False Image Spread By Anti-Reform Activists, Right wing extremist “Tea Party” spreads lies about the 9/12 rally.

Far right extremists are using another lie to spread their big health sponsored message of fear by trying to inflate the size of their march on Washington last weekend by distributing a photo of a packed National Mall. But the picture is years old.

Politifact asked the public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, Pete Piringer, ,if the rally was big enough to fill the space in the picture. He said no — and moreover, there’s no way that picture can be from 2009.

“It was an impressive crowd,” he said., but after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol the crowd “only filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street,” he said. But the photo showed the crowd reaching far beyond that to the Washington Monument, which is bordered by 15th and and 17th Streets.

But there’s a much bigger problem with the photograph which proves that it is indeed a fake and is much older than claimed. Where is the National Museum of the American Indian? A huge building that’s located on the corner of Fourth St and Independence Ave which opened over 5 years ago! (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) Apparently the organizers of these tea parties care about as much about the American Indian as they do in spreading the truth, because they missed this landmark when disturbing the fake picture. . So clearly the photo doesn’t show the “tea party” crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.

“I’ve seen bigger crowds at Montreal Expos games, but I still wouldn’t fake a photo just to justify your predictions of millions descending on Washington,” said one gleeful Democratic media strategist. “This is grade-A stupid and just plays into the argument that these were astroturf protests to begin with. They’ve always brought the noise, but the question that was supposed to be answered this weekend was, could they bring the numbers? In that respect this was an unmitigated disaster.”

Numerous conservative blogs and news agencies, including Fox News ran with this picture before removing it later in the day. Others say the circulation of the picture was a left-wing conspiracy to discredit the event. However, many of them are still claiming that at least a million people attended the march. Nate Silver estimates about 70,000 protesters showed up.

And this isn’t the first time the tea party organizers tried to lie about the size of the event. On Saturday organized Matt Kibbe announce on stage that ABC News had estimated a crowd of 1 to 1.5 million were in attendance. ABC news never reported anything of the sort.