“A political appointee at the Department of Health and Human Services shared an image in 2017 that said "our forefathers would have hung" Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for treason, a CNN KFile review has found.
Ximena Barreto is a far-right political pundit who in December 2017 joined the Trump administration as deputy director of communications at the department.
Barreto was placed on leave by the department on Monday after theliberal watchdog Media Mattersreported that Barreto called Islam "a cult" and pushed the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which alleged that Clinton was part of a child-sex ring based in part at a Washington, DC, pizza restaurant.
A subsequent KFile review of her Twitter account "RepublicanChick" found that Barreto also repeatedly used the hashtag #BanIslam and twice shared conspiracy theories about the death of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. Barreto also shared a conspiracy theory that French President Emmanuel Macron was controlled by the Rothschild family and that Clinton and Obama were controlled by investor and Democratic mega-donor George Soros. Both the Rothschilds and Soros are frequent targets of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
On Barack Obama
In May of 2017, Barretoretweeted an imagesaying the "our forefathers would have hung" Clinton and Obama for treason.
In August of 2017 Barretoretweeted an imageof a statue of Obama labeling him "a Muslim terrorist."
In January of 2017, Barretowrote in a tweetthat Obama was a "pansy and a traitor."
