Were explosive devices discovered at the site of a Donald Trump campaign event on September 18, 2024, on Long Island, New York? No, that's not true: Law enforcement denied the rumor. The police statement said that a person "training a bomb detection dog" near the event's location had made a false report.
The claim about explosive devices appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on September 18, 2024. The claim said:
🚨BREAKING: Explosives Discovered Near President Trump Rally in Long Island, New York.
Protect Trump at all costs!
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of the writing of this fact check:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Sep 19 14:27:14 2024 UTC)
On September 18, 2024, Trump held a rally at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale on Long Island, New York. It was scheduled to begin at 7 p.m., according to a Nassau Coliseum schedule (archived here).
Before noon Eastern Time on September 18, 2024, the Nassau County police commissioner for Uniondale, Patrick Ryder (archived here), denied claims about an explosive device at or near the coliseum. Ryder's statement (archived here), posted on the Nassau County Police Department's Facebook account, said:
Reports of explosives being found at the site are unfounded. There is a person who is being questioned who may have been training a bomb detection dog near the site. The individual with the bomb dog falsely reported explosives being found and that individual is currently being detained by the police.
Then, the Nassau County Police Department account on X again refuted the claim (archived here):
Reports that an explosive device was found at the Nassau Coliseum are FALSE.
Finally, the New York State Police confirmed (archived here) on X that:
No explosives were found.
Despite these police denials, around 3 p.m. ET on September 18, 2024 -- the Nassau Coliseum's scheduled opening time for the Trump rally -- X's primary owner, billionaire Elon Musk, reposted on X another variation of the claim. As of this writing, the reposted item has been deleted, but the post's screenshot (archived here) was still available on CNBC anchor Carl Quintanilla's account on X.
Early in the morning on September 18, 2024, James Lalino, who describes himself on LinkedIn as a producer, booker and writer for the One America News Network, had posted on X (archived here) that an unidentified source within the Nassau County Police Department had told him that a "perimeter" near the Trump rally's location had been "breached" and that police checking the area had "found an explosive device in one of the vehicles and that driver ended up running into the woods.
A police alert (archived here) later in the day on the Nassau County Police Department's website repeated the police commissioner's statement and mentioned a "suspicious incident," but did not elaborate. It said that one individual was being questioned, but it, too, firmly denied that any explosives had been discovered.
The Associated Press (archived here) reported that police said that the person detained was a civilian and "not a member of a law enforcement agency."
Claims about explosives on Long Island came after earlier incidents elsewhere, including the arrest of a suspect in what the FBI termed an assassination attempt against Trump at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida (archived here) on September 15, 2024. In July 2024, an assailant shot at and wounded the former president during a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania (archived here). One man was killed and two others wounded.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims about former President Donald Trump can be found here. Fact checks of claims about the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
