Cole Allen: 'Time machine' claims about correspondents' dinner shooter rise after Henry Martinez's post resurfaces
Cole Tomas Allen, 31, from Los Angeles, has been identified as the alleged shooter at the White House correspondents’ dinner where President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance were present.
As more information emerges on the suspect, several bizarre claims have begun to do the rounds as well. One springs from a 2023 X post, which bizarrely just mentions ‘Cole Allen’. The post, from one Henry Martinez, was made on December 22, three years back, and has now gained immense traction after the shooting incident.
This has put Martinez’s profile under the scanner as well, which in turn has sparked ‘time travel’ theories.
Henry Martinez: All about profile after Cole Allen post
Martinez’s post has over 33.2 million views now. It has sparked considerable interest in who the person is. Not much is known about Martinez from his profile, except that he has a Pepe frog as his cover photo.
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However, conspiracy theories have even linked the bowtie-wearing frog to President Trump’s appearance at the dinner. That said, it is the cover photo on Martinez’s profile that has drawn all the attention. Many users on X have claimed that if they tinker with the image the form that appears resembles Trump’s now-iconic photo with the pumped up fist after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“The header photo of the Henry Martinez X account, that made one single post in 2023 that said “Cole Allen,” looks like a modern art rendering of the Trump assassination photo. The photo links to a Time Machine site,” one person wrote, calling it ‘really weird.’
Indeed the photo is present on the Time Machine site. It appears for an article on ‘Study on quality in 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage’.
“The study led by Cyprus University of Technology has identified all relevant elements for successful 3D digitisation of cultural heritage, classifying them by degree of complexity and purpose or use. The study also looked at what determines the quality of a 3D digitisation project and made an inventory of existing formats, standards, guidelines and methodologies used by the industry. This study (Executive summary in French) also collected a number of projects and success stories serving as benchmarks for 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage,” the page reads.
Time Machine Organization describes itself as ‘the leading international organization for cooperation in technology, science and cultural heritage and the institutional governing framework that ensures the sustainability and economic independence of the Time Machine project.’ The reference to Time Machine sparked time travel conspiracy theories, which indicated that Martinez knew back in 2023 that Allen would try the shooting incident.
“Yesterday, the first recorded time travel incident in history occurred. Henry Martinez, a NASA scientist who disappeared in the United States and whose background image is a time machine, tweeted a single message in 2023: “Cole Allen, the man arrested yesterday at the White House accused of attempting to assassinate US President Trump. In one of his photos, he is wearing an IDF uniform.” By tracing the digital version of the NASA scientist’s time machine image, it turns out to be a photo of Trump bleeding from his ear,” one page claimed.
However, there is nothing to back this bizarre claim. In fact, Time Machine has nothing to do with time travel and more to do with preserving history. In the about us section of the website, they note “Time Machine is aiming to join Europe’s rich past with up-to-date digital technologies and infrastructures, creating a collective digital information system mapping the European economic, social, cultural and geographical evolution across times.”
Claims have also been made that Martinez was writing for NASA, after Allen’s alleged LinkedIn profile also listed that he’d worked there.
“And now we have Henry Martinez writing papers for NASA- ‘Testing Orions Fairing Separation System’ By Martinez, Henry (Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. Denver, CO, United States). More context: Cole Allen’s LinkedIn says – He is a software developer, a mechanical engineer, and a summer graduate research fellowship student at NASA Jet Propulsion Lab,” a page noted.
However, there’s confirmation if the author listed and the X profile owner are the same people. One person even tried to push down the hype around the old post, saying that there could be more than one person with the same name, and it might have had nothing to do with the recent shooting.
“Crazy thought, there may be more than one Cole Allen,” they wrote.