Does EXIF Data Prove Trump Is Lying to America?

Does EXIF Data Prove Trump Is Lying to America?

I'm not one to write political articles, and I promise you this one isn't meant to be pro-Trump or anti-Trump. However, as photographers, we've been told that a photo is worth a thousand words. What if the words these photos replace tell a very different story?

I woke up this morning seeing a popular photography term trending on Twitter: EXIF. This acronym stands for "exchangeable image file format," and it is used to give standard terminology and reporting on digital files produced by digital cameras. Photographers are familiar with this data because it can tell us what aperture an image was shot at, the camera's shutter speed, the camera and lens model used for a particular photograph, and what time the images were taken. This was a strange term to see trending on a worldwide platform like Twitter, so you know I had to click on it.

What I found was two images released by the White House showing Donald Trump signing papers in the Walter Reed Hospital. The two images were released yesterday, and there was a lot of controversy around whether or not the hospitalized president was actually getting work done or if he and his staff had staged a fake photoshoot. With so much misinformation surrounding whether or not the sitting president is falling sick with COVID-19 or if his case is rather mild, images of him working and looking in good spirits are some of the few bits of information the outside public has on his potentially dire situation.

The bombshell that this new tweet exposes is that the two images were taken only 10 minutes apart. With Trump sitting in two different locations and in two completely different outfits, we have to ask ourselves how probable it would be for the president to appear in such radically different situations in such a short period of time? Below is the screen capture of the viral images showing the two timestamps from the EXIF data.

As you can see in the two red boxes I highlight, the EXIF says one image was taken at 5:25:59 PM, while the other was taken just 10 minutes later at 5:35:40 PM on October 3.

There are a few other interesting things the EXIF data from these images, as the two images below show. The first one is that the images are credited to White House photographer Joyce N. Boghosian. You can also see that the images were taken on a Sony ILCE-9 camera, which is also known as the Sony A9 mirrorless camera. The lens used for both images is the Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 lenses (shot wide open at ISO 3,200 for all you photo geeks reading).

Additional EXIF images of the images in question

When I saw these images, I had a little laugh to myself and thought: "yep, the White House seems to have been caught staging some photos of the president doing work while diagnosed with Coronavirus." I also thought that maybe this would be an interesting article for Fstoppers readers. And in writing this article, that's when a few strange things started popping up.

The first thing I wanted to do was create my own screen captures of the EXIF data so that I wouldn't have to use someone else's images in a fair use situation but also to double-check the authenticity of the images spewing around the internet. I tried to find the original published image, which is cited as coming from the White House, but I couldn't find it on Twitter.  "No worries," I thought. This image is posted everywhere on the internet.

None of the images I found online had EXIF data

After saving a few different copies of the two images, I noticed that none of them actually had any EXIF data attached to them. Many websites and social media platforms strip EXIF data in an effort to make files smaller, so that was expected. What I didn't expect was for every single image I threw into Photoshop to all have this data missing. Where could I find the original image used to create the viral set of bombshell EXIF images? How could I reproduce these myself?  Maybe the Joyce N. Boghosian, the White House photographer who took these images, would have them on her account. No such luck there either. This is a bit strange.

I decided to look a bit more into Joyce N. Boghosian to see if there were other clues. One string of tweets was showed Joyce taking the image of the event and people were complaining about her not wearing a mask while taking these photographs. I noticed that the woman in this photo wasn't using a Sony camera at all but instead had a Canon and Leica. It seemed strange that a press photographer would have more than one or two brands of cameras on them at any one time, and surely, they wouldn't use both Sony and Canon cameras with the same type of 70-200mm lens. And if this was a photo of Joyce as she took the shots of the stage, well, she didn't shoot them on Sony cameras at all. In trying to find out more about Joyce, I discovered that the photo above wasn't of Joyce photographing Trump at all but rather a tighter crop from her time working with President George Bush. So that was a bit of a dead-end too.

This photo shows Joyce more than a decade earlier

I finally found what I think are the original versions of the two images through the Associated Press. When thrown into Photoshop, I still cannot see all the data shown by the images posted on Twitter. I can confirm that the EXIF data in the file does show the same timestamps under the "Orgin" tab. However, there doesn't seem to be any copyright information or metadata tags at all. I'm not sure what to make of this; does my version of Photoshop not show the full EXIF data? Maybe some of the data was stripped from the smaller version of the image I downloaded from the Associated Press's website? Maybe Apple is a better operating system than Windows?

So, where does this all leave us? For me, I like to know the truth. As I've seen in our Coronavirus Journal, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. It seems the media outlets on both sides of the political spectrum like to edit and chop words to fit their own narrative. This is probably nothing new and has been happening ever since the beginning of the printing press. What is new is social media and the ability for every single person to have a voice and spread this so-called "news." Finding the truth in all of this noise has never been harder, and with the current pandemic still at hand, more and more people are getting on edge trying to understand what is actually happening in the world. Unfortunately, many have simply given up.

The other night, I watched a documentary on Netflix that has been recommended to me by many different people. The Social Dilemma is a documentary on how social media has quickly changed from being strictly a social platform to being a powerful system designed to enslave the human mind. The 90-minute documentary explores the creators of some of the largest social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google. Without spoiling some of the topics they discuss, a few programmers believe that these relatively new platforms are simply too powerful to prevent the spread of misinformation. On one hand, having a limited number of powerful news agencies that are trusted with sharing the truth to the world is problematic; on the other hand, having billions of people replace that paradigm without any real sense of accountability is equally terrifying.

How does this all relate back to the EXIF data tweet I read about this morning? I want to give the whistleblowers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to when these two images were taken. Being the skeptic that I am, I also wanted to research it a little before coming up with my own conclusion. I do find the two images strange, and the White House has been cloaking the president's current COVID situation in a sea of non-transparency.  As another image has shown, even the items on the desk seem to point in the direction of the images being staged.  Some might ask if someone simply could have made up fake EXIF data and pushed them online to a mob of people foaming at the mouth to discredit the president? That doesn't seem to be the case since the times match from images anyone can download off the AP's website. Regardless of when the EXIF data tells us the images were taken, we are still left not completely knowing the context of what's happening in these photos themselves.  I think the truth lies somewhere between a photograph and a thousand words.

Is this more proof the images are staged?

I'm hoping Joyce Boghosian will speak up and give some insight into the EXIF data exposed in these tweets. Was her camera's internal clock set correctly? What happened in between those 10 minutes? As a photojournalist who has been documenting the daily activities of several presidents for decades now, I hope we can trust her to give us the truth. Whatever happens, this story could turn out to be one of the last big public relations disasters of the president during his term or it could be the opening saga in another four years of his presidency. Hopefully, the truth will come out from those actually present in the room when these images were taken.

Patrick Hall's picture

Patrick Hall is a founder of Fstoppers.com and a photographer based out of Charleston, South Carolina.

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191 Comments
Previous comments

Images are gone. Edit.... never mind they are back.

Chronically paying taxes is not actually that bad.

This is some Kim Jong-Un stuff

No, we’re not there yet. 4 more years.

Finally , something to talk about other than the moon landing being fake.

Okay Boomer.

Obama was the most corrupt president in history, Joe Biden has 47 years in government with nothing to sbow for it, and Trump is the only one you want to talk about.

Well Ted Cruz did kill Kennedy.

You mean it wasn't Waldo?

Waldo was the Patsy.

Can you list three things initiated by President Obama that you consider corrupt?

Just curious.

He sent many jobs and money to China, his administration left 4 people alone and stranded in Bengazi.

I don't think "corruption" means what you think it means.

I’m sure Obama did more than a few things wrong but comparing him to a moron that has been dodging going to prison for 40 years is one of the dumbest things I’ve heard. No doubt America deserves trump and you prove my point by being

Patrick doing the homework.

The first thing that came to my mind when I first saw the photos of the interior of the Walter Reed Hospital, does the WRH have nice cabinetry? Seems to be a bit overkill in the use of white cabinetry for a hospital. I can't seem to find any photos of the Walter Reed Hospital's interior that match Trump's photoshoot. But it does look like something one would find in somewhere at the white house. I would be guessing a room in the basement of the WH. Maybe the sleuths here can find a photo of the same cabinetry in WRH.

The photos I found, that are probably pretty old now, show a very gaudy red and silver hotel style presidential suite in the hospital.

Patrick,
Your tried, buddy. There is just no way in these divisive times to have a conversation about anything involving the President without the conversation being dragged into the political realm. Maybe one day we can get back to being able to have an interesting conversation about presidential photography without falling into tropes about orange man bad or sleepy quid pro Joe, but for now this is where we are; like it or not.

Dude, you are a mess. Do you just come on here to cause trouble? I look at all your past comments through your profile. All you do is post in an aggressive fashion, regardless of topic, usually bashing someone else's opinion and positioning yourself as something we should listen to as an "expert". Usually means you know less than everyone else but like to hear his own voice. Your post above about the EXIF is unrelated and uncalled for. Take your opinion on Biden elsewhere, else take your medicine when people slam-dunk on Trump.

I don't give 1/2 a crap whether you are "trying" to be political or not. You're being political. I work hard to avoid politics and if this is going to be the path your articles take then you'll join Mike "I hate Nikon" Smith in the list of authors I don't read.

Patrick, you have lost a lot of credibility with the statement "in two completely different outfits." This appears to be extreme hyperbole since the shirt appears identical with identical cuff-links, and it is not at all unusual for a person to take off their sport coat in a span of 10 minutes. Have you ever picked up your work, moved to the adjacent room, and taken your coat off, and gotten back to work? Seems perfectly reasonable.

But let's assume the worst instead: The photographer shows up and is there for a limited time. They want to reassure everyone that he's doing okay. He picks up his stuff and moves to another room simply because the photographer is there, so she can have two different photos. Wow, what a scandal, I suppose.

I'm not sure what the point of this article is? He lies about things on a daily basis, and is regularly caught doing so. Whether or not he's changing his outfit around the hospital is such a dumb thing to be caught up in.

Edit: Keep downvoting me Republicans, it does nothing.

haha well said. I'm not actually from the UK, I was living there when I made my profile on here, I'm actually from Australia, and am living in Australia. As for why do I care, I don't, hence why I chose to post a pointless comment on an even more pointless post. Apparently I got under the skin of at least 4 Republicans, yourself included by the look of it.

You sound like someone I'd enjoy a conversation with, perhaps over a beer! Is Columbus known for its zoo? I haven't been to one in a while, there's a great wildlife park in Ballarat (about an hour out of Melbourne) where they have kangaroos walking about that you can feed, and a koala experience where you can pet and feed them, highly recommended if you ever visit!

Oh I like unsweetened tea too, my wife is British so it’s just a revolving door of tea all day every day. Good to keep in mind about Columbus, I might visit one day.

"Why does a British citizen care what the POTUS does, aside from issues that affect England?"

Until the recent backing away from the world stage much of the world looked at what the US (largest economy and largest military) was doing or not doing regarding treaties, policy, tariffs, military intervention or non intervention, etc. For many years the US was the "policeman of the world" but that job is up for grabs now. It's an interesting time.

Maybe the term policeman of the world is old fashioned and now it's influencer of the world.

James, Chinese companies are already manufacturing in the US employing US workers and therefore, trade secrets seem easy to purchase or access by simply purchasing a company. While the trade and intellectual property theft debate has value, it means nothing if the back door is wide open.

I am not a Trump supporter (in fact I hate him). But the suspicion raised here is pretty flimsy. The article mentions "two completely different outfits". Are they really? It looks to me that the only difference is the missing suit jacket in one photo. It takes mere seconds to take off a suit jacket. As to the different locations? IDK, but I wouldn't be surprised that the second location might have been just another room next door. So, there is plenty of time for him to take off the suit jacket and walked to an adjacent room.

Having said all that, the photos could still be staged. Who knows what the heck he was doing at the table. How do we know that he was really working or just pretending, posing for the camera?

Just another fully staged photo shoot like the one with the Bible. We should be happy he didn’t teargas the hospital employees and patients while he was changing the rooms.

"a bible"

“I’m not trying to be political” and the headline is, “ Does EXIF data prove Trump is lying to America”? Wow that’s about as political as one can be since it is unlikely any POTUS directly orchestrates a photo shoot and this level of information. What a joke. Maybe, and not being political here, you could look at the time stamps from Souza’s work and see what the O was doing during Bengazhi or do a body language analysis on the images when he said, “ you can keep your doctor...”? What a fraud.

When the man lies about everyone and everything, you can be sure that the photos are staged to "represent" work, not showing any actual work. Now excuse me while I get back to my work of signing blank pieces of paper ....

Does it really matter? People that love him, will continue to. Those that have disdain will also continue. The conspiracy theorists will find alternative narratives.

We really need to teach critical thinking starting at a young age.

Shocked to not find out this wasn't an Andy post.. heh

Nice journalism there but now that he stuck people in his car with him, it really don't matter.

It has already been decided that Covid ended last spring.

Re: to what degree, if any, these photos are honest candids of Trump signing some things somewhere within Walter Reed Medical Center, or were staged.

With all we know about Donald Trump and his incessant lying, common sense tells me it's far more likely these images were staged than that they were not. So what if they were? He's anxious to show he's capable of seeing to his duties as president, that no cockamamie virus is going to get in his way, he's a macho man, etc., ad nauseam. If they were faked, they're among the least consequential of his efforts to perpetually misinform and deceive.

Good job Patrick Hall. You sure know how to get clicks!
And since we are on the subject... TRUMP 2020.

Couldn't they have just changed locations and continued shooting while he worked? First one was with the jacket, then he was asked to take off his jacket and go to another room. If he is working, while being asked to do these, what is wrong with that? Countless politicians have done this. He is getting work done, while the photographer is getting her work done. Win win situation.

There are less papers in the pink file in the second pic, maybe he has signed a couple of documents within these 10mins? I don't think they need 10 whole minutes to move to another room, remove the jacket, sit, put the papers and start snapping away.

Another point worth mentioning is his hair in the second one looks a bit messy. If these photos were staged, most probably the hair would have been fixed to be similar to the first one. Neat, tidy and polished. Second one looks very natural, as if taken without Trump realizing.

Trump worked or didn’t... it’s irrelevant actually. What matters is the mess and division he created.

No matter the truth, it's good to see that there are still some people actually doing some research on what they read online instead of just copy pasting.

And you doing that also instantly shows how dubious some of those posts are.

Thank you for showing that -- because even if confusion about timestamps is cleared up, you still do not have a source for EXIF data that shows camera and lens so where did that come from? Who's faking what and for what purpose?

Interesting article. It seems to me that the difficulty in finding the exif data relating to the camera model and lens is the crux of this adventure. Why is it present in those screenshots but Patrick was not able to find it?

Look at the first picture in the article with the side-by-side and you can see the file names used to generate those screenshots of the exif data. You can take the part after "AP" and search for those ID numbers at www.apimages.com. (for example, http://www.apimages.com/Search?query=20278121050179) If you open the page where they'll sell you the picture, you can download the smaller 2000x1000 preview copy and that has all the exif data still in it. Use exiftool (exiftool.org) on those images to get all the relevant metadata **including the camera model number and lens**. I've included the exiftool printout of one of the pictures here (https://pastebin.com/DRWEFB2b) but you can easily reproduce it with the steps I've described in this comment. Patrick did most of these steps in the article, but my contribution is to use exiftool to view exif tags, and I'm able to confirm that the AP pictures were shot on the Sony a9 on the 70-200 lens.

This implies that the full exif data was present in the image by the time it got to the Associated Press. At the very least, that takes twitter users out of the loop and suggests that you only have to be able to trust the AP and the white house to have not doctored the exif data.

I'm not supporting or disparaging Trump but EVERY politician does staged photoshoots. There is no way Trump would be reading and siging real documents with a photographer photographing everything. That could lead to an even bigger issue if contantents of documents were release to the news media.

So was this a staged photoshoot - Yes
Does it matter - No

The fact that people will belive anything about Trump while other will belive nothing is the bigger issue.

I believe the pics was staged, but where is the problem?

Crap like this is why, by default, I run any photo I plan to share online anywhere through an exit data removal program.
I know my locations, settings, equipment, no one else needs to, so I always remove all metadata for privacy.

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