Is this a real photo of guards wearing swastika armbands at the courthouse where Trump was being held?

Claim:

Soldiers wearing swastika armbands were spotted in a New York City courthouse ahead of the impeachment of former US President Donald Trump in April 2023.

Evaluation:

context

The photo is from the set of the 2017 dystopian television series The Man in the High Castle, then filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Much play was found outside the New York courthouse where former US President Donald Trump appeared for his indictment on April 4, 2023, but Nazi soldiers were not present. Trump pleaded not guilty on a 34-felony indictment in which he was charged with burying allegations of extramarital affairs that surfaced during his first White House campaign.

As pro-Trump and anti-Trump supporters cheered and jeered outside the courthouse, a photo of men dressed as soldiers and wearing swastika armbands also went viral.

Twitter user @krus_chiki claimed these men were standing outside the courthouse, writing: “Wtf I just took this picture outside the New York courthouse where Donald Trump is being held? Anyone know what’s going on???”

This is not a photo of men in Nazi uniforms with swastika armbands in front of the New York courthouse. Using Google’s reverse image search, we found the same photo of a Article 2017 on the making of the Amazon TV series The Man in the High Castle. The headline of the article The Georgia Straight– a weekly from Vancouver, British Columbia – says: “Uniformed Nazis in downtown Vancouver for the filming of The Man in the High Castle.”

Based on a novel by Philip K. Dick, the series Set in “a dystopian America dominated by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan,” it imagines what might have happened if the Axis powers had won World War II. The uniformed men were clearly disguised as SS guards, it said Article“Some wore the traditional Nazi armbands and others wore red, white and blue armbands symbolizing American occupation. Some carried WWII-era German submachine guns, and an American flag with a large swastika could be seen inside the building.”

Given that this is an old photo from a television program passed as one outside the New York courthouse where Trump was arraigned, we classify this claim as “mislabeled.”

Sources