Real 2023 X post with name 'Cole Allen' circulates after White House correspondents' dinner shooting

After the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on April 25, 2026, a rumor spread online that an X user had made a post in 2023 with only the name "Cole Allen" — the name of the suspected shooter — suggesting they had predicted the incident years earlier.

Several social media accounts pointed to the supposed X post, including one where the user made a video discussing it (archived):

The post summarizing the video's key points read:

This seems impossible: 

A Twitter account made a post with the shooter's name almost 2 1/2 years ago, and the header of that account has an image from a website called "Time Machine". 

To make things even crazier, the Trump Butler photograph superimposed over that image shows that it's almost a perfect outline of that image.

The claim about the supposed post spread further on X, including in Spanish.

As we outline below, an X post that read "Cole Allen" appeared on the platform in December 2023. It was the only post from the X account @HenryMa79561893, which uses the name "Henry Martinez," before it went dormant. As such, we have rated the claim true.

What remains unclear is the reason the account shared the post or whether it has any connection to the suspect in the correspondents' dinner shooting.

Snopes contacted the account via X and we will update this report should the person behind it respond. We have also reached out to the FBI to ask whether the post is of any interest in its investigation into Allen and the shooting.

At 9:07 p.m. Eastern time Dec. 21, 2023, Martinez made the following post (archived):

While Premium X users can edit their posts, it is not possible to backdate them, meaning the user could not have shared the post after the shooting and assigned an earlier date to it. 

The account joined X the same month it made the post and has not made any others since then. Its profile photo featured Pepe the Frog, better known as the mascot of QAnon, an online group responsible for spreading baseless conspiracy theories. 

Some users claimed Martinez co-authored a technical report for NASA in 2014, the same year the suspect in the correspondents' dinner shooting reportedly interned at the U.S. space agency. While we did find a 2014 paper listing a Henry Martinez as one of its authors, it was not possible to verify whether this was the same person behind the X account.

The header image at the top of the X user's profile, which some users accurately said appeared in May 2022 on a website with the urltimemachine.eu, was first published in 2021 on the stock image bank Unsplash. The website Psychedelics Today also used it in one of its posts in January 2022.

For further reading, Snopes examined the claim that Allen was a registered Democrat who donated money to the 2024 campaign of former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.

Do you have more information on this topic? Send us a message.