PolitiFact’s coverage of the Donald Trump assassination attempt

Shortly after a gunman opened fire on former President Donald Trump’s July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, misinformation about the assassination attempt spread rapidly online. The shooting also became central to Trump and other Republicans’ messages at the 2024 Republican National Convention.

Trump was struck in the upper part of his right ear before Secret Service agents escorted him off stage. He was then taken to a local hospital for treatment. One person in the audience was killed and two others were injured. The Secret Service said its snipers killed the gunman.

PolitiFact has fact-checked numerous claims about the assassination attempt, the shooter, Trump’s injuries and the Secret Service’s role that day. See a post or claim you want us to fact-check? Send it to [email protected].

One of the earliest claims to emerge after the shooting was that it was staged — some claimed Trump faked the incident, while others said the Secret Service staged the attack. Both claims are baseless, and we rated them Pants on Fire.

Thousands of rally attendees, including news photographers and reporters, witnessed the event, and the FBI is investigating it as an assassination attempt.

Images also claimed to show FBI assistant director Janeen DiGuiseppi in the crowd at the rally. But she was not in attendance, according to the FBI.

Trump opened his acceptance speech on the RNC’s final night by recounting the July 13 assassination attempt he survived at his rally five days earlier. Read his remarks in full context here.

Trump also credited his survival of the assassination attempt to a graphic about immigration. Here’s what the graphic was about.

Numerous false claims about the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, have circulated online in the days since the assassination attempt.

• The shooter was falsely identified multiple times as Hank Pecker, Mark Violets and Maxwell Yearick. The FBI named only Crooks as the shooter.

• Photos of a long-haired blond man are not of the shooter, Crooks. The unnamed man in the photos falsely claimed responsibility for the attempted assassination of Trump.

• The shooter was not transgender, as one photo claimed to show.

• Crooks was not the person in this photo wearing a Jewish head covering, known as a kippah or yarmulke.

• A video of a man yelling "slash Republican throats" was taken in 2020 on Arizona State University’s campus. The man in the video is not Crooks.

• An Instagram account using Crooks’ name referenced Jeffrey Epstein, but Meta said it removed the account because it was fake.

• Crooks was a registered Republican, not a registered Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Crooks would have been too young to vote in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

• There is no evidence Crooks was arrested more than once. Records show that Crooks did not have a public criminal history, and the FBI said he was not on its radar before the shooting.

Several claims about Trump, his family and his injuries have gone viral since the shooting.

• A photo doesn’t show a bullet hole in Trump’s chest. The apparent hole in the authentic image is a crease in a Secret Service agent’s jacket. Neither Trump, FBI investigators nor any major news outlets have mentioned a bullet hitting Trump’s chest.

• Trump’s right ear did not "grow back" after it was wounded in the shooting. A photo claiming to show this is from 2022; Trump has worn a bandage on his ear since July 13.

• Trump didn’t say he lost his "whole ear" in the shooting.

• Photos don’t show Trump golfing the day after he was injured at the rally. These photos predate the shooting.

• Trump’s youngest son, Barron, didn’t attend the July 13 rally, as one photo claims to show. The image was taken at a different rally, four days before the shooting.

Although the Secret Service has been under scrutiny since the assassination attempt, some posts made false claims about agents’ actions.

• Trump rally shooting put scrutiny on Secret Service women, diversity efforts. Here are the facts.

• A photo was altered to make it appear as though Secret Service agents were smiling as they escorted Trump offstage after the assassination attempt. In the original photo, the agents weren’t smiling.

• An anonymous 4chan user claimed he was a Secret Service agent named Jonathan Willis who had been ordered not to shoot the gunman who opened fire on Trump. But a Secret Service spokesperson said this was false and that the Secret Service doesn’t employ anyone by that name.

• A Secret Service sniper wasn’t wearing a red string bracelet tied to Kabbalah Judaism. A zoomed-in photo of the sniper shows he was wearing a black band with red letters and a black string with red and black beads.

• Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s death was not linked to the Trump rally or the Secret Service’s oversight. The Texas Democrat died July 19 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in June.