No evidence Secret Service sniper posted 4chan thread

"My name is Jonathan Willis, I'm the officer in the famous photo of the two snipers on the roof at Trump's rally," says a 4chan post shared across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X and other platforms -- including in German and Spanish.

"I came here to inform the public that I had the assassin in my sights for at least 3 minutes, but the head of the secret service refused to give the order to take out the perp. 100% the top brass prevented me from killing the assassin before he took the shots at president Trump."

News outlets such as India's Hindustan Times and the Washington Examiner amplified the claims, feeding into baseless conspiracy theories that the attempted assassination of Trump was an "inside job."

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Screenshot from the Hindustan Times taken July 16, 2024

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Screenshot from Instagram taken July 16, 2024

The FBI has named Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania as the shooter who killed one attendee and critically injured two others at the rally in Butler (archived here). A Secret Service sniper team killed Crooks after he shot Trump in the ear.

Footage backs up accounts from witnesses that they had warned police and physically pointed at the shooter as he lay on a nearby roof preparing to open fire, according to a Washington Post investigation (archived here). The newspaper reported that shots targeting Trump rang out 86 seconds after the first audible attempts to warn the police.

Facing growing criticism over a massive security failure, the Secret Service has vowed to cooperate with an independent review ordered by President Joe Biden.

But spokesman Nate Herring told AFP on July 15 that the claims swirling online are "categorically false."

"There's nothing to it. There's no one by that name who works for the Secret Service," he said of the 4chan claim from the purported agent.

Adam Reed, director of the Pennsylvania State Police Communications Office (archived here), told AFP in a July 16 email that the department also does not have any employees named Jonathan Willis.

AFP found no other evidence of the supposed sniper. Other independent fact-checking organizations have also debunked the rumors.

AFP contacted the Butler City Police Department for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.

Fringe forum

4chan has for years been the source of disinformation about everything from mass shootings and LGBTQ rights to broad conspiracy movements such as Pizzagate and QAnon.

An anonymous user published the post criticizing the Secret Service's response to the Trump rally shooting on July 14. The user's unique ID indicates they have only shared four other threads, none of which predate the original.

A reverse image search shows the photo in the post was taken by Associated Press photographer Gene J Puskar (archived here). One sniper's vest says "Secret Service" on the back.

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said in a July 15 statement that agents "moved quickly during the incident, with our counter sniper team neutralizing the shooter and our agents implementing protective measures to ensure the safety of former president Donald Trump" (archived here).

In a July 14 statement (archived here), Chief of Communications Anthony Guglielmi refuted claims that the agency had rebuffed the Trump campaign's requests for more security.

"In fact, recently the US Secret Service added protective resources and capabilities to the former president's security detail," he said.

Michel-Jacques Gagné, a historian and conspiracy theory expert at Champlain College Saint-Lambert in Canada (archived here), told AFP it is not surprising that some Trump supporters have spread misinformation about the so-called "deep state" in the wake of Trump's near-assassination.

"For many Americans who feel more and more isolated from power ... the federal government appears less and less to reflect their traditional values," he said. "It is thus easy to imagine that the federal institutions are just puppets of the deep state where the real decisions are being made by powerful figures without popular approval."

AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about the attempted Trump assassination here.

Julie Pacorel contributed to this report.