On this day in conspiracies

Presidential aide Alexander Butterfield tells the Ervin Committee, under questioning, that Nixon secretly recorded nearly all his Oval Office conversations, turning the case from testimony into evidence.

During the televised Iran-Contra hearings, Representative Jack Brooks tries to ask Oliver North about a reported plan to suspend the Constitution in an emergency. Committee chair Daniel Inouye rules the area classified and cuts the question off. The on-camera refusal to answer becomes, for many, the founding proof that something is being hidden.

El Salvador's Supreme Court strikes down the 1993 amnesty law as unconstitutional. The Romero case is formally reopened in 2017, but with D'Aubuisson long dead and most other suspects dead or vanished, no one has been brought to trial.

The court sentences the five. Dadayev, named as the gunman, receives 20 years; the others receive terms ranging from 11 to 19 years. Nemtsov's family and lawyers say the verdict stops at the executors and leaves the organizers and the motive unaddressed.

Major fact-checking outlets and wire services publish debunks. Reporters check the names said to belong to missing children and find the “matches” are coincidences involving common first names; in the cases people cited, the named individuals were located and confirmed safe, and were not trafficking victims.

After an earlier trial ended without a verdict on the central counts, a jury convicts Schulte of espionage and computer-hacking charges tied to the leak. He is separately convicted in 2023 on child sexual abuse material charges.

At roughly 6:11 p.m., a gunman on the roof of a building outside the rally's secured perimeter fires several rounds toward the stage. Former President Trump, struck in the upper right ear, drops behind the lectern; Secret Service agents cover him and he is rushed away with blood visible on his face. A Secret Service counter-sniper kills the gunman seconds after he opens fire.

NPR reports that the cloud-seeding claim is not only untrue but actively harmful, quoting a recently retired National Weather Service meteorologist who says there is zero science correlating the seeding with the flood, and noting that the false narrative distracts from real questions about warnings and preparedness.

The doubts reach fellow senators. Sen. Ron Johnson says in an interview that he had heard from an unnamed source that the released image was an older photo, while adding that he did not actually know and had not spoken with McConnell himself. Other online figures demand video proof rather than a still image. None of the claims that the photo is old or fabricated is backed by verifiable evidence, and McConnell's office maintains the account of a fall and pneumonia.

News organizations and fact-checkers report that the preliminary findings indicate a natural cause and no evidence of foul play, and that the assassination and poisoning claims are baseless. The theory continues to circulate regardless.

Netflix promotes its first Home Run Derby, having taken over the broadcast as part of its expanding live-sports slate. Trade coverage of the production previews a redesigned, graphics-heavy presentation of the event.