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After an armed gunman drove a pickup truck into a Michigan church, opened fire on worshipers and set the church ablaze, people online rushed to find clues about the attacker’s politics.
Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, of Burton, Michigan, was a former U.S. Marine and Iraq War veteran. His Sept. 28 ambush on the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints church in Grand Blanc Township left four people dead and eight wounded. He died in an exchange of gunfire with police.
Law enforcement officials said in a Sept. 29 press conference they are investigating the attack as “an act of targeted violence,” but shared no more details about Sanford’s motive. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that Sanford “hated people of the Mormon faith.”
In the absence of information, people online sought to assign political blame —a common trend at a time of heightened political polarization and violence.
“We’re learning the shooter of the church in Michigan has been a Trump hater at least since 2015! More left-wing violence!” one user posted Sept. 28 on X. Others said the opposite: “Yesterday’s Michigan Shooter was MAGA Supporter Thomas Jacob Sanford.”
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Michigan does not register voters by party affiliation and has open primaries, which means Sanford’s voting history doesn’t shed light on his political views.
Sanford had been photographed years ago wearing a T-shirt in support of President Donald Trump, but early reporting left unanswered whether politics played a role in the attack at all.
Friends of Sanford’s told The New York Times that Sanford had become more serious after serving in Iraq and had developed animosity toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints following a painful breakup with a Mormon woman.
Burton City Council candidate Kris Johns told the Detroit Free Press he had a conversation with Sanford about a week before the attack during which Sanford expressed negative views about the Mormon faith.
Social media users pointed to clues — some real, others fake — to try to support their hunches about the shooter’s political leanings.
We examined some of them.
Google Maps images show a Trump campaign sign at Sanford’s address
Some people pointed to a June 2025 Google Maps streetview image of Sanford’s home that shows a Trump campaign sign tucked above a stop sign on a wooden fence next to his house. It is not clear whether the sign says “Trump/Vance” or “Trump/Pence.”
(Google Maps image captured June 2025)
Some online users argued the political sign’s placement near a stop sign signaled opposition to Trump.
None of the earlier Google Maps captures of the same address in 2022, 2021, 2019 or 2017 show any campaign signs on the property.
Property records show that Sanford purchased the home in 2016.
Facebook photo shows Sanford wearing “Trump 2020” shirt
Some users surfaced a family photo of Sanford with his wife and child that showed him wearing a camouflage short-sleeved shirt with a pro-Trump 2020 campaign message. The photo, which remained publicly accessible on Sept. 30, was posted in 2019 to a Facebook page dedicated to documenting his child’s struggles with chronic illness.
(Screenshot of Facebook post)
Some online users said the image is photoshopped, and that the original image was a plain camouflage shirt, but we found no evidence of that.
Political donations and “socialist” X account are from different people named Thomas Sanford
Other accounts shared screenshots they said showed Sanford had donated to Democrats. “Thomas Jacob Sanford donated to Act Blue regularly,” one X account said, attaching screenshots of the Federal Election Commission donor lookup database that tracks political donations.
But the screenshots showed donations from other people named Thomas Sanford, who listed their residences as Virginia, Idaho and Wisconsin.
(Screenshot of X post)
A person named Thomas Sanford in Rockwood, Michigan, who described himself as retired, made a number of small donations, all through the Republican fundraising platform, WinRed. Rockwood is more than an hour away from Burton.
Other posts linked Sanford to an X account with a bio that read “Politically active Democratic Socialist, PROGRESSIVE, and proud UNION member.” But this person named Thomas Sanford from Wisconsin continued to post on the Blue Sky social media platform following the shooting and does not appear to be the same person.
(Screenshot of X post)
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report
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