Does a blog post prove the late Thomas Matthew Crooks, shot dead while trying to assassinate Donald Trump, made payments to Ryan Wesley Routh, charged in a separate apparent assassination attempt on Trump? No, that's not true: The blog was edited to add the name Ryan Wesley Routh on September 17, 2024 -- one day after Routh was arrested. Also, Lead Stories found no credible information to confirm payments were made between Crooks and Routh.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on September 16, 2024. It said:
🇺🇸What the An article emerges alleging that Thomas Crooks made payments to Ryan Routh?! Shooter #1 paying shooter #2 ????
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Sep 17 18:08:43 2024 UTC)
The blog post (archived here) the claim is based on shows that it was posted on August 30, 2024. The name Ryan Wesley Routh was absent from the original version of the blog post saved to the internet archive Wayback Machine.
Routh was arrested on September 16, 2024, for allegedly planning to assassinate former President Trump at the Trump International Golf Course in Florida.
The blog post was edited on September 17, 2024, to add Routh's name. Reliable media sources typically show a disclaimer when an article is modified for transparency and credibility purposes, but there is no such disclaimer on the blog post. The modification can be demonstrated through its source code on lawyersclubindia.com (below) as well as its saved history on the Wayback Machine: August 30, 2024, and September 17, 2024. You can see a direct list of additions and chages on this comparison page on the Wayback Machine.
The source code it was initially published on August 30, 2024, and modified on September 17, 2024, a day after Routh was arrested. Highlighted code lines in the screenshot below show the publishing and modification dates:
(Source: lawyersclubindia.com screenshot taken on Tue Sep 17 12:44:39 2024 UTC)
No credible reports of payments connecting Routh and Crooks could be found by Lead Stories. A search (archived here) through Google News did not bring up a single reliable source on the matter.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning Ryan Wesley Routh can be found here. Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims related to Thomas Matthew Crooks can be found here. Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning the two assassination attempts on Trump can be found here.
