Fact-check: Was the Secret Service agent who saved Trump a former Russian Karate champ?
Top Russian news agencies and papers featured headlines on July 15 claiming a Russian woman saved former President Donald Trump during the July 13 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.
Scores of Russian media outlets reported that the female agent of the U.S. Secret Service, who appeared in the footage shielding Trump and escorting him to safety, was a Russian karate and martial arts athlete by the name of Irina S.
Born in the town of Skopin near the central city of Ryazan’, Irina trained with the famous Russian karate and martial arts coaches Olga Novikova and Yevgeny Zhirikhov, the reports said. In 2000, Irina’s family emigrated to the U.S. where she worked as a martial arts coach before enlisting with a private security firm providing bodyguard services to the U.S. government, Russian media reported.
Prominent Russian propagandist and political analyst Aleksey Chadayev posted on Telegram a picture of Trump supported by the female SS agent, saying “A funny part: this aunty in the center front of this historic photo is a Russian karatist from Ryazan who moved to America in the early 2000s.”
The business newspaper Vglyad, news site Lenta.ru, news aggregator Newsru.com, and others said:
“The woman who shielded Trump from the bullets turned out to be a Russian karateist.”
This is unsubstantiated.
The coaches, Olga Novikova and Yevgeny Zhirikhov, told the Russian news agencies they did not recognize their pupil in the footage and could not confirm whether the Secret Service agent was indeed Irina S.
Some news agencies and papers deleted their reports about the Russian origins of the Secret Service agent, and others corrected their initial reports, yet many kept them unchanged. As of the time of this publication, the Russian Internet search engine Yandex.ru yields hundreds of news reports and social media posts claiming a “Russian woman saved Trump.”
The U.S. Secret Service has not responded to Polygraph.info questions regarding the national origin of the female agent seen in the footage protecting Trump by the time of this writing.
Russia seized on Trump’s assassination attempt to attack and distort American democratic values, spreading conspiracy theories and baseless accusations.
