{"id":277016,"date":"2026-06-24T19:38:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T19:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/277016\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T19:38:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T19:38:28","slug":"queens-candidate-arrested-over-deceptive-use-of-ai-on-campaign-trail-sources-queens-daily-eagle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/277016\/","title":{"rendered":"Queens candidate arrested over deceptive use of AI on campaign trail: sources \u2014 Queens Daily Eagle"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ryan Schwach<\/p>\n

Jonathan Rinaldi, a perennial candidate who repeatedly used artificial intelligence to create deceptive campaign materials during several failed bids for office, was arrested Wednesday morning in Queens, multiple sources told the Eagle.<\/p>\n

Law enforcement sources confirmed that Rinaldi \u2013 who lost the Democratic primary race for Assembly District 28 against incumbent Andrew Hevesi by around 76 percentage points Tuesday night \u2013 was cuffed on Wednesday and is due to be arraigned later in the day. <\/p>\n

A separate source familiar with the complaint said Rinaldi is expected to be charged with more than a dozen counts related to his use of AI on the campaign trail. <\/p>\n

The Queens district attorney\u2019s office declined to comment. <\/p>\n

During both his bid for the City Council last year and the State Assembly this year, Rinaldi used artificial intelligence to create misleading social media posts. The posts included fabricated endorsements, news articles, and videos of his opponents. <\/p>\n

Last year, the Eagle was the first to report<\/a> that Facebook and Instagram accounts belonging to Rinaldi\u2019s campaign posted made-up headlines boasting non-existent endorsements from former Governor Andrew Cuomo, Councilmember Bob Holden and State Assemblymember Andrew Hevesi in his race against Councilmember Lynn Schulman. <\/p>\n

Rinaldi used AI to mimic news articles so that they appeared to be written by real outlets, including the Eagle. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ryan Schwach Jonathan Rinaldi, a perennial candidate who repeatedly used artificial intelligence to create deceptive campaign materials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-277016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}