Fact check: Viral clip of Trump promising to free Imran Khan after US elections win is fake

On November 5, several users on TikTok shared a video of Donald Trump saying that if he wins the US elections, he’ll try his best to get Imran Khan out of jail. However, the video clip is dubbed over and is originally from 2017.
Trump, the Republican Party candidate, has won the race for the US presidential elections and is all set to become the 47th president of the US. He was facing off against the Democratic Party, led by current Vice President Kamala Harris, in this election.
Imran Khan has been imprisoned in Adiala Jail for over a year. His sentences in the previous two Toshakhana cases were suspended, and he was acquitted in the cypher and iddat cases, but he has since been charged in a third Toshakhana case.
On November 5, a user on TikTok, who is a PTI supporter based on his username and past posts, shared a video of Trump saying that if he wins the US presidential elections, he will try his best to get Khan out of jail.
In the clip, Trump can be heard saying, “Hello, my Pakistani American friends. I promise, that if I win, I will try my best to get Imran Khan out of jail as soon as possible. He is my friend, I love him. I will support him to take over the government again, and rock, and we will work together to make our ties stronger. Imran Khan Zindabad”.
The video garnered 2.4 million views and was reshared 19,300 times.
The same video was also shared on YouTube here, here and here.
A fact-check was initiated to verify the claim due to its virality and the ongoing US election season. There is a popular narrative among Khan’s supporters suggesting that Trump becoming president could tip the scales in favour of the incarcerated former prime minister.
Upon investigating the clip, the team noticed discrepancies between the audio and Trump’s lip movements, suggesting that the video appeared to be dubbed.

To further investigate the circulated video, a Google reverse image search was conducted to trace the original clip. The search yielded results from May 12, 2017, on NBC News’ YouTube channel, which redirected to Trump’s exclusive interview with Lester Holt, titled “President Donald Trump on his firing of James Comey (Extended Exclusive).”
The description of the YouTube video also provided context that Trump was justifying his action of firing then-FBI director James Comey to the interviewer.
The reverse image search also yielded versions of the same dubbed video from March 2024, implying that this isn’t the first time that dubbed clip went viral and that it was fact-checked back then by an Indian fact-checking outlet Newschecker.
Therefore, the claim regarding Donald Trump reassuring Pakistani Americans that, if he gets elected as the president of the United States, he will get Imran Khan out of jail as soon as possible is false.
The clip has been dubbed over and is from 2017 when Trump was not talking about Khan but firing former FBI director James Comey.
This fact check was originally published by iVerify Pakistan — a project of CEJ and UNDP.