Hours after a gunman attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally on Saturday, videos of a person purporting to be the suspect began spreading rapidly across TikTok, X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit and Telegram. The videos have been shared by both verified and unverified social media accounts, as well as handles purporting to belong to the gunman, who has been identified by the FBI as Thomas Matthew Crooks. Crooks was shot and killed by the Secret Service at the rally.
“My name is Thomas Matthew Crooks,” said a viral clip circulating Sunday that had been liked, watched or shared thousands of times on posts across the platforms. “I hate Republicans, I hate Trump, and guess what? You got the wrong guy.” (Some versions of the video then cut to footage of President Joe Biden.) Crooks was a registered Republican, though records show he donated $15 to a liberal voters group in 2021.
BBC Verify, which uses open source intelligence and investigative techniques to track mis- and disinformation online, reported that the man in the widely-viewed videos is not the shooter. UC Berkeley professor and deepfake expert Hany Farid reviewed the clips and told Forbes they do not appear to have been AI-generated.
The videos, which have also landed on 4chan and 8chan, claim to show the 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania describing his motives, which are not yet known to the public (Biden said Sunday afternoon there is still “no information” about that). They also sow confusion over whether the man whose likeness has been used is, in fact, the actual suspect.
Photos that appear to be of the same man circulated on X on Saturday and were boosted by prominent accounts, including former CNN host Don Lemon and far-right activist Laura Loomer. Forbes found at least one blue-check account from a verified news organization with 124,000 followers on TikTok sharing the video, and nearly a dozen small but growing TikTok and Instagram accounts using that man’s name and face early Sunday. Some of the videos and accounts have since been taken down, but as fast as they are being removed, new ones showing the same person making the same claims are sprouting up.
Meanwhile, on Gab, a post has began circulating that was purportedly written by a Secret Service agent who was ordered not to fire on Crooks. Yet there is no evidence suggesting the post was actually written by a Secret Service agent.
The firestorm of false or misleading information that has followed the assassination attempt is further inflaming one of the most unprecedented moments in modern American politics. Conspiracy theories have spread rapidly across social media, blaming the so-called deep state for the attack.
With millions of people turning to the likes of TikTok and Twitter (now X) for breaking news and political commentary, social media platforms can very quickly propagate unverified claims and insert outright falsehoods into public discourse. Forbes has also discovered the same video on the internet 2.0 blogging platform LiveJournal and a Catholic social platform called Gloria.TV.
TikTok, X, YouTube, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Reddit, LiveJournal and Gloria.TV did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Telegram could not immediately be reached.
On TikTok, users have also been using so-called algospeak—code words that help to avoid detection by TikTok’s algorithm—to talk about the alleged gunman and the shooting on Saturday. Many are using the words “pew pew” to reference guns or gunshots; “unalive” or “d3ath” to describe those who were killed; and “sh00ter” or “sh0t” to discuss the suspect.
