No, an FEC filing doesn’t mean Joe Biden has announced he’s running again

Social media briefly erupted on Aug. 30 when it seemed that an obscure filing with the Federal Election Commission revealed some big news — that President Joe Biden was announcing his bid for a second term.

The flurry of interest originated with a tweet by Steve Herman, chief national correspondent with Voice of America, that linked the disclosure filing to a major decision by Biden.

Others on social media proceeded to share the news on Facebook and Instagram. Conservatives found humor in the notion that Biden would embark upon another run in 2024 when his disapproval ratings in FiveThirtyEight.com’s polling average are significantly outpacing his approval ratings. These posts, sometimes peppered with laughing emojis, attracted thousands of likes.

But all the noise was premature. After hearing from the Democratic National Committee that his interpretation of the document was inaccurate, Herman deleted the tweet, saying he "misinterpreted" the filing. Later, Fox News published an article explaining how the confusion emerged.

When PolitiFact reached out to the Democratic National Committee, they told us the same thing they had advised Herman. They said the filing was necessary to update the name of the treasurer of Biden’s campaign committee. The outgoing treasurer was taking a government job, they said.

We located the documents in question and found that this marked the second time Biden campaign officials have filed an update to what is known as form F1A, both times changing the name of the treasurer.

The form, which is a one-page list of contact names and numbers, was filed Aug. 30, identifying the treasurer as Keana Spencer. 

The previous F1A, filed May 22, 2021, listed the treasurer as Andrea Wise. And the F1A filed before that, on Jan. 21, 2021 — one day after Biden was sworn in as president — named Iran Campana as treasurer.

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The notion that Biden would decline to run for a second term is not totally out of left field. If he were to run and win again, Biden would be 82 years old on Inauguration Day 2024, and 86 when his second term came to a close.

Some Democratic officials have expressed concern about Biden running for another term. Recent polls by Quinnipiac University and The New York Times and Siena College have found majorities of Democrats preferring that Biden not run again in 2024.

The White House has so far insisted that Biden plans to seek another term, even if he has yet to formally announce it.

"To be clear, as the president has said repeatedly, he plans to run in 2024," tweeted White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in June.

Either way, Biden has not officially announced a bid for a second term. The notion that Biden did so in an obscure federal disclosure filing is False.