Are state legislators pushing proposals that would expunge the criminal records of transgender individuals who change their legal names? While several prominent social media accounts have circulated this claim in recent weeks, there is no evidence to suggest these provisions were under consideration by state policymakers.
On May 26, the Instagram account “MentorHouse0,” which has more than 500,000 followers, shared a 55-second video clip from a June 2023 episode of businessman Patrick Bet-David’s video podcast, the PBD Podcast. That episode featured Infowars’ Alex Jones—a well-known conspiracy theorist and the source of several previous Dispatch Fact Check articles—as a guest. “They’re trying to pass laws in California and other states where once you change your name, and if you’re trans, it expunges your criminal record.” Jones said in the episode.
The viral video clip then shows Adam Sosnick, a financial advice podcaster affiliated with Bet-David, indicating Jones’ claim was true. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Just change your name, Alex. Now you’re Alexandra Jones—exonerated, you’re good, you owe no money,” Sosnick added, referring to the $1.4 billion a Connecticut jury ordered Jones to pay in 2022 to the families of victims killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting following a defamation suit that centered around Jones’ false claim that the massacre was a hoax.
“MentorHouse0” did not identify who was speaking in the video clip, that it was taken from the PBD Podcast, or that the clip was nearly two years old. In its caption, it stated, “Credits : Unknown.”
Later that day, the X account “Concerned Citizen”—which has nearly 1 million followers and describes itself as a “Conspiracy Realist/Coincidence Analyzer”—tweeted out the clip, and, in its caption, quoted Jones’ claim about the provisions supposedly being pushed in California and other states. “This is so wrong,” it stated. On May 27, “Defiant L’s”—an X account with 1.5 million followers and affiliated with the right-wing media group Resist the Mainstream—shared a nearly identical tweet, adding, “If true, this is stupid beyond imagination.”
There is no evidence behind this claim. While some states have passed “clean slate” legislation in recent years expunging or sealing the records of some convicts, no state has a law doing so explicitly for individuals who undergo either a gender transition or a legal name change. Jones never specified which bill included the supposed provisions he claimed were being pushed. However, around the time the podcast was released, a California law expunging some criminal records was about to go into effect, and, separately, state legislators were considering a bill to make certain public records of transgender minors confidential.
In September 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed into law Senate Bill 731, also known as the “Clean Slate Law,” which expanded the types of felony convictions that California would either seal from the public or expunge from that individual’s criminal record. The statute went into effect on July 1, 2023, one week after the PBD Podcast episode aired. Under the law, convicted felons who were not sex offenders or found guilty of “serious” or “violent” crimes would see their arrest and conviction records sealed or expunged from public view four years following their conviction, unless they were convicted of a separate felony charge in that time. The criminal history for convicted felons who have their records sealed or expunged under the law is still accessible in background checks for those applying to work in education, law enforcement, or seeking a seat in public office. The law would also not interfere with law enforcement’s ability to access an individual’s criminal history. Furthermore, longstanding California state law bars some felons from holding statewide and local public office, and those individuals are still considered ineligible to hold public office under the “Clean Slate Law.”
A separate piece of legislation that California policymakers were also considering was Assembly Bill 223, dubbed the “Transgender Youth Privacy Act,” introduced by Democratic State Assemblymember Chris Ward in January 2023. The bill made it out of committee on June 13, 2023—11 days before the podcast aired—and was signed into law by Newsom in September of that year.
But the “Transgender Youth Privacy Act” did not expunge the criminal record of transgender individuals. Ward’s office confirmed that this law made confidential all records relating to a legal name or gender change for individuals under 18 years old, stating to the Dispatch Fact Check that its primary purpose was “protecting the privacy of a minor.” As Ward explained when he introduced the bill, it was intended to ensure that transgender minors in California can live “without fear of retaliation from someone who discovers that information in the public record.” Ward’s office explained that any statement claiming the law expunged criminal offenses from the public record was “false,” and that the bill only sealed petitions filed by a minor to change their gender or sex identifier and name, as well as “any paper associated with the proceedings.”
The Dispatch Fact Check has reached out to Infowars and Patrick Bet-David’s company Valuetainment with a request for comment.
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