Trump post saying he had Comey 'arrested,' threatening Kimmel is fake. Here's proof

Claim:

A screenshot authentically shows an X post by U.S. President Donald Trump in which he said he had former FBI Director James Comey arrested and threatened late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

Rating:

Fake (About this rating?)

In late April 2026, an image spread online claiming to show an X post by U.S. President Donald Trump in which he supposedly said he had former FBI Director James Comey arrested and threatened late-night host Jimmy Kimmel with a similar fate. 

The post circulated online after the U.S. Department of Justice announced that a grand jury indicted Comey over a social media post characterized as a threat against Trump. Around the same time, Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, called for ABC to fire Kimmel following a joke he made calling the first lady an "expectant widow" days before a shooting at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

An X user shared the purported screenshot on May 1, 2026 (archived), writing, "That's not how this works, that's not how any of this is supposed to work."

Trump's alleged post read:

I had James Comey arrested. That's the kind of power you have when you're President. Remember that, Jimmy Kimmel, and anyone else who thinks it's funny to take shots at me. Not so funny anymore, right? I've got Todd Blanche working very closely with me, very closely, and he gets things done. Always with a straight face too, which is incredible when you think about it. So consider this your warning. And Iran, same thing. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Open up the Strait, or the gloves come off. Big time. You've all been warned. Have a great day.

Others shared the purported post on X and Facebook. Some users appeared to believe the post was authentic and Snopes readers contacted us to investigate its legitimacy.

To investigate the post's authenticity, we first used search engines such as DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo. If Trump had really said he had Comey arrested or threatened Kimmel with a similar fate, reputable news outlets, such as The Associated Press or Reuters, would have reported on it, and those searches would have uncovered that evidence. That was not the case.

Trump had not posted on his official X account since March 2, 2026. Searches of Trump's Truth Social feed and its archive did not return any results for such a post either. Further, a White House spokesperson confirmed to Snopes via email that the post was fake.

Other signs also indicated the alleged post was a fabrication. It did not include a timestamp or engagement metrics, such as likes, comments and reshares, found in authentic posts on X or other social media platforms. Additionally, Trump's real X account features a gray verification checkmark rather than the blue icon in the fabricated screenshot.

The earliest version of the post we could find originated from a Facebook user named John Dewees on April 29, 2026 (archived). The poster added a comment below the screenshot suggesting it wasn't real, but it was revealing that so many people believed it was:

I'm not going to respond to all the claims that this post wasn't real. I'm simply going to state that each and everyone who read it believes and knows he is capable of posting such callous hideous fascist traitorous sick material.

And that's the real point here. Nuff said

We reached out to the account asking for comment on the fact that some people mistook the fake post as real. We will update this story if we receive a response.

Snopes has debunked similar pieces of media before. For example, in April 2026, we alerted readers to a fake post attributed to Trump in which he supposedly called Norah O'Donnell "Norah O'Dumble."

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