A US government photographer told investigators that he intentionally cropped photos of President Donald Trump’s inauguration to remove empty space and make the audience look larger, according to newly released documents.
The admission on Friday, contained in newly released records from an investigation last year, shed new light on what happened after the National Park Service on January 20, 2017, shared a social media post comparing the crowds that attended the inaugurations of Trump and former President Barack Obama, reports CNN.
Trump claimed footage of the event did not jive with the number of people he saw from the stage.
His then-press secretary, Sean Spicer, gathered reporters the following evening and claimed: “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration… Period.”
The identity of the photographer and many other government officials are redacted from the documents.
The documents recount the call Trump placed on his first full day in office to the then-acting park service director, Michael Reynolds.
Reynolds told investigators he spoke with Trump on the morning after the inauguration, and that the President “asked him to provide pictures of the inauguration”, investigators wrote in their notes.
Spicer also reached out to the park service, and a staffer said she understood he asked “for NPS to provide photographs in which it appeared the inauguration crowd filled the majority of the space in the photograph”.
The request for additional photographs was relayed to at least two park service photographers who had worked at the event, CNN reported.
One told investigators he arrived to his office about 30 minutes after Trump and Reynolds spoke, and that he cropped the photos, including removing “the bottom where the crowd ended”.
