A member of Mike Pence replacement JD Vance’s staff last week called Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck’s office to ask if there was any truth to the batshit stories about Haitian Migrants eating pets, to which Heck tells the Wall Street Journal he said no, there’s no evidence supporting it.

Heck said the staffer “asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’ I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.” That was Monday, September 9th. The next day Vance tweeted “In the last several weeks, my office has received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who’ve said their neighbors’ pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants. It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false,” then following up with “In short, don’t let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots. Keep the cat memes flowing,” meaning it didn’t matter whether or not it was true because they were having fun doing it and it served a political purpose.

That night, convicted felon former President Trump amplified the conspiracy theory to a massive national audience during his debate stage self-immolation. “It induces panic and fear and depletes resources. We’re living the danger that misinformation and created stories leads to,” said Heck, adding that the city’s logged at least 36 bomb threats to public facilities in the past week.

“A Vance spokesperson on Tuesday provided The Wall Street Journal with a police report in which a resident had claimed her pet might have been taken by Haitian neighbors. But when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore’s house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later—found safe in her own basement. Kilgore, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app,” the Journal writes further down in the sprawling story.