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Fact check: No soldiers died in nonexistent raid to seize election servers in Germany

Corrections & clarifications: This story has been updated to reflect that Gen. Thomas McInerney was not a contributor to Fox News at the time of his 2018 remark about Sen. John McCain. He made the comment as a guest.

The claim: Soldiers died in a U.S. Army raid to retrieve election servers in Germany

Since mid-November, unfounded rumors that the U.S. Army performed a raid in Germany to seize servers with election-related information have proliferated online.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney spread the rumor in an appearance on Worldview Radio & WVW-TV on Nov. 28.

"The U.S. Army, the U.S. Special Forces Command, seized a server farm in Frankfurt, Germany," he said. He also said that he heard the seizure "didn't go down without incident."

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"I haven’t been able to verify it,” McInerney explained. “I want to be careful in that. It’s just coming out, but I understand — my initial report is — that there were U.S. soldiers killed in that operation."

Users like Steve Willingham then took to Facebook to claim that five soldiers who died in a helicopter crash in Egypt on Nov. 12 were actually killed in the raid.

"Cover story is that these 5 died in a training accident," he wrote on Facebook Nov. 30. "General McInerney says 'no', they we’re (sic) killed gaining entry into the CIA Server Farm."

McInerney, Worldview Radio & WVW-TV, and Willingham have not responded to requests from USA TODAY for comment.

A county worker moves packed up voting machines at the Clark County Election Department, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020, in Las Vegas.
A county worker moves packed up voting machines at the Clark County Election Department, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020, in Las Vegas.

No soldiers died in nonexistent raid

The U.S. Army did not perform a raid in Germany to seize servers with election-related information. The story was previously debunked by USA TODAY.

Because there was no raid, there were also no casualties.

Spokespeople for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and U.S. Army Public Affairs have confirmed to the Associated Press that claims of a raid are untrue.

"These allegations are false," they said.

The Special Operations Command has not had a fatal incident since August, when two soldiers died in a helicopter crash in California. Its most recent combat deaths were in Afghanistan in February, per the Military Times.

The five soldiers killed in the helicopter crash in Sinai, Egypt, on Nov. 12 were on a peacekeeping mission. Though the cause of the crash is still under investigation, there were no signs of an attack and it appeared to be an accident, according to the Associated Press.

McInerney and misinformation

McInerney is not a credible source of information on the matter. Retired from the Air Force in 1994,he has a history of false and controversial statements.

In 2010, he questioned whether President Barack Obama’s birth records were authentic, per Media Matters. Obama's campaign had posted his Hawaiian birth certificate online in 2008, following conspiracy theories that he wasn't born in the U.S.

In 2018, Fox News — where McInerney previously served as a contributor — announced that it would no longer book him as a guest after he falsely claimed that torture had “worked on” Sen. John McCain, who endured five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, per the Arizona Republic.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, the claim that soldiers died in a U.S. Army raid to retrieve election servers in Germany is FALSE. Spokespersons for U.S. Army have confirmed that there was no raid in Germany and were no casualties. The five soldiers killed in the helicopter crash on Nov. 12 were on a peacekeeping mission in Egypt.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: No soldiers died trying to seize servers in Germany