A bizarre conspiracy theory has emerged following the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, linking suspect Cole Allen to time travel.
As countless people began to search for information on social media regarding the alleged shooter's past, a mysterious post was found on a seemingly dormant X account, which has now gone viral.
The December 21, 2023 post from a user calling themself 'Henry Martinez' simply shared the name 'Cole Allen.' However, this post was the first and only message ever sent from the account.
Internet sleuths have since gone down the rabbit hole, attempting to find out who Henry Martinez is, whether they are connected to the WHCD shooter and whether they somehow predict what would happen 28 months later.
'Time travel is real,' one person said online after discovering the post.
'I hope everyone is as creeped out as I am,' another person added.
Skeptics have pointed out that the bizarre post may be an incredible coincidence, possibly done by someone who created random X accounts and guessed common names in the hopes of making a shocking prediction months or years later.
Cybersecurity expert James Knight told Daily Mail that one possibility that has already been ruled out is that someone hacked into X to make a new post mentioning Allen appear to originate from the past.
A mysterious post appeared to reference the name of attempted presidential assassin Cole Tomas Allen.
Cole Allen's social media posts have also surfaced, reportedly showing he engaged in heated political rhetoric.
'It is not possible on X to manipulate or backdate an existing post to make it appear years older than its actual creation date. Also, there are no known hacks or third-party tools for backdating,' said Knight.
The expert from DigitalWarfare.com explained the mystery post was indeed written in December 2023 because each X post has a unique 'Snowflake ID' which encodes its exact creation time.
'I believe that this is just a coincidence with someone guessing [or] posting a common name of "Cole Allen" in 2023.'
According to Social Security records and Census data, Cole has actually been an uncommon first name in the US, ranking below the top 150 names for boys. However, Allen is one of the country's most common surnames, sitting near the top 30 family names in America.
That suspected coincidence was then amplified by the search algorithms built into X, which matched Allen's name to the old post and showed it to the thousands, and possibly millions, of people trying to find the 31-year-old online.
Since the 'Henry Martinez' account was unearthed over the weekend, the dormant page has gained over 23,000 followers, and the post in question has been viewed 54 million times, even though nothing else has been shared to the account since the shooting at the Washington Hilton.
Despite Knight and other social media experts writing off the post as nothing more than a lucky guess, conspiracy theorists have pointed out a chilling link between Allen, the WHCD shooting suspect, and a real person named Henry Martinez.
It was revealed that Allen was a summer intern at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in California in 2014. That same year, NASA released a research paper on the Orion spacecraft, which was just used to visit the moon, written by aerospace engineer Henry Martinez.
Authorities said Allen, a resident of Torrance, California, was allegedly attempting to gain entry to the White House Correspondents' Dinner while carrying multiple weapons and shooting a Secret Service agent.
A seemingly dormant social media account has gained thousands of followers after appearing to predict that 'Cole Allen' would be involved in a major event.
On Monday, federal officials announced that Allen had been charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump, discharging a firearm during a violent crime and transporting arms and ammunition across state lines.
The 31-year-old is believed to be the lone gunman who opened fire outside the gala just after 8.30pm ET Saturday night, while Trump and the other guests were inside the main dining room.
Approximately 3,000 journalists and White House officials had gathered inside. The gunman struck a Secret Service agent with one round at close range, but the officer was hit in their bulletproof vest and is expected to make a full recovery.
Screenshots circulating online appeared to show posts from November 4, 2024, attributed to an account believed to be linked to Allen, including one message stating, 'So exciting this week, we'll either have the first woman president or the end of America.'
That post was allegedly followed the next day by one stating the user had voted for Kamala Harris.
Other resurfaced posts attributed to the same account appeared to show heated political rhetoric, including comparisons between modern officials and notorious figures from authoritarian regimes throughout history.