Facebook page “Kosovo Report" has published content claiming that Richard Grenell, US President Donald Trump's envoy for Special Missions, said that "There will be elections in September after Thaçi returns.".
What's wrong with this claim?
After fact-checking conducted by hibrid.info, it was determined that this claim is incorrect.
FACTS
The claim is based on an interview with Richard Grenell on "Express newspaper", in which he spoke about the political crisis in Kosovo and the judicial process against the former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
However, in the text of the interview there is no statement by Grenell that there will be elections in September or that the elections will be held after Hashim Thaçi's return.
The part of the article that says "The country could easily go to new elections in the fall" is part of the author's description of the political situation and is not a quote from Grenell. This sentence, in the article by "gazetaexpress.com" is not placed in quotation marks and is not attributed to him (see photo below).
On the other hand, in the part where he talks about Hashim Thaçi, Grenell states that "The West wants former President Hashim Thaçi to be released and return to help lead Kosovo again." However, he does not mention any date for Thaçi's return, nor does he link his return to holding elections.
As for the September date, Kosovo Specialized Chambers have announced that on September 16, the verdict in the court case against Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selim and Jakup Krasniqi will be announced.
The content posted on Facebook was subject to verification due to the interaction it had received up until the time of writing this article. By then, it had accumulated 51 reactions, 46 comments and 1 share.
Transparency of the “Kosova Report” website
The “Kosova Report” page on the Facebook platform has over 70 thousand followers. According to transparency data, the page was created on June 12, 2019, is managed by Italy and has two administrators. The history of the page shows that it changed its name from “Kosovo Army” to “Kosovo Army Report” on September 10, 2021 and then on September 19, 2021 to “Kosovo Report” (see here).
Analyze
The website "Kosova Report" claimed in a post that Richard Grenell said that there will be elections in Kosovo in September after Hashim Thaçi's return.
After verifying the facts, it was confirmed that Grenell did not make such a statement and did not link Thaçi's return to the elections. The part of the interview where the elections in the fall are mentioned was written by the author of the article, while Grenell spoke separately about the desire for Thaçi to be released and return to Kosovo.
Based on its work methodology, hibrid.info assesses this content as "Manipulation of facts".
rationale
“Factual manipulation” is a rating given to informational content that uses facts known to be accurate but interprets them in a distorted manner. These reports typically use accurate information to draw incorrect conclusions or claims, thereby misleading consumers of media content about the actual meaning of the facts presented.