Authenticity of Michigan church shooter's image questioned on social media

Published on October 1, 2025 at 22:52
2 min read
By AFP USA

An image posted to Facebook in 2019 shows the man accused of attacking a Mormon church in the US state of Michigan wearing a shirt supporting Donald Trump for reelection. A low quality, cropped version of the image was shared on X by a Democratic lawmaker, leading to accusations it had been altered to tie Thomas Jacob Sanford to the president, but there is no indication the original photo is inauthentic.

"Eric Swalwell gets caught photoshopping Michigan Church shooter's shirt to make him appear MAGA," a September 29, 2025 post on Instagram claims.

It shares an apparent family photo of Sanford where he appears to be wearing a plain camouflage shirt and contrasts that with a screenshot of a September 29 post on X from Swalwell (archived here), a Democrat from California, in which Sanford wears a shirt that says: "Re-elect Trump 2020."

Screenshot of a post on Instagram taken September 30, 2025, cropped by AFP to omit the wife and child of Thomas Jacob Sanford

Screenshot of a post taken on September 30, 2025 from Representative Eric Swalwell's X page

Similar posts quickly spread on Facebook, Threads and X, while the Daily Caller published a now-retracted article claiming Swalwell had "photoshopped" the image.

Sanford was killed by police after he rammed a Mormon church in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan with his vehicle before opening fire with an assault rifle and then setting the building ablaze. Officials said four churchgoers were also killed and eight others wounded.

The FBI says it is investigating the crime as an "act of targeted violence," but offered few other details about the suspect's politics or motive.

Local city council candidate Kris Johns told the Detroit Free Press he spoke with Sanford while canvassing for votes and had discussed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He said the conversation was not overtly political, but Sanford expressed unfavorable views of Mormonism.

Michigan voters do not register by party affiliation (archived here). Mark Grebner, a Democratic consultant who collects voter and petition data, told the non-profit news organization Bridge Michigan that records reveal only that Sanford voted in every November election since 2016.

Despite a lack of clear evidence of Sanford's political affiliation, the image of him wearing a shirt backing Trump for reelection does appear to be authentic.

A reverse image search of the photo posted by Swalwell, leads to higher quality version of the same image posted on September 13, 2019 to a Facebook page titled "Brantlee's journey" (archived here).

Neighbors have mentioned Sanford's son Brantlee to local reporters. The Facebook page links to a GoFundMe fundraiser that is no longer available. The page was saved in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine on September 28 and it shows that page was established in 2015 to help the family cover medical bills due to their son's rare congenital disease.

There is no indication that the Facebook post has been edited or changed since 2019.

By contrast, searches for the image of Sanford in the plain shirt only surface posts after September 29, 2025.

Swalwell responded to the claims by reposting coverage from a local media outlet linking to the 2019 Facebook post (archived here).

He also posted on X that he threatened the Daily Caller with a lawsuit prior to it retracting the article accusing him of altering the photo (archived here).

AFP could not locate an exact match to the shirt worn in the photo, but further image searches lead to a similar design (archived here) with Trump sporting American flag sunglasses above the slogan: "Make Liberals Cry Again."

Read more of AFP's coverage of misinformation in the United States here.

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