Lengthy Island legislation enforcement officers labored shortly Wednesday to publicly dismantle social media posts falsely reporting that explosives had been present in a automotive close to former President Donald Trump’s deliberate rally in New York.
False studies of an explosive machine started circulating hours earlier than the Republican presidential candidate’s marketing campaign occasion at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, simply days after he was apparently the goal of a second doable assassination try.
Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder mentioned police questioned and detained an individual who “could have been coaching a bomb-sniffing canine” close to the protest web site and “falsely reported that explosives had been discovered.”
Lt. Scott Skrynecki, a county police spokesman, mentioned in follow-up messages that the particular person, who police haven’t but recognized, was a civilian and never a member of a legislation enforcement company.
He additionally mentioned the particular person didn’t work for or was affiliated with the occasion, which is predicted to attract hundreds of Trump supporters to the sector that was previously house to the NHL’s New York Islanders.
That is Trump’s first rally on Lengthy Island, a suburban space east of New York Metropolis, since 2017.
In 2020, President Joe Biden defeated Trump by a margin of about 4 p.c on Lengthy Island, beating him in Nassau County by about 60,000 votes, although Trump received neighboring Suffolk County by greater than 200 votes.
Earlier Wednesday, Skrynecki and different county officers responded shortly to debunk the web claims, which seem to have begun with a publish by a reporter citing nameless sources inside the native police division.
The claims have been broadly shared on X, previously Twitter, by a number of distinguished accounts, together with that of firm proprietor Elon Musk, who has almost 200 million followers. Spokespeople for X didn’t instantly reply to an electronic mail searching for remark.
“False,” Skrynecki wrote in a textual content message to the AP because the allegations unfold.
“No. It’s ridiculous. It has no validity,” mentioned Christopher Boyle, spokesman for Nassau County Government Bruce Blakeman.