenko” from the flight’s manifest) had connections to the Trump Organization and was on the flight Sunday. A report from the Daily Caller noted that Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe also spread this rumor via a tweet he has since deleted.
The article pointed out “the passenger manifest listed Panchenko as being born in 1973. Millian, whose real name is Siarhei Kukuts, is 39 years old, meaning he was born in 1978 or 1979.”
Clearly the Sergei Millian who has been tied to Trump, the Kremlin, and the dossier, was not one of the victims of Sunday’s plane crash.
Tribe later tweeted “THIS MAY HAVE BEEN A DIFFERENT SERGEI” and that he was “sorry if [he] rang a false alarm.”
But Your News Wire didn’t stop with Sergei.
The CFO of Rosatom Overseas, Vyacheslav Ivanov, was not in the plane and is (according to his Facebook profile) currently in Moscow. The CFO of Rosatom, Nikolay Solomon, is also still alive.
As the old Russian proverb goes, “Trust, but verify.” (Especially when it comes to stories about people with “Clinton ties” mysteriously disappearing.)
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