Vance used a police report about a stolen cat to justify pet-eating rumors. ‘Miss Sassy’ was hiding in the basement

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance tried to prove his baseless claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets by pointing to a police reportfrom one resident in Springfield, Ohio, that alleged her cat may have been stolen by her Haitian neighbors.

Turns out the cat, Miss Sassy, had been hiding in the basement the whole time, and Anna Kilgore had apologized to her neighbors for the mix-up with the help of a translation app, she told The Wall Street Journal this week.

Vance and his running mate Donald Trump, along with GOP allies, have spent days repeating baseless rumors that Haitian immigrants were stealing Springfield’s dogs and cats and eating them, in an effort to further push their hardline agenda on immigration.

The claims have been repeatedly debunked by Springfield’s police department, city officials and Ohio’s Republican governor Mike DeWine. Local officials have also made it clear that Haitian immigrants who recently arrived in the city did so legally.

Trump even raised the conspiracy theory during last week’s presidential debate — and pushed back against a live fact-check by debate moderator, David Muir. “Well, I’ve seen people on television,” Trump replied. “People on television say, ‘My dog was taken and used for food,’ so maybe he said that and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager.”

The WSJ also reported on Wednesday that Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck had told a Vance staffer directly on September 9 that the pet-eating rumors were not true, when he called to verify.

“He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” Heck told the WSJ. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were