FALSE CLAIMS HAVE spread suggesting that a Republican congressman said uncensored documents in the Epstein files reveal the existence of prototypes for a superweapon belonging to the Israeli state.

However, there is no evidence that such a document exists. There is also no record of the congressman talking about such a weapon, and the person who popularised the claim provides no sources or evidence to back it up.

“Thomas Massie claims to have seen unredacted prototypes of a mass extinction level weapon belonging to the state of Israel in the Epstein Files” a post on X by a user called Nassar reads.

“The House Rep says he ‘couldn’t go into any more details’ but saw it named as: The Global Obliteration Yield Beam”.

This post has been viewed more than 995,600 times since it was published on 12 February, and has been republished across other social media platforms, including to a popular Facebook page that says it is run from Dublin, Ireland.

That post, on the page Traditionalist Western Art, has accumulated more than 700 likes, as well as hundreds of comments.

Some of these note that the initials of the weapon mean it could be described as a “GOY beam”. (Goyim is used in Yiddish to refer to non-Jewish people, though the term has also been adopted ironically by antisemites).

However, many other comments on both Facebook and X appear to take the claims very seriously.

Regardless of the intentions behind the post — it is a lie.

Thomas Massie, described as a libertarian from rural Kentucky, has repeatedly broken ranks with his Republican colleagues in congress by criticising the administration’s release of files related to the investigation into deceased sex trafficker Jefferey Epstein.

Massie, who has access to the unredacted versions of the files, has used this privilege to argue that many of the redacted names are not of victims, successfully pressuring the US Justice Department into releasing uncensored documents.

The released files have hinted at connections between Epstein and the Israeli intelligence community, prompting speculation that Epstein had worked for Mossad.

However, although there is widespread coverage of Massie’s utterances about the Epstein files, there is no record of him mentioning prototypes for a super weapon.

Furthermore, searches on Google for a “Global Obliteration Yield Beam” reveal more than 130 results, all featuring either identical wording or references to the post by X user Nassar.

Some posts on the platform X also pushed back on the claim. The user Nassar only responded by linking to an inactive page on the website of the US Department of Justice, claiming the redacted file had been there, but was taken down immediately after he had posted the link.

The user’s post history largely consists of racist content and other deliberately provocative comments seemingly designed to rile up readers.

Given this, it is likely that the post was intended as a hoax that has since been widely shared.

Many users on X may have looked at the account that spread the claim and concluded it was a deliberate fabrication.

However, screenshots of the post and posts featuring copies of the text present the same information to wide audiences who have little chance to discern the original user was not to be taken seriously.

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