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| - An investigative columnist from Daily Signal, a conservative news website, posted doctored images of a letter purportedly showing either Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or his father, Rafael Cruz, assassinated former President John F. Kennedy. The columnist repeatedly implied it was a joke in the replies of his original post on X, but his post was replicated by other social media users without this context shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal officials to declassify any remaining files from the investigation into Kennedy's assassination.
On Jan. 23, 2025, social media users began spreading a rumor that images of supposedly newly released files in the investigation of former President John F. Kennedy's assassination were authentic. Posts online claimed the images showed that Lee Harvey Oswald was framed as Kennedy's shooter, and that Oswald knew the actual attacker's name and alias.
The rumor circulated on Facebook (archived) and X (archived), where one post received over 10,000 likes:
The images suggested that Oswald knew "Cruz" — it's unclear if this is referring to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, or his father, Rafael Cruz — killed Kennedy. Here's the full text:
I tried to tell Cruz not to do it, but he told me, "If you interfere with the Zodiac's plans, I'll have you taken care of, you dirty commie.
Whatever you do, don't let Ted run for Senate! I have information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton...
However, these images were doctored and originated as satire. They appeared to come from a post on X (archived) by Tony Kinnett, an investigative columnist for the conservative news site Daily Signal. Kinnett implied multiple times in the replies to his post that he was making a joke (archived, archived, archived and archived). However, many replies in a reposted version of Kinnett's post without this context appeared to assume that the images were genuine (archived, archived and archived).
The original, authentic image is available on the National Archives' website. The letter is a report from Swiss police about Oswald's plan to study at a school in Switzerland and contains no reference to Cruz, "the Zodiac" or Hillary Clinton.
(National Archives)
According to the FBI, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he assassinated Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.
Kinnett's post is likely a reference to a long-standing internet meme claiming Ted Cruz is the Zodiac killer, an unidentified serial killer who killed at least five people in the San Francisco area between 1968 and 1969. Cruz himself has taken part in this running joke.
Cruz was born in 1970, two years after the Zodiac killer's first known killing and one year after the Zodiac killer's known activities ceased. Kennedy's assassination also happened in 1963, five years prior to the Zodiac killer's first known activities. Furthermore, Hillary Clinton, born in 1947, was 16 at the time of the Kennedy assassination and not yet a known political figure. Thus, the dates in the doctored image don't align with the dates of the actual event.
The altered image may also be a reference to a claim — previously debunked by Snopes — that Cruz's father was linked to the Kennedy assassination. Snopes has also looked into other claims surrounding Kennedy's assassination, including purportedly authentic images of Kennedy's bloody shirt and a rumor that Kennedy predicted his own death.
Kinnett posted his satirical documents on the same day U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal officials to come up with a plan to release any remaining documents related to Kennedy's assassination, as well as investigations into the assassinations of former U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
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