Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman did not create Telegram channel

THE FACTS: Hyten’s spokeswoman, Maj. Trisha Guillebeau, confirmed to the AP that the general does not have a Telegram account and that the creator of the channel is impersonating him. The Telegram channel titled “General Hyten” was created on Monday. By the next day, it had dozens of posts and well over 200,000 subscribers.

Posts appearing to come from Hyten in the channel urged users not to give up hope and to “have faith.” Some posts included videos or images of former President Donald Trump. The posts hinted at impending breaking news and the potential use of an emergency broadcasting system, mirroring a false theory that President Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration would be interrupted by emergency broadcasts or Trump invoking the Insurrection Act. Multiple posts in the channel also included terms like “great awakening,” “storm” and “nothing can stop what is coming,” which are frequently used by supporters of QAnon, a false conspiracy theory rooted in the baseless belief that Trump is fighting deep state enemies and a cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibals operating a child sex trafficking ring.

The individual sharing the posts used an image of Hyten and claimed to be him, even writing, “The account is maintained by me. -genhyten.” However, Guillebeau confirmed to the AP that an impersonator was behind the account. “This Telegram account is fake,” Guillebeau said in a phone interview. “General Hyten doesn’t have any professional or personal social media accounts across the board.” By Tuesday, the channel had been mentioned in hundreds of other Telegram channels populated by QAnon supporters, according to Marc-Andre Argentino, a doctoral candidate at Concordia University who studies the QAnon movement. Telegram did not respond to a request for comment from the AP, but it did appear to affix a warning label to the channel on Tuesday.

— Ali Swenson