What was claimed
Tommy Robinson was pictured with the suspect in the White House Correspondent’s dinner shooting, Cole Allen.
Our verdict
This image is fake, and was made using AI.
Fake picture of Tommy Robinson with White House Correspondents’ dinner shooting suspect shared online
A fake picture of Tommy Robinson apparently standing with the White House Correspondents’ dinner shooting suspect has been circulating online.
The image being shared on Facebook seems to show the British political activist, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, posing in a suit on a red carpet next to a man who resembles Cole Tomas Allen, the suspected gunman in the gala shooting on 25 April. A genuine image of him lying face down on the floor is also included in the post.
But the image supposedly showing Mr Allen with Tommy Robinson isn’t real, and was made using AI.
It contains a SynthID invisible watermark, which is added to content created or altered with Google’s AI tools. We couldn’t find any examples of the image appearing online prior to the shooting, or any evidence that it is a real photograph.
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The posts sharing the image mention Mr Allen, and add: “A former staff member who previously worked with Tommy Robinson, his wife is currently also employed within her team.” It’s unclear what this is supposed to mean exactly, but we’ve found absolutely no evidence to suggest any connection between Mr Allen and Mr Robinson.
Other fact checkers have identified a number of similarly false posts linking Mr Allen to other public figures, including Usha Vance, the second lady of the United States, and NBC News anchor Savannah Guthrie.
A fake image supposedly showing Mr Allen with Ms Guthrie has a similar red-carpet background to the picture featuring Tommy Robinson. And we found another fake picture showing Mr Allen standing against the same background with Meghan Markle, which also contains SynthID.
Mr Allen, who is 31 years old, has been charged with and formally indicted on four counts: attempting to assassinate the President of the United States, two counts related to weapons offences, and a charge for assaulting a federal officer. At the time of writing he had not yet entered a plea.
Before sharing content like this that you may come across on social media, it’s important to consider whether it comes from a trustworthy and verifiable source. Our Full Fact toolkit and guides to spotting misleading images and AI content can help you do this.
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 the image of Tommy Robinson with Cole Allen is fake.