Does a viral social media post show a real passport for someone from India named 'Priyanka Rao' who is supposedly the wife of Cole Tomas Allen? No, that's not true: There have been no news reports mentioning that name in connection with the man who was accused of being the shooter at the 2026 White House Correspondents Dinner. The passport seen in a viral image contained obvious errors such as listing the differently spelled name "Cole Thomas Allen" under "Nationality" and was likely generated using AI-tools.
The passport image appeared in a post on X (archived here) published on April 26, 2026 with a text that read:
The perpetrator of the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, 31 year old Cole Tomas Allen, with his Indian wife, Priyanka Rao.
This was the passport image in question:
(Image source: post by @ThokaReturns on X.com)
At the time of writing, a Google News search for the names "Cole Thomas Allen" and "Priyanka Rao" did not return any news stories mentioning the two together (archived here). Neither did a search in combination with the actual spelling, "Cole Tomas Allen" (archived here).
The passport image listed "Cole Thomas Allen" both under "Nationality" and as "Name of Father/Legal Guardian", which would mean her father (or legal guardian), who was supposedly her husband according to the post, was also a country. But it also listed "Priyanka Rao" as "Name of Spouse", which would mean she was actually married to herself. Obviously this is absurd and shows the image is not of a real passport.
According to Google's Gemini tool (full response archived here), the image in question contained a SynthID watermark which indicates it was generated using AI tools:
Based on a digital analysis, most or all of this image was edited or generated with Google AI, which is indicated by the presence of a SynthID watermark.
