Do a photo and video circulating online show Thomas Matthew Crooks, identified by the FBI as the man who shot at Donald Trump on July 13, 2024? No, that's not true: the photo and video appear to have originated on the X account of a user with the handle 'jewgazing'. He apparently posted the photo and video after others made him aware he resembled the person in a different picture that had been released allegedly showing the shooter.
The original post by @jewgazing (archived here) looked like this:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Sun Jul 14 12:57:28 2024 UTC)
The account has since gone private and has replaced it's header image with another photo showing the same person:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Sun Jul 14 13:01:23 2024 UTC)
Later the same man appears to have posted (archived here) a short video snipped in which he claimed to be Crooks, which we've archived here:
Even though the X account is now private, Lead Stories was able to find a mirrored copy of it on a site running Nitter, an alternative front-end to Twitter/X that makes it possible to read Twitter/X without ads or tracking.
The timeline of events can be seen here (archived here).
It appears a user named 'bonk' with X handle '@UNKN0WNPLEAZURZ' reacted (archived here) to a tweet (archived here) by user 'Trump History' (with handle '@Trump_History45') with a photo of the alleged shooter by saying:
bro thats a photo of @jewgazing wtf
(Source: X screenshot taken on Sun Jul 14 13:34:18 2024 UTC)
This apparently led to user @jewgazing responding: "i gotta delete all my selfies asap....."
(Source: Nitter screenshot taken on Sun Jul 14 13:30:48 2024 UTC)
And then posting the image in question:
(Source: Nitter screenshot taken on Sun Jul 14 13:32:28 2024 UTC)
He can also be seen posting about "planning something hilarious" with a screenshot of a webshop selling the same t-shirt the perpetrator was allegedly wearing:
(Source: Nitter screenshot taken on Sun Jul 14 13:34:12 2024 UTC)
In later tweets (archived here) before the account went private the user can be seen reposting and reacting to several tweets from people who took his post seriously.
(Source: Nitter screenshot taken on Sun Jul 14 13:52:26 2024 UTC)
Additionally an X user named @slatsizm (archived here) claimed to have taken a screenshot of a post on the @jewgazing account showing the picture of the same man in a movie theatre (the same picture that now appears in the header of the @jewgazing account):
(Source: X screenshot taken on Sun Jul 14 14:01:26 2024 UTC)
