Pizzagate (conspiracy theory)

This conspiracy theory emerged near the end of the 2016 United States presidential election cycle. On October 30, 2016, a reputed white supremacist Twitter account claimed the New York City Police Department, which was searching emails found on Anthony Weiner's laptop as part of an investigation into his sexting scandals, had discovered the existence of a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party. Internet users reading John Podesta's emails released by in early November 2016 speculated that some words in Podesta's emails were code words for pedophilia and human trafficking. The theory also proposed that the ring was a meeting ground for satanic ritual abuse.

The theory was then posted on the message board Godlike Productions. The following day, the story was repeated on YourNewsWire citing a 4chan post from earlier that year. Adl-Tabatabai's story was then spread by and elaborated on by other fake news websites, including SubjectPolitics, which falsely claimed the New York Police Department had raided Hillary Clinton's property. The website Conservative Daily Post ran a headline falsely stating that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had confirmed that story.

Users on Twitter and 4chan searched the leaked emails of John Podesta for food-related "code words" that supposedly revealed the existence of a sex trafficking operation. For example, The New York Times reported that the phrase "cheese pizza" was thought by a poster to 4chan to be a code word for child pornography since they had the same initials. The allegations spread to "the mainstream internet" following a post on the website Reddit several days before the 2016 US presidential election. The post, meanwhile removed by the site, alleged the involvement of the Washington, D.C., business Comet Ping Pong:

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