False Claim About Fake Secret Service Agent Contributes to Rally Conspiracy Theories

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. Quick Take Posts from the anonymous online forum 4Chan have been spreading the false claim that Secret Service officials prevented an agent named “Jonathan Willis” from shooting former President Donald Trump’s attempted assassin. The Secret Service has no employee by that name, and the claim is “categorically false,” the agency said. Full Story Nobody by the name of Jonathan Willis is employed by the U.S. Secret Service, agency spokesman Nate Herring told us via email. But in the chaotic hours following the shooting at former President Donald Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, an online post by an anonymous user who claimed to be “Jonathan Willis” began fueling nascent conspiracies about the shooting. It said, “My name is Jonathan Willis, I’m the officer in the famous photo of the two snipers on the roof at Trump’s rally. I came here to inform the public that I had the assassin in my sights for at least 3 minutes, but the head of the secret service refused to give the order to take out the perp. 100% the top brass prevented me from killing the assassin before he took the shots...