False Claim About Fake Secret Service Agent Contributes to Rally Conspiracy Theories
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Quick Take
Posts from the anonymous online forum 4Chan have been spreading the false claim that Secret Service officials prevented an agent named “Jonathan Willis” from shooting former President Donald Trump’s attempted assassin. The Secret Service has no employee by that name, and the claim is “categorically false,” the agency said.
Full Story
Nobody by the name of Jonathan Willis is employed by the U.S. Secret Service, agency spokesman Nate Herring told us via email.
But in the chaotic hours following the shooting at former President Donald Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, an online post by an anonymous user who claimed to be “Jonathan Willis” began fueling nascent conspiracies about the shooting.
It said, “My name is Jonathan Willis, I’m the officer in the famous photo of the two snipers on the roof at Trump’s rally. 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.”
The post, which originated on 4Chan — the anonymous forum best known for incubating the QAnon conspiracy theory — went up about eight hours after the shooting, when concrete information about the incident was scarce.
About 20 minutes later, the same anonymous user posted this message: “I didn’t follow the orders though, as soon as the shooter opened on Trump I returned fire despite strict orders to not engage. I had eyes on the shooter for three minutes watching him fiddle with his rifle and adjust the scope, it was obvious he was a shooter yet I wasn’t allowed to engage. After I killed the shooter I was arrested, questioned by the FBI, and just released an hour ago. Already lost my job for not following orders, but I’m glad I took the shots anyway.”
Screenshots of those posts quickly migrated to other social media platforms. One such post that has garnered more than 11 million views on X, for example, shared the 4Chan post with the message, “Big if true.” The same X account shared a video from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and quoted Jones as saying of the Secret Service response to the shooting, “That is not a failure of security; that is a stand down.”
Similar posts have spread across other major social media platforms, too, including Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.
Commenters on those posts have said things such as, “I smell a government cover up that failed and is out in the open!!!” Another called for the director of the Secret Service to be “charged for Treason.”
But, as we said, the claims made on 4Chan were posted by an anonymous user, and the Secret Service doesn’t have any employees by the name of Jonathan Willis.
Herring, the Secret Service spokesman, told us, “This claim is categorically false.”
Secret Service snipers killed the shooter at the scene, and the FBI later identified him as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Three attendees were also shot — Corey Comperatore, 50, died, and David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 74, were injured.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Sources
Herring, Nate. Spokesman, U.S. Secret Service. Email response to FactCheck.org. 15 Jul 2024.
Dewey, Caitlin. “Absolutely everything you need to know to understand 4chan, the Internet’s own bogeyman.” Washington Post. 25 Sep 2014.
Wendling, Mike. “QAnon: What is it and where did it come from?” BBC. 6 Jan 2021.
Rigdon, Renée, et al. “Minute-by-minute: Visual timeline of the Trump assassination attempt.” CNN. 15 Jul 2024.
