Fact Check: Did Trump announce declassification of 9/11 records in a social media post?
WASHINGTON, DC: Following the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a claim began circulating on social media platforms that President Donald Trump, in an online post, announced the declassification of the 9/11 records. The claim has sparked speculation among social media users, prompting a fact-check into it.
Claim: Trump announced he is declassifying 9/11 records on Truth Social
The claim circulated in the form of a screenshot from Trump's official Truth Social handle.
The alleged post reads, “My fellow Americans, I am declassifying the 9/11 records. Pretty soon, all channels, every single one, are going to HEAR what REALLY happened on 9/11! The Truth is coming out, and it's going to be BIGGER than anyone thought. The storm is upon us. God bless the United States of America.”
The claim drew mixed reactions from online users, with many appearing to believe the post to be authentic, while a few others dismissed it as fake and called for a fact-check.
Fact Check: Trump made no such post
Although the Trump administration did declassify 9/11 files on what presidents knew before the attacks, the viral screenshot is fake, and no such post was made by Trump.
A search on Trump’s official Truth Social handle for the post yielded no results that match the text in the screenshot.
A search on Trump’s commentary accounts on X, which automatically archive all his Truth Social posts, also did not yield any results.
If Trump had really made the post, it would not go unreported by prominent news media reports, but a search on Google for the claim returned no results about the post, except for the declassification of the 9/11 files.
Declassified files show presidents were warned about attack plots before 9/11
According to the cache of declassified documents that was released by the Trump administration on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush were warned about plots to attack the US.
The documents claimed that the members of the Middle East-based extremist group were present in the US and had even performed a “trial run” at a New York airport nearly three full years before the attack that took down the Twin Towers.
It also claimed that the FBI recovered a manifesto in February 2000, which included the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower as potential targets.