Trump posted a photo of me sitting by my tent - then a bulldozer arrived
US President Donald Trump was riding along in his motorcade through Washington DC last Sunday on the way to his golf club when he saw something that clearly irked him - a homeless tent encampment on a patch of grass.
"The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY," he posted on Truth Social that morning, along with four photos.
One of these showed a man sitting in a camping chair by his tent, who I would eventually learn was Bill Theodie. Four days later, Mr Theodie was forced to move after the president announced a crackdown on homelessness in the nation's capital.
"That's me," he said when I showed him the photo Trump posted, which was the first time he had seen it.
"That is insane that he just leaned out the window and takes a picture of me and then posts it on social media in a negative way, using it as his political tool."
On Monday, Trump announced his administration would be "removing homeless encampments from all over our parks, our beautiful, beautiful parks".
"We have slums here, we're getting rid of them," he said from behind the podium in the White House press room.
After the announcement, BBC Verify decided to investigate the photos that the president had posted.
We matched visual clues in the pictures of the tents - including a bend in the road alongside the grassy area where they were pitched - to a location on Google streetview.
The encampment was about a 10-minute drive from the White House, and less than that from the BBC office in Washington - so I headed down there to see what had happened to the site that had caught the president’s attention.
When I arrived local officials were there warning people they........
© BBC
