Fact Check: Did Cole Allen Drive for Savannah Guthrie or Other Celebrities?
Cole Tomas Allen, accused of attempting to assassinate President Trump, has been the subject of viral social media claims regarding his past as a driver for celebrities. These claims, which include various high-profile names, have been debunked as false. Investigations reveal that Allen's LinkedIn profile does not support these allegations, and the images used in the posts are AI-generated.
- ▪Cole Allen was charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump and other counts after an incident at the White House correspondents' dinner.
- ▪Social media posts falsely claim that Allen worked as a driver for several celebrities, including Savannah Guthrie and Taylor Swift.
- ▪Allen's LinkedIn profile indicates he has worked as a teacher and indie game developer, with no evidence of celebrity driving experience.
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| Original publisher | Newsweek |
| Canonical URL | https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-cole-allen-drive-for-savannah-guthrie-or-other-celebrities-11888320 |
| Publication time | Tue, 28 Apr 2026 12:38:29 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-04-28T16:47:47.399Z |
| Last seen | 2026-04-28T16:47:47.399Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 3ed25vMdUMPV |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
By Jenna SundelNews ReporterShareNewsweek is a Trust Project memberSee more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.Accused wannabe Trump-assassin Cole Tomas Allen was once a driver for some high-profile celebrities, including Savannah Guthrie, Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny and Sydney Sweeney, according to several posts circulating on social media.Allen has drawn intense public interest after he charged through security while carrying a long gun with the intention of killing President Donald Trump and other Cabinet members at the White House correspondents' dinner on Saturday night.The 31-year-old California resident was charged with attempting to assassinate the President of the United States and several other counts…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Newsweek.