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Claim: A viral social media post features what appears to be a BBC News quote card claiming that Todd Blanche, identified as the U.S. Attorney General, said that Ghana linked extradition to slave trade reparations.
Verdict: False! The quote is fabricated. There is no evidence that Todd Blanche ever made the statement, and the graphic is not an authentic BBC News quote card. DUBAWA found no corresponding BBC article or social media post carrying the alleged quote. A reverse image search also yielded no trace of the graphic on any BBC platform.
Full Text
A Facebook post by a lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the University of Ghana, Joshua Jebuntie Zaato (archived here), has attracted hundreds of interactions after sharing what appears to be a BBC News quote card featuring Todd Blanche.
The graphic alleges that Blanche accused Ghana’s previous government of refusing to extradite people involved in romance scams unless the United States apologised and compensated Africa for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
The claim surfaced amid heightened public discussion about Ghana’s cooperation with U.S. authorities on cybercrime investigations and renewed calls by African leaders for reparations over the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Because the image bears the BBC News logo and attributes the statement to a senior U.S. official, DUBAWA investigated whether the quote and graphic are authentic.
Verification
Todd Blanche is an American lawyer who served as President Donald Trump’s defence attorney before being nominated to a senior leadership position at the U.S. Department of Justice. In July 2026, he appeared before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee as part of his confirmation process.
However, DUBAWA found no official record of Blanche making any statement linking Ghana’s extradition cooperation to demands for slavery reparations.
Searches of:
- U.S. Department of Justice statements;
- Senate Judiciary Committee proceedings;
- official hearing transcripts; and
- credible international news reports
Produced no evidence that the alleged quote exists.
Instead, Blanche’s Senate testimony focused primarily on questions surrounding his legal representation of President Donald Trump, ethics, the Department of Justice, and other domestic legal matters—not Ghana, romance scams, or reparations.
The quote does not appear anywhere.
DUBAWA searched for the exact wording of the alleged quote across Google and major news databases.
The search returned no credible results showing Todd Blanche making the statement.
If a senior U.S. justice official had made such an extraordinary remark, it would almost certainly have been reported by multiple reputable media organisations. No such reports exist.
The viral image also falsely uses BBC News branding.
Most importantly, DUBAWA conducted a Google reverse image search of the viral quote card and found no evidence that the BBC had ever published the graphic.
Additional searches on the BBC News website and on its official social media channels similarly produced no matching articles, videos, or quote cards.
The fabricated quote appears to exploit two unrelated issues.
First, Ghana has, in recent years, been among African countries advocating for international recognition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and supporting discussions on reparatory justice.
Second, Ghana has continued to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement agencies on investigations into alleged romance fraud and cybercrime suspects. In one recent case, the U.S. Department of Justice publicly thanked Ghanaian authorities for assisting in the extradition of a Ghanaian suspect accused of participating in a multi-million-dollar romance fraud scheme.
The official U.S. statement contains no suggestion that Ghana conditioned extradition cooperation on apologies or compensation for slavery.
The viral graphic, therefore, combines real geopolitical issues into a fabricated quote to create a politically charged narrative.
Meanwhile, the graphic’s design is inconsistent with how BBC News formats its news/quote cards. Importantly, BBC News always credits the source of the photo on its news cards. As shown in the three samples below, the photo source is indicated in the top right corner of the card. The viral image does not have any such credit indicated.
See links to referenced images: 1, 2, and 3.
Conclusion
The claim is false. Todd Blanche never made the statement attributed to him, and there is no official record supporting the claim.
The image circulating on social media is not an authentic BBC News quote card. DUBAWA’s reverse image search found no evidence that the BBC ever published the graphic. In contrast, searches of BBC platforms, U.S. Department of Justice records, Senate proceedings, and reputable news archives found no trace of the alleged quote.
