Secret Service agents pictured around Donald Trump immediately after he was shot at a rally in Pennsylvania were not wearing earpieces.
This isn’t correct. High quality images of the agents show they were wearing earpieces on the stage.
Donald Trump wasn’t taken to hospital after the attempted assassination.
Mr Trump was treated at Butler Memorial Hospital for the injury to his ear after the attack.
An image is being shared online with false claims it shows the US Secret Service agents who escorted Donald Trump away after he was shot were not wearing earpieces.
The photo, which has been circulating on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, has the caption: “Apparently Secret Service agents are now on leave as the investigation grows.
“Trump apparently never went to the hospital?!?!
“Someone made a great point - none of these Secret Service agents have their earpieces in…”
In the image being shared, the Republican presidential candidate is being helped off stage by a number of Secret Service agents wearing suits, who do not appear to be wearing earpieces.
It captures the seconds after the assassination attempt on Mr Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on 13 July.
However, a higher resolution version of the same photograph, and others from the rally, show the agents were actually wearing earpieces—albeit inconspicuously.
In various angles you can see covert earpieces, connected to a coiled tube running down the neck into the collar. But they cannot be seen in the image being shared, due to its low quality.
Mr Trump was hit by a bullet in his right ear in the attack, while one audience member, Corey Comperatore, was killed and two others, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, were seriously injured.
Contrary to the other claim made in the post, Mr Trump was taken to hospital following the attack by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks. He was treated at Butler Memorial Hospital immediately after the shooting.
However, it has been reported that at least five US Secret Service agents have been placed on administrative leave following the attack. An investigation is underway into what the service called an ‘operational failure’, which has since seen the resignation of its director Kim Cheatle.
Full Fact has seen many examples of misinformation circulating with unevidenced theories that the assassination attempt on the former president was staged, including old images shared with claims they show Mr Trump’s uninjured ear after the shooting.
We’ve written a guide about how to identify misleading images online, and advice about how to avoid spreading misleading content.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because high quality images show that the Secret Service agents surrounding the presidential candidate were wearing earpieces.
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