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Is a bio page mentioning "Epstein" from the real Instagram account of Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks? No, that's not true: A Meta spokesperson told Lead Stories the account was a copycat/fake account. The company told another fact-checking organization that it had removed the account. Lead Stories previously debunked the profile picture in the Instagram post as not being Crooks. An account using that picture posted troll messages falsely claiming the person in the picture was the shooter.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Threads on July 14, 2024. It showed an Instagram account and bio that read:
Praise the Lord ✝️ in my quest to end Epsteins evil empire
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Thu Jul 18 17:13:15 2024 UTC)
The account does not belong to 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, the shooter who tried to assassinate former President Trump and was identified (archived here) on July 14, 2024, by the FBI. He was shot and killed by the U.S. Secret Service (archived here), they said.
The profile picture in the image is taken from the X account @Poopy_Tool_Fan archived (here). The account was previously known as @jewgazing. The image was posted on July 10, 2024. The person in the shot is wearing dark pants and tie-dyed T-shirt and appears to be taking a selfie in a bathroom, as this screenshot shows:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Jul 18 17:20:13 2024 UTC)
As Lead Stories previously reported, this account does not belong to the shooter.
In a July 18, 2024, response to Lead Stories' inquiry about the account, Meta spokesperson Erica Sackin emailed, "I can confirm that's not an authentic account for Thomas Matthew Crooks."
Sackin added that Meta teams "monitor our platform for credible threats of violence, false information, or content glorifying the shooter or shooting."
Any copycat accounts of "individuals involved" in a shooting are always removed, she stressed.
Copycat accounts of the shooter are not allowed, and we remove them when we find them. We continue to monitor and block people from creating new copycat accounts.
PolitiFact also fact checked the claim. Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold was quoted as saying that the "copycat/fake" account "was removed."
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims related to the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024, can be found here.
Updates:
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2024-07-19T16:57:41Z 2024-07-19T16:57:41ZIncludes Meta response
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