No, this photo and video do not show the gunman who tried to assassinate Trump
A large number of social media users have been circulating a photo of a man in black, claiming he is the gunman who targeted Donald Trump during a campaign rally on July 13 and an activist with Antifa, a left-wing anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement. Other social media users have been sharing a different video which shows an entirely different man they claim to be the gunman. In the video, the man expresses his hatred for Trump and Republicans. It turns out, however, that the video is a hoax, and the person in the photo has no link with the assassination attempt.
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If you only have a minute…
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Some social media users have been claiming that the gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump during a campaign rally on July 13 is an anti-fascist (Antifa) activist. They’ve been circulating a photo that they say shows this person since July 14.
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The man in the photo is actually an Italian sports journalist who has no link with the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
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Other social media users have been circulating a video also posted online on July 14 that they say shows the gunman. The man in the video expresses his hatred for Donald Trump and Republicans more widely.
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However, this video was a hoax posted by an American social media user who later deleted the video from his account.
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Multiple photos of the real gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, have now been made public.
The fact check, in detail:
- Was the gunman an Antifa activist?
Some social media users have been claiming that the man who tried to assassinate Donald Trump at a campaign rally on Saturday, July 13 in Pennsylvania (United States) was a radical far-left and anti-fascist Antifa activist. A photo that they say shows the gunman has garnered more than 334,000 views on X and racked up many more on Facebook.
A social media user – claiming to be quoting the police in Butler, the town where the shooting occurred – says the man in the picture is named Mark Violets. He’s wearing a hat and a black sweatshirt, which is similar to Antifa’s customary dress code of all black.
However, it turns out the man in the photo has nothing to do with the assassination attempt on the former president. We ran this image through a reverse image search (check out our handy guide to learn how to do one yourself) and we were able to identify the man in the image. His name is Marco Violi and he’s an Italian sports journalist. On his YouTube channel, there are videos where the journalist is wearing a black outfit that looks similar to what the man is wearing in the video shared on social media.
For his part, Marco Violi took to Instagram on July 14 and published a statement in Italian. In it, he said he lives in Rome and strongly denied having a role in the assassination attempt.
Violi said that the Mark Violets story and the use of his photo were carried out by two different accounts, LogikSEO and @moussolinho, who had been harassing him. Italian news site Open.online discovered the original post by @moussolinho, which the author later deleted. It was, however, preserved in screengrabs where you can read the text that started the rumour. Violi said he would be filing a complaint against the people who had created and spread this fake news item.
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Did the gunman really talk about his motives and hatred for Donald Trump in a video?
The threats are terrifying. In a video that has garnered more than four million views since it was first posted on X on July 14, a man who claims to be the person who would attempt to assassinate Donald Trump, Thomas Matthew Crooks, explains his reasons.
"I hate Republicans. I hate Trump. And guess what? You got the wrong guy,” the man says with a smile. The video has been shared with a photo of what appears to be the same man.
It turns out, however, that both the video and photo are hoaxes. We carried out a reverse image search and found the account that first posted them – an X user using the handle @jewgazing. The morning of July 14, the account @jewgazing (which has since been renamed @Poopy_Tool_Fan) posted the photo, claiming that the man pictured was the gunman.
Then, @jewgazing posted the video that has been circulating online featuring the young man said to be Thomas Matthew Crooks, expressing his hatred for Trump and the Republicans in general. The video is no longer available on @jewgazing’s account but social media users took screengrabs of the post.
Both the video and photo are hoaxes. First, the images only appeared online two hours after the assassination attempt – and after the gunman was killed.
And, on July 14, @jewgazing seemed to show some regret for what he posted. In a post in English, which has since been deleted, he admitted that he had carried out a hoax.
“I made a joke but it’s serious now im fucked, i shouldn’t have posted that video FUCK,” he wrote on X.
Finally, the FBI identified the gunman a few hours after the assassination attempt. The photo featured in media reports shows someone who looks completely different from the man who appears in the fake photo and video shared online.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was killed when the Secret Service returned his gunfire. He was from a suburb near Pittsburgh. He had registered as a Republican for the upcoming election on November 5. He also had apparently made a donation to a political action committee that raised money for Democrats. He had no criminal record.
