NEW YORK (AP) — Long Island law enforcement worked quickly Wednesday to publicly remove social media posts falsely reporting that explosives had been found in a car near former President Donald Trump’s planned rally in New York.
False reports of an explosive began circulating hours before the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign event at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, just days after he was reportedly targeted by a second possible assassination attempt.
Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said police questioned and detained a person who “may have trained a bomb-detection dog” near the rally site and “falsely reported the discovery of explosives.”
County police spokesman Lt. Scott Skrynecki said in follow-up messages that the person, whom police have not yet identified, was a civilian and not a member of a law enforcement agency.
He also said the person did not work for or was affiliated with the event, which is expected to draw thousands of Trump supporters to the arena that was once the home of the NHL’s New York Islanders.
The rally is Trump’s first on Long Island, a suburb just east of New York City, since 2017.
In 2020, President Joe Biden defeated Trump by a margin of about 4 percent on Long Island, outpacing him in Nassau County by about 60,000 votes, though Trump won neighboring Suffolk County by more than 200 votes.
Earlier Wednesday, Skrynecki and other county officials moved quickly to deny the allegations about the online row, which appear to have started with a message from a reporter citing anonymous sources within the local police department.
The allegations were then widely shared on X, formerly Twitter, by a number of prominent accounts, including that of the company’s owner, Elon Musk, who has nearly 200 million followers. Spokespeople for X did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
“This is false,” Skrynecki wrote to the AP as the allegations spread.
“No. It’s ridiculous. There’s no validity,” said Christopher Boyle, a spokesman for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman.
