Obama Was Not Arrested

Drew Fossen

News

20th January 2021

Obama was present at Biden's inauguration (Getty Images).

The Claim

Former President Barack Obama was arrested.

News posted on

Emerging story

The claim went viral on January 18th, 2020. America Divided Podcast claimed: “BARACK OBAMA ARRESTED... 75 days after election day in America and, a NEW video surfaced of former President Barack Obama in a JAIL CELL."

The video quickly received over 1000 shares on Facebook.

However, many comments on the video accused the original poster of “making things worse by reporting fake events."

Misbar’s Analysis

Misbar’s investigation found this claim to be fake. If you watch the full video posted by America Divided Podcast, the host goes on to explain that Obama has not been arrested and that the footage is actually from Barack Obama visiting Nelson Mandela’s jail cell in South Africa in 2013. The exact same clip shown in the video can be seen on The Guardian’s YouTube channel in a video from July 2nd, 2013.

According to Reuters, Obama and his family visited the cell on Robben Island near Cape Town in South Africa on June 30, 2013 to pay tribute to ex-inmate and former South African president and anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela, who was then critically ill in hospital, and later died on Dec. 5, 2013 of a lung infection.

Barack Obama has been active on Twitter since the release of this video, twice tweeting tributes to Martin Luther King, Jr.

The headline in the post by America Divided Podcast was likely created for click-bait and feeds into the baseless conspiracy theories that high-profile Democrats will be arrested before Joe Biden’s inauguration. However, Obama and the other ostensibly arrested Democrats successfully attended Biden's inauguration.