Vance doesn't back away from false claims about migrants in Ohio even amid threats to the community

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance did not back away on Sunday from the false claims he and Donald Trump have been making that Haitians in an Ohio community are abducting and eating pets, even as the state's GOP governor and other officials insist there is no evidence of such behavior.

Vance, an Ohio senator, said constituents in Springfield are bringing concerns to him and that at least 10 were “verifiable.” In a series of news show interviews, he said he was amplifying the claims as a way to draw attention to Democrat Kamala Harris' immigration policies, which he said are lax, while adding, "Everybody who has dealt with a large influx of migration knows that sometimes there are cultural practices that seem very far out there to a lot of Americans.”

Local and state officials have said the claims are untrue, wrongly cast the city in a negative light and have brought unwanted and frightening negative attention since Trump mentioned it in the presidential debate last week, when he called out Springfield by name. For two days straight, bomb threats prompted the evacuation of schools and government buildings, with some emailed threats referencing an influx of migrants into the community.

But it wasn’t just Springfield officials who were refuting the claims. Gov. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said Sunday that “there’s a lot of garbage on the internet and, you know, this is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There’s no evidence of this at all.”