A Taipei city councilor has been charged for using a crudely forged document to attack the ruling party before the 2024 election — bad news for him, and an embarrassment for the opposition figures who passed the paper around.

• Hou Han-ting, a New Party councilor in Taipei, was indicted for election-law violations and using forged private documents.
• Before the 2024 presidential vote he held a press conference waving what he said were internal DPP papers showing the party used state power and the media to sway the election and the courts.
• The document was riddled with typos, simplified Chinese characters, and phrasing nobody in Taiwan uses — marks of a Chinese-made fake, and the DPP body it named does not exist.
• The indictment says the paper came from former lawmaker Chiu Yi, who flagged it might be fake; Hou asked ex-lawmaker Kuo Cheng-liang to check it but went public before any answer came back.
• York University's Shen Jung-chin mocked the whole chain of handling as one of the dumbest episodes of the month.

Outlook: The case now heads to court, and it hands the DPP a ready-made example of Chinese disinformation flowing through opposition hands.