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Drew Harwell
Washington: The White House has posted an altered photo of an attorney arrested after a Minnesota church protest, edited to make it look like she was crying, sparking concern among some forensic image experts about the administration’s distortion of real-world imagery.
In a photo posted to X on Thursday morning, Washington time, by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the attorney, Nekima Levy Armstrong, appears in handcuffs with a blank expression on her face.
But in an edited version of the photo posted half an hour later by the White House, Levy Armstrong appears to be openly weeping, with tears streaming down her face. The post did not disclose that the image had been changed.
US Attorney-General Pam Bondi said Levy Armstrong was arrested on charges that she had helped to co-ordinate a protest inside a Minnesota church. The protest, which opposed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has become a flashpoint in the national debate over the Trump administration’s crackdown on migrants, with the White House accusing her of being a “far-left agitator” who had orchestrated “church riots”.
The manipulated image of Levy Armstrong on X had been seen roughly 2.5 million times by Thursday afternoon. It was unclear whether the image was altered using artificial intelligence or more traditional photo-editing tools.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Kaelan Dorr, a deputy communications director who has co-ordinated the White House’s digital strategy, referenced the image in an X post: “Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, mocked people questioning the image with an X post that said: “uM, eXCuSe mE??? iS tHAt DiGiTAlLy AlTeReD?!?!?!?!?!”
At a news conference on Thursday, Levy Armstrong’s husband, Marques Armstrong, told supporters gathered at the St Paul courthouse that the social media post about her arrest told a false story, including because she had stood tall and walked without crying.
“We have the videos to prove that, to dispel the lies and the twisting of the truth that this administration constantly does,” he said.
Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and co-founder of the digital forensics company GetReal Security, overlaid the two images and determined that the image shared by the White House had been manipulated.
The false image, he said, could undermine the White House’s attempts to win public trust through communications on its official account, where it has millions of followers.
“People will think: When you guys post images of Venezuelan drug boats, why should we believe you? In fact, why should we believe anything you say?” Farid said.
Trump and the White House have frequently used edited or AI-generated imagery to win attention and score political points. Some have been clear satire or memes, including a video Trump posted last year showing him dumping faeces on protesters from a fighter jet. But others have appeared more realistic, including a video Trump posted last northern summer supposedly showing former president Barack Obama being arrested by the FBI.
At the same time, Trump has criticised his political enemies for purportedly distributing fake images. During the 2024 campaign, he accused Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris of using a fake photo from a rally stop.
“There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.‘d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” he said in a Truth Social post.
Farid said photos like the fake crying image were especially pernicious because they could easily convince viewers they were real.
While the fighter jet video was “tasteless and disturbing, it was not designed to be deceptive”, he said. “This clearly falls on the deceptive side: it’s clearly manipulated, clearly not labelled. They’re just out there, distorting facts.”
Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, said the image “moved us to a new level of manipulative propaganda” because it relied on a subtle alteration rather than a more obvious fraud.
“When you have this image that looks completely plausible and has been altered to demean the person being arrested, we’re in new territory,” he said.
The Washington Post
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