On July 15, Lawyer Irakli Zakareishvili, along with other Georgian and Russian-speaking Facebook users (1, 2, 3, 4), published a photo claiming to quote words from a U.S. Secret Service sniper. According to the quote, Jonathan Willis is a Secret Service sniper who was on the roof during the attack on former U.S. President Donald Trump. He watched the attacker for several minutes, but the Secret Service chief did not give the order to shoot. Jonathan Willis claims that he was not allowed to take the first shot until the assailant shot Trump. He also posts a photo, claiming that one of the snipers depicted on it is himself.
The disseminated information that a U.S. Secret Service sniper revealed his identity and stated that he was not given a timely order to neutralize Trump’s attacker is false. The post was published on the American forum 4chan. The Secret Service denies having an employee named Jonathan Willis.
The photo circulating on social media, claiming to be a Secret Service sniper’s confession, is actually a post published on 4chan on July 14. The post’s author is an anonymous account with the username “z9qiQ4hq,” who has published four posts under this name. In the first post, the author reveals his name, claiming to be a Secret Service sniper who was on the roof during the attack on Donald Trump. In the subsequent post, he writes that as soon as Trump was shot, he did not wait for orders and shot the assailant himself, killing him. After killing the assailant, he was arrested, interrogated by the FBI, and dismissed from service for disobeying orders. In the next two posts, the account does not share significant information, uploading a photo of his dog and telling some of the people involved in the discussion that they know nothing.

Open sources do not contain any information about Jonathan Willis being associated with the Secret Service or the FBI, nor do reliable media outlets report on him. The American fact-checking platform PolitiFact published a comment from a representative of the U.S. Secret Service on this issue. They categorically called the information false and stated that no one named Jonathan Willis works for the Secret Service. Additionally, the Associated Press published a comment from a Secret Service representative who said that snipers are trained to act upon spotting a threat and should not wait for instructions to neutralize a suspect. He confirmed that the information in the circulated post is not true.
On July 13, at a pre-election rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, former U.S. President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump was shot. As a result of the shooting, Trump sustained an ear injury. One person present at the rally was killed, and two others were injured. The police also neutralized the attacker, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks. Following the attack, the U.S. Secret Service released a statement noting that this was an attempt to assassinate Donald Trump and that the sniper team took protective measures and neutralized the attacker. After the attack, Trump published a post calling for American unity.
About the Source
Lawyer Irakli Zakareishvili regularly spreads anti-Semitic, anti-Ukrainian, and anti-Western disinformation on Facebook. False claims voiced by him have been debunked multiple times by “Myth Detector.”
Archive links: Irakli Zakareishvili, 4chan
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