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| - Is Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro being charged with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler on July 13, 2024? No, that's not true: The district attorney of Butler County told Lead Stories that Shapiro "HAS NOT been charged with anything connected to the assassination attempt." The DA added: "I do not believe the Governor was at all involved in the assassination attempt."
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on February 9, 2025. The post's caption said:
Holy Shit! Shapiro being charged with the attempted assassination of Trump! Screw the superbowl this is HUGE!!!
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Feb 10 15:56:12 2025 UTC)
This post did not provide any evidence to support the assertion that Shapiro was being charged with the attempted assassination of Trump in July 2024.
Butler County, Pennsylvania, District Attorney
Richard Goldinger, district attorney of Butler County, told Lead Stories in a February 10, 2025, email that there's no truth to the social media claim. In a statement, he said:
Governor Shapiro HAS NOT been charged with anything connected to the assassination attempt in Butler, PA last July.
Not long after the rally, I received a private criminal complaint from a citizen who resides in Harrisburg, PA. I did not find the allegation credible at all. The allegation read more like a novel than an actual affidavit of probable cause.
Private criminal complaints must be approved by the District Attorney, so the complaint was sent to me. I immediately did not believe the allegation. That being said, there were already multiple investigations occurring, so I relied on those investigations in denying the private criminal complaint.
In a reply to their original social media post, the person also shared the private criminal complaint filed by Hadassah Feinberg, which was mentioned in Goldinger's statement. Screenshots of the complaint are included below:
(Source: X screenshots taken on Mon Feb 10 2025 UTC)
In his statement, Goldinger added:
I don't know anything about the person who sent the private criminal complaint, other than she has sued me, the Governor, other District Attorneys in Pennsylvania, and multiple government agencies. As I stated, she resides in Harrisburg, which is over 200 miles from Butler, PA.
Google search
A Google News search (archived here) using the words "Shapiro being charged with the attempted assassination of Trump" found no evidence to support the social media claim as of February 10, 2025.
In the conclusion of his email to Lead Stories, Goldinger added:
I do not believe the Governor was at all involved in the assassination attempt. This is corroborated by the criminal investigations conducted by law enforcement.
Read more
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024, can be found here.
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