Fact-Check: Was Khalistani Terrorist Pannu the special guest at Trump’s Inaugural Ceremony?? Discover the Truth here

Donald Trump took over as the 47th US president on Monday, January 20. The swearing-in ceremony was followed by a range of inaugural events including three inaugural ball events. While Trump and his team had planned to organize an outdoor event but severe cold conditions in the national capital led them to organize an indoor event.  Several important personalities including tech giants, celebrities, and political leaders attended Trump’s second inauguration.
Amid this, a video has recently surfaced on social media platform X(formerly Twitter) showing Khalistani terrorist Gurupatwant Singh Pannu at the Liberty Ball of US President Trump’s inaugural ceremony. The video has been shared by various Pakistan-based handles with the claim that he was a special guest at Trump’s official inaugural event.

X handle named Hello Pakistan posted this video on X and wrote: “Khalistani activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, targeted by the Modi government in an assassination attempt in New York, was a special guest at Trump’s official inaugural event, ‘The Liberty Ball”

In addition, handles named Kashmir English and Kashmiri Tales posted this video sharing similar claims. The preview link can be seen here and here.

Fact-Check

In the probe, the DFRAC team found that Gurupatwant Pannu was not invited to the event and bought the tickets through some contact.

Our team converted this video into some keyframes and reverse-searched them on Google which led us to the latest reports published by The Economic Times, Times Now & Livemint.

The reports stated that Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Pannun was spotted at a star-studded inauguration event of President Donald Trump and raised anti-India slogans while others chanted ‘USA, USA’. Videos from US President Donald Trump’s inauguration ball are doing rounds on social media where Gurpatwant Singh Pannun can be seen raising pro-Khalistan slogans. The incident took place at The Liberty Ball during the official inaugural ceremony. While the others chanted pro-US slogans, Pannun quickly said ‘Khalistan Zindabad’ as the camera, supposedly his own, panned towards him. He was not invited to the mega event and reportedly bought the tickets through some contact

Investigating further, we also came across some reports about the dignitaries invited to Trump’s official inaugural event.

The prominent personalities who had been invited at Trump’s ceremony were Tech giants including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and TikTok CEO Shou Chew, Former US presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Trump mega-donor Miriam Adelson, Tilman Fertitta, a television personality and billionaire owner of the Houston Rockets basketball team, businessman Todd Ricketts were among others. 

Celebrities including Carrie Underwood, classical singer Christopher Macchio performed at the inauguration events. The disco band Village People, who had supported Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, would be performing. 

Wrestler Logan Paul, Jake–who recently beat Mike Tyson, Dana White, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Hulk Hogan and actor Jon Voight would make appearances. 

China’s vice-president Han Zheng, Argentina’s populist leader Javier Milei, Italy Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Nigel Farage, Britan’s champion of Brexit and the leader of the anti-immigration Reform party, Tom van Grieken of Belgium’s far-right Vlaams Belang and Mateusz Morawiecki of Poland’s national-conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) would attend the ceremony. 

Notably, not even a single report mentioning the name of Terrorist Gurupawant Singh Pannu came to light.

Thus, his efforts to show closeness with the closeness with Newly US regime, have fallen flat.

Conclusion

It is evident from DFRAC’s fact-check that the viral video claiming Pannu to be the special guest at Trump’s Inaugural event is misleading indeed since he has not been invited to the event and holds no proximity with US President Trump.

Analysis: Misleading