(editors’ note: April Fools)

It was early on the morning of July 6, 2016, in the heat of the election battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.* Yuri Svetlopov made his way from the Motel 6 off of Interstate 77 to the Johnson Exhibition Hall in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. FBI surveillance tapes show that Svetlopov arrived at 10:13 AM, about four hours before a scheduled joint speech by Hillary Clinton and then-president Barack Obama.*

Security footage taken outside the Johnson Hall, recently released by FBI Director James Comey, indicates that by 10 AM on that morning a large crowd had already gathered to hear Mrs. Clinton speak. Crowd estimate experts put the figure in the two to three-thousand persons range.

But then Svetlopov arrived. He is a small, ordinary man. Tapes reveal that morning he was bald, unshaven, with brown glasses, and wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt under his green jacket. The tapes clearly show Svetlopov lighting a cigarette in the parking lot. At 10:14 AM, Svetlopov was seen walking into the crowd.

From that point, his movements cannot be exactly traced. But one thing is certain. By 10:15 AM, the crowd waiting outside the Hall began to diminish. At 10:13 AM, there were between 2,000-3,000 people. By 10:50 AM, footage reveals about 1,500 people.

And by 12:58 PM, there were only about two hundred fifty individuals left.

The FBI isn’t certain, but security camera footage also showed three semi-trucks from the Crimean Meat Co. that entered and left the Exhibition Hall’s parking lot. At the time, nobody thought anything about it. This was the company contracted to provide the pigs-in-a-blanket sausages that Mrs. Clinton insists be served at every venue at which she appeared.

Only now a more horrific theory has emerged.

A source high up in the FBI revealed that the same Crimean Meat Co. trucks were spotted at nineteen of twenty-three events in June and July of 2016. These events include a July 14th Seattle book signing and fundraiser. Publishers anticipated “maybe a thousand [people]” would show to the book signing, but only “some two dozen” did.

“Nothing else but sinister Russian activities could account for the lack of enthusiasm for Hillary at these events,” said the source.

The source could not place Svetlopov at the Seattle event. But the source said that what they knew of his travel did allow Svetlopov enough time to arrive at Seattle and later appear in Miami, Florida at another Hillary event. At the Miami event, agents are certain they spotted the same Iron Maiden t-shirt in the small crowd.

“Nothing else but sinister Russian activities could account for the lack of enthusiasm for Hillary at these events,” said the source.

Director Comey corroborated this theory when he revealed two photos. The first was an early photo of a man who was a known Hillary supporter. A second, later, photo was of the same man wearing a “MAGA” hat. MAGA was shorthand for Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again.”

The most chilling part of this shocking evidence was that this man was one of the people first lined up at the Charlotte event but who never made it inside the Hall. The FBI source said that interviews with this man, whose name is not being released, were not productive.

The source said, “All the man told us was that he met ‘some guy’ in line at the Hall who offered to ‘take him for a nice drive.’ Then, during this ride, the man changed his mind about voting for Hillary.” The man refused to reveal further details about himself, despite repeated queries.

Yuri Svetlopov also disappeared. There were no more sightings until a fuzzy photograph of him emerged from a Moscow Vodka Hall appeared on Instagram in December, 2016. The Instagram account belonged to Anatoly Kuznetsov, who has known associations with Vladimir Putin.

“You can paint your own picture about what happened,” said the source. “There are too many coincidences for comfort.”

This evidence is in addition to an incident noted outside a Baltimore polling station. Witnesses report that a man dressed as a woman “speaking with a Slavic accent” emerged from the polling station with several pencils with worn erasers.

The man might have got away. But a local television station was conducting post-vote interviews, and this man, clearly wearing a bright red, ill-fitting wig, was asked for his opinion on the election. “I changed no vote,” he said, and quickly moved off camera.

FBI agents acknowledged they are now looking for evidence of penetrations at other polling locations.

Director Comey said, “All the best Hollywood celebrities and media personalities agree Russia hacked the 2016 election. It’s my job to prove these people right.”

*Editors’ note: April Fools.