In late April 2026, an armed man attempted to charge into the ballroom that was hosting the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Law enforcement took a man accused of targeting the dinner, Cole Tomas Allen, into custody after gunfire reportedly left a Secret Service agent with non-life-threatening injuries.
Immediately following the incident, people on social media began sharing countless rumors about Allen's identity, affiliations and motives. For example, one post (archived) included an image of a person resembling Allen wearing a sweatshirt with the emblem of the Israel Defense Forces, the official name of the Israeli military. The man said to be Allen was sitting in a chair and holding a silver drink can while
The post read:
The Trump dinner shooter was a ZIONIST!
Do NOT let the media hide this!
If it were the other way around, it would be EVERYWHERE!
People shared the image, sometimes as part of a screenshotted post from an X account called The Maga Report, to Reddit (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), YouTube (archived) and X (archived). Many of these posts claimed, without evidence, that Allen uploaded the image to a now-deleted Instagram account.
Snopes readers searched the site and sent emails wondering if the image was real.
As of publishing, Snopes has not yet found primary sourcing to confirm the veracity of the image. Therefore, we've not yet given the image a rating.
Snopes emailed the Department of Justice to ask if it had identified an Instagram account as Allen's and if it had found evidence that the image was real. We also reached out to the account that appeared to have first posted the image to ask if it could provide evidence it was authentic. We'll update this story when we receive replies.
A reverse image search did not reveal an obvious source for the image. In fact, the oldest version of the image Snopes could find was The Maga Report's post (archived), which some of the posts spreading the claim shared as a screenshot. That account posted the image April 25, 2026, at 10:52 p.m. EDT, according to its timestamp.
We found no evidence that any version of the image appeared online before the attack, which metadata of photos from The Associated Press suggests began approximately 8:34 p.m. EDT that same day.
Some social media users, in an effort to debunk the IDF sweatshirt image, posted screenshots (archived) of an Instagram account they believed to be Allen's. In those screenshots, the account's profile picture appeared to be of an individual who looked like the suspected attacker and the display name was "Cole Thomas Allen."
However, by the afternoon of April 26, the account (archived) from the screenshot remained on Instagram and did not have same profile picture or description. Instead, the profile picture showed John Hinckley Jr., former President Ronald Reagan's attempted assassin, and the description was, "I did for the lulz." Because law enforcement took Allen into custody immediately after the shooting and, as of this writing, there were no reports of his release, it was unlikely that he would have been able to update the account, if it were really his. Additionally, the AP and other mainstream news outlets have consistently spelled the suspect's name as Cole Tomas Allen, without an "h" in the middle name.
These anomalies suggest that it's unlikely the account really belonged to Allen.
A LinkedIn account (archived) that appeared to be Allen's did not include the image of of the man wearing an IDF sweatshirt in its post history.
Investigating whether image was AI-generated
Analyses by artificial intelligence-generated image detection tools, such as Hive, Sightengine, Truthscan, MyDetector and WasItAI returned results ranging from a 2% to 97% likelihood that the image was generated or edited with AI tools. As a reminder, AI detection tools are not always accurate and are prone to both false positives and false negatives. They are best used as context or support for other evidence.
Although there isn't yet enough evidence to definitively confirm whether the image is fake, visual evidence within the image itself does suggest that it might be generated by AI tools.
For example, at least two details stand out as unusual in the top left of the image. A table next to the door, positioned like it could be an entryway table, appears to have two legs that abruptly end after a couple of inches. An unidentifiable object next to it stands immediately in front of the door. While neither detail is definitive proof the image is fake, both stand out as odd.
Additionally, one side of the man's pants appear to be too wide, stretching what appears to be several inches past his hips. The other side of the pants appears to blend into or merge with the chair. It is difficult to discern if these are unrealistic anomalies or just a byproduct by the image's poor quality and angle.
(X user @The_Maga_Report/Snopes Illustration)
Snopes is fact-checking other claims about the attack on the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, including one asserting that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said there would be "shots fired" before the attack.
Do you have more information about the origin of this image? Send us a message.