Did a meme about the "National Intelligence Agency" discovering Bernie Sanders owns several companies and bank accounts in China originate from actual news reports? No, that's not true: It originated on a satirical Facebook page run by a liberal man with a long history of tricking conservatives into sharing made-up content. The meme had an explicit disclaimer from the Facebook page saying that "nothing on this page is real" but some versions of the meme circulating online had that part removed.
The meme image appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) published by "America's Last Line Of Defense" on February 20, 2026 with a caption that read:
Bernie is a communist. This isn't all that surprising.
This is what the image in the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Sun Feb 22 13:29:58 2026 UTC)
The text in the meme image read:
Bernie Sanders has some explaining to do after the National Intelligence Agency found disturbing links between him and China
Sanders apparently owns numerous companies and holds over a dozen bank accounts in Beijing.
None of it was disclosed on his Congressional financial statements.
There's very little chance that the holdings are legal.
It had a clear disclaimer in the bottom right corner that read: "Nothing on this page is real".
At least one viral version of the meme posted on X (archived here) had that disclaimer cut off:
(Image source: x post by @mcafeenew.)
A search on Google News for stories mentioning "National Intelligence Agency", "Bernie Sanders" and "China" did not return any results (archived here). There is a "National Intelligence Agency" website (archived here) but it does not have a .gov website domain and it appears to be a private company. The site did not mention Bernie Sanders either.
The homepage of the America's Last Line of Defense Facebook account (archived here) mentions it is the "home of the Dunning-Kruger Times" and clearly states, "The flagship of the ALLOD network of trollery and propaganda for cash. Nothing on this page is real," as this screenshot shows:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken by Lead Stories)
The page also says it is run by "Busta Troll," which is the nickname of Christopher Blair.
Christopher Blair is a self-professed liberal from Maine who for years has run networks of websites set up to troll conservatives with made-up news items in order to get them to share his posts. He often goes by the nickname "Busta Troll." A 2018 BBC profile called Blair "the Godfather of fake news," describing him as "one of the world's most prolific writers of disinformation."
His websites usually have multiple satire disclaimers and the stories very often contain obvious hints they are not real, like category names indicating they are fiction, links to "sources" that instead go to funny or offensive images or an "S for Satire" logo added to the images used as illustration. Another telltale sign is the name "Art Tubolls" (anagram for "Busta Troll") for characters in the stories. Blair also frequently pays homage to two of his friends who passed away by using their names ("Joe Barron" and "Sandy Batt") in stories.
