No evidence Usha Vance attended conference with media gala shooting suspect
- Published on April 28, 2026 at 22:34
- 2 min read
- By Sahas WIJEWARDENE, Marisha GOLDHAMER, AFP USA
Social media is awash with unsupported claims the Trump administration "staged" the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, including many people attempting to connect the alleged shooter, Cole Tomas Allen, to Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance. But there is no evidence the second lady is the woman who appears in a 2017 news report about a conference where Allen pitched an invention.
"Video of Usha Vance and shooter Cole Allen together in 2017 resurfaces" an April 26, 2026 X post claims.
It includes a news report from the Los Angeles area ABC affiliate station showing Allen presenting a wheelchair braking invention at an "Aging into the Future" conference (archived here).
B-roll in the clip, which the station first posted March 14, 2017, included footage of a woman claimed to be Vance (archived here). The presenter, however, is not identified in the story.
Similar posts appeared on Facebook, TikTok, Threads and Bluesky, adding to a torrent of unfounded theories asserting that the Trump administration "staged" the attack that disrupted the gala.
Allen, 31, was arraigned on April 27, 2026 on charges of trying to assassinate the president and two firearms crimes. He faces a sentence of up to life in prison if convicted of attempting to kill Trump.
Despite a chaotic encounter near a security checkpoint, Allen never got close to Trump or the other guests attending the large dinner event.
Authorities released an email Allen sent to his family describing his plan to harm Trump administration officials (archived here).
AFP found no evidence he is connected to Vance via a 2017 conference held in California.
The communications office for the second lady did not respond to AFP, but told fact-checking organization Lead Stories that it "can confirm that it was not her" in the clip circulating online.
Vance's first child, Ewan, was born in June 2017, so she would have been pregnant at the time of the conference, which is inconsistent with the appearance of the woman in the video.
Additionally, the woman speaks in front of a sign with a logo for "SmallCircles," an organization the second lady has never worked for according to her LinkedIn profile (archived here).
In 2017, Vance was serving as a law clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in the District of Columbia.
Fact-checking organization Snopes reported that the woman is likely Arati Desai Wagabaza, who lists herself as the founder and CEO of SmallCircles from 2015-2018 on her LinkedIn profile and is seen in an archived version of the company's website.
AFP reached out to Wagabaza, but no response was forthcoming.
St. Barnabas Senior Services, a non-profit group that organized the conference, did not comment on the claims about Vance, but its director of communications Isaac Galindo confirmed to AFP that Allen attended the 2017 event.
"At that time, he participated as a student in a CalTech led design challenge," he said on April 27, 2026. "His involvement was limited to that single presentation."
Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation in the United States here.
Copyright © AFP 2017-2026. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
