Was the Secret Service agent who saved Trump a former Russian karate champion?

On July 15, major Russian news agencies and newspapers published headlines claiming that a Russian woman saved former President Donald Trump during the July 13 assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.

Dozens of Russian media outlets reported that the female U.S. Secret Service agent seen in the footage protecting and escorting Trump to safety is a Russian karate and martial arts athlete named Irina S.

Irina was born in the town of Skopin, near the central city of Ryazan, and trained with renowned Russian karate and martial arts coaches Olga Novikova and Yevgeny Zhirikhov, the reports said. In 2000, Irina’s family emigrated to the US, where she worked as a martial arts coach before joining a private security company that provided bodyguard services to the US government, Russian media reported.

Prominent Russian propagandist and political analyst Alexei Chadayev posted a photo on Telegram of Trump being supported by a female SS agent, saying: “A funny detail: this aunt in the front center of this historical photo is a Russian Karatist from Ryazan who moved to America in the early 2000s.”

The business newspaper Vglyad, news site Lenta.ru, news aggregator Newsru.com and others said:

“The woman who shielded Trump from the bullets turned out to be a Russian karateka.”

This is unfounded.

The coaches, Olga Novikova and Yevgeny Zhirikhov, told Russian news agencies that they did not recognize their pupil in the footage and could not confirm whether the secret service agent was indeed Irina S.

Some news agencies and newspapers have removed their reports about the Secret Service agent’s Russian origins, and others have corrected their initial reports, but many have left them unchanged. At the time of publication, the Russian Internet search engine Yandex.ru returns hundreds of news stories and social media posts claiming that a “Russian woman saved Trump.”

At the time of writing, the US Secret Service has not yet responded to questions from Polygraph.info about the nationality of the female agent seen in the footage of Trump being protected.

Russia used the attempted assassination of Trump to attack and distort American democratic values, spreading conspiracy theories and baseless accusations.