BBC News Reality Check

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After Donald Trump’s indictment, his son Eric Trump tweeted: “This is what you get for giving a crooked politician $1m. Alvin Bragg is a Soros puppet.”

There have been similar posts trying to discredit Bragg - the district attorney leading the case against the former president - claiming he's somehow under the control of the billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

There is a financial link between Bragg and Soros but it is more tenuous than the claim makes out.

In May 2021, Soros donated $1m to Color of Change, a criminal justice group, according to the campaign finance website Open Secrets.

Six days earlier, the group had endorsed Bragg in the election for New York district attorney - pledging to spend $1m on campaigning for him.

But it spent $4.6m on other political candidates that year too, according to Open Secrets.

And Soros had donated to Colour of Change before, giving $450,000 in 2016-18. His Democracy PAC fundraising group gave $2m in 2020, according to official figures.

A spokesman for Soros, told the New York Times that neither Soros nor his fundraising group had contributed directly to Bragg’s campaign, and the two “have never met in person or spoken by telephone, email, Zoom, etc".

In addition to taking on PMQs today, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab appeared on a range of news programmes this morning.

Talking about satisfaction with the NHS, he said: “The backlogs, waiting times, waiting lists are down by around two thirds since their peak of the pandemic.”

We asked the Department of Health what this was based on and they said he was referring to figures for the number of people waiting more than 18 months for NHS care in England. That specific figure has actually fallen by more than 80% since their high-point in September 2021.

But the overall figures for waiting times do not show a fall.

The latest NHS England figures show that 7.2 million people had been referred for treatment but not yet started it in January 2023, which is well up from 5.9 million in September 2021 and the highest since records began in 2007.

• Find out more about waiting times in your area

Police numbers also came up at PMQs, with Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner saying to Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab: "After 13 years of his party in government there are now 6,000 fewer neighbourhood police officers on Britain's streets."

The latest figures show that at the end of September 2022 there were 142,145 full-time equivalent police officers in England and Wales, which is down 1,589 compared with 143,734 in March 2010.

Those statistics do not include a category for neighbourhood police officers.

It does include PCSOs (police community support officers) who share some but not all of the powers of police officers.

There were 8,263 PCSOs at the end of September 2022, which is down more than 8,000 in the last 13 years.

We have asked Labour if that was what she was talking about.

The issue of convictions for rape was one topic that came up as Deputy PM Dominic Raab and deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner sparred at Prime Minister's Questions. We heard a lot of numbers - but were they correct?Responding to questions about the numbers of people convicted for rape, Dominic Raab said: "The conviction rate has gone up - it's now at 69%."

The conviction rate is the proportion of people prosecuted who end up being convicted.

It turns out that 69% was the figure for April to June 2022 - it fell a bit in the months after that but was still over 60%.

But Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner responded: "69% of 1.6% - is that really something to boast about?"

The 1.6% is the proportion of rapes recorded by police that led to someone being charged or ordered to appear in court in England and Wales in the year to September 2022.

Richard Hughes, who we heard from at the start of the show, is chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which comes up with the independent forecasts that appear in the Budget.

He told Laura Kuenssberg that the OBR’s “forecasting record turns out to be slightly better than the forecasting record of the Treasury when it was doing the forecasts, back before 2010”.

We took a look at its record at the time of the Autumn Statement, and it turned out that its forecasts for economic growth were slightly better than the average forecast in the City.

You can read more about it here.

One of the key things the committee investigating Boris Johnson is looking at is how long it took him to correct some of his statements to Parliament, which he acknowledges were misleading.

This is known as "correcting the record".

Boris Johnson says he corrected the record at "the earliest opportunity at which I could make the necessary correction", which, he says, was after the publication of Sue Gray's report into Downing Street gatherings on 25 May 2022.

That was almost six months after his statements about Covid rules and guidance being followed "at all times" had been made.

On 25 May, he said: “I am happy to set on the record now that when I came to this House and said in all sincerity that the rules and guidance had been followed at all times, it was what I believed to be true.”

But he did not say that his earlier statement had been untrue.

The committee has questioned why he did not take the opportunity to set out what he knew about gatherings he had attended when asked about them in the Commons before Sue Gray's report was published.

Boris Johnson was earlier asked about a gathering in the Downing Street press office on 18 December 2020 and the fact that he told the House of Commons that all guidance was followed in No 10.

He said he didn't attend the event and says he remembers it was an evening where they were dealing with the emergence of the Delta variant of Covid and fears over a no-deal Brexit.

Johnson says he has no memory of seeing any kind of "party or illicit gathering" taking place, adding he first learned of it more than a year later from an adviser.

The event featured alcohol, a Secret Santa gift exchange, and an awards ceremony, with people working elsewhere in the building complaining about the noise it generated.

A cleaner noted the following morning that red wine had been spilled on one wall and on a number of boxes of photocopier paper.

Not only was there nothing in the guidance suggesting such an event would be acceptable, the guidance for England at the time said specifically: "You must not have a work Christmas lunch or party, where that is a primarily social activity and is not otherwise permitted by the rules in your tier".

Boris Johnson has defended the leaving do on 13 November 2020 which he was pictured at, saying: "The guidance specifically allows for workplace freedoms to decide how to implement it."

But what the guidance for England said was that social distancing of two metres or one metre with mitigation should be followed. If that wasn't possible the activity should have been redesigned or potentially stopped.

There was nothing in the guidance that permitted work gatherings such as leaving drinks.

Remember that Downing Street insiders told the BBC that at the event being discussed: "there were about 30 people, if not more, in a room. Everyone was stood shoulder to shoulder, some people on each other's laps".

We don't know whether Boris Johnson was there at that time - he says he didn't stay longer than 25 minutes.

One of the key things the committee investigating Boris Johnson is looking at is how long it took him to correct some of his statements to Parliament.

This is known as "correcting the record". Each year around 100 written corrections are made by ministers who have inadvertently misled Parliament.

Boris Johnson says he corrected the record at "the earliest opportunity at which I could make the necessary correction", which, he says, was after the publication of Sue Gray's report into Downing Street gatherings on 25 May 2022.

That was almost six months after his statements about Covid rules and guidance being followed "at all times" had been made.

The committee said in its interim report that it wanted to know why "instead of correcting the record at the earliest opportunity, he declined to answer questions that were within his direct knowledge".

It said that it should have been obvious to Johnson that not all the guidance was being followed at events that he attended. Johnson disputes this.

You can read more about it here.

Boris Johnson says in his dossier: "The evidence before the committee demonstrates that those working at No 10 at the time shared my honest belief that the rules and guidance were being followed."

But the Privileges Committee - which is investigating him - has published evidence that contradicts this.

Its interim report earlier this month included a series of WhatsApp messages between the then director of communications and a No 10 official on 25 January 2022.

In response to a suggestion that they should describe an event as "reasonably necessary for work purposes", the director of communications says: "I’m struggling to come up with a way this one is in the rules in my head", and "not sure that one works does it. Also blows another great gaping hole in the PM’s account doesn’t it?"

There was another message from the director of communications in relation to the gathering of 19 June 2020 saying "Haven’t heard any explanation of how it’s in the rules".

In his dossier, Johnson says these are "internal messages between advisers. There is no suggestion at all that these concerns were passed on to me".

You can read more about it here.

An earlier version of this post stated the messages were sent in 2021, they were sent in 2022.

A key part of Boris Johnson’s defence is that leaving events were necessary for work purposes.

In his dossier, he says: "My view has always been that thanking and encouraging staff, and maintaining morale at No 10, was absolutely essential for work purposes."

While the guidance for England varied, at the time of one of the key gatherings it was that "only absolutely necessary participants should physically attend meetings" and they should maintain social distancing.

There was nothing in the guidance from the time that implied that leaving drinks or other forms of socialising at work were allowed.

We also learn from the committee's interim report that there was tailored guidance issued to Downing Street staff laying out the rules and guidance for their workplace, including on social distancing.

That guidance has not yet been made public.

You can read more about it here.