Following the Sept. 15, 2024, apparent attempted assassination of former president Trump — the second such attempt in less than three months — online rumors about the would-be assassin, Ryan Routh, traveled far and wide.
One significant rumor was that he had appeared in a BlackRock commercial. This rumor references the fact that Thomas Crooks, who fired at and hit Trump during a July 2024 rally in Pennsylvania, did indeed appear in a commercial for BlackRock, a massive multinational investment company.
The claim that a second would-be assassin had this same biographical background, social media posts claimed, left "zero chance of coincidence." Erik Prince, who founded and ran the private military contractor Blackwater, repeated the claim on Real America's Voice:
Prince: "There's some indication that shows both the Butler shooter and yesterday's shooter both appeared in BlackRock TV commercials. The statistical likelihood of that being random is impossible. "@realErikDPrince pic.twitter.com/F7i768Ke6d
— Grace Chong ?? (@gc22gc) September 16, 2024
Videos shared in support of this claim appear to genuinely show Routh briefly, but the video has no connection whatsoever to BlackRock.
This video was made on behalf of Ukraine's Azov Battalion three months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 to thank people who had supported them and spread their message. The battalion defended the city of Mariupol in the early days of the Russia-Ukraine war.
This video is a message to the world from the Mariupol defenders.They are grateful for our support and ask us to keep on fighting."Thank you to everyone who supports the Defenders of Mariupol and raises the issue of Mariupol at the international level
Mariupol is??"#savemariupol pic.twitter.com/WiQfSiA2Gx— SAVE AZOV ?? (@save_mrpl) May 1, 2022
According to 2023 reporting in The New York Times, Routh had traveled to Ukraine and attempted to insert himself into the affairs of Ukraine's International Legion.
Because Routh appears in a video designed to raise money for the Azov Battalion and not a commercial made for BlackRock, we rate the claim false.