Old photo misrepresented as Giuliani car crash
- Published on September 2, 2025 at 22:24
- 3 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"100% pray for Rudy!" says an August 31, 2025 post on X from Alex Jones, founder of the conspiratorial website InfoWars.
Similar posts shared the same photo -- showing two cars destroyed from a collision -- in multiple languages across X and other platforms, such as Facebook. Some posts suggested Giuliani was targeted in a hit-job, while others speculated that he had been driving intoxicated.
The claims and image spread after the New Hampshire State Police and Michael Ragusa, Giuliani's head of security, said in a pair of statements that the former New York City mayor had been injured in a car crash August 30 (archived here and here).
But the photo is old and unrelated.
A reverse image search traced the picture to an August 2, 2024 article from NBC 7, a local news outlet in San Diego, California (archived here). The report detailed a head-on crash between two cars. The six people involved were hospitalized, some with serious injuries, but all survived.
Giuliani's accident took place over a year later and on the opposite side of the United States.
According to the New Hampshire State Police, the Trump acolyte had been a passenger in a car that was flagged down by a woman on the side of the road who reported that she had been involved in a domestic violence incident.
After state troopers arrived at the scene, Giuliani left with his driver, and their car was struck from behind minutes later on the opposite side of the highway. Troopers at the initial scene responded to the incident and rendered aid.
Ragusa said Giuliani suffered a fractured thoracic vertebrae, multiple lacerations and contusions, and injuries to his arm and leg.
The police said the crash was believed to be unrelated to the original domestic violence incident. Ragusa added on X that it was "not a targeted attack," calling such claims "unfounded conspiracy theories" (archived here).
On September 1, Trump announced that he would award Giuliani -- a key backer of the president's legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden -- with the presidential medal of freedom (archived here).
AFP has debunked other misinformation about US politics here.
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