There has been a historic update in the investigation into Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man responsible for firing eight rounds from a semi-automatic AR-15-style rifle at President Donald Trump during his July 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
President Donald Trump made a statement on the status of the investigation into Crook’s Butler assassination attempt last week that changes the entire outlook of the shooting.
The President wrote on his Truth Social feed that the Department of Justice, under former President Joe Biden and former FBI Director Christopher Wray, had largely deleted any information pertaining to Crooks or the assassination attempt before he took office in January of 2025.
The President wrote on his feed: “Everybody knows the Crooked Joe Biden FBI didn’t do what they should have with respect to the Lunatic who shot me in Butler, PA. By the time I got into Office, on January 20th, most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted, or gone. New info was just found! Why wasn’t it seen long ago? This was all a Democrat Plot, to get me out of the Election, that failed. Dirty Cop Christopher Wray should pay a price for the way he handled this assassination attempt, and certainly for the things he said. GOD BLESS AMERICA, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
President Donald Trump’s statement reveals yet another one of the greatest political scandals of our time.
Joe Biden and the Democrat Party, working with elements of the Deep State and former FBI Director Christopher Wray moved to cover up an assassination attempt against their chief political rival. This revelation further raises questions as to the authenticity of Crooks, and who he may have been communicating with prior to the rally.
The President’s comments came just hours after documents from the Senate Judiciary Committee revealed that Thomas Matthew Crooks had his cremation paid for by an ‘anonymous donor’ after his parents refused to pay for his cremation for financial reasons.
That same report also revealed that Crooks had ordered his firearm through the mail, with pieces delivered to a ‘Bob Dole’ at his home address.
The Many Anomalies Of The Near-Assassination of President Donald Trump on July 13th, 2024
I have been reporting on the anomalies surrounding the Crooks Assassination attempt since that fateful day in Butler, of which there are many.
Local officers (Beaver County Emergency Services Unit countersnipers) saw Crooks using a rangefinder and looking toward the stage before the rally in Butler began that day.
They photographed him and radioed/texted the concern. One contemporaneous message around 5:38 p.m. said he was “looking towards stage” with the device.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that Crooks flew a DJI drone over the area around 3:50–4:00 p.m. (roughly two hours before the shooting) for about 11 minutes, approximately 200 yards from the stage. He watched a live feed on the controller. The drone and controller were later recovered from his car.
Crowds pointed and shouted about a man on the roof for roughly two minutes before shots.
The AGR complex (the building Crooks used) was left outside the Secret Service secure perimeter despite known line-of-sight to the stage. No one from any agency was assigned to the roof. Local snipers inside the building thought the outer area and roofs were someone else’s job.
Video posted after shooting shows what appears to be Crooks shuffling on the roof prior to the shots being fired at President Donald Trump.
Approximately 22 seconds before Crooks fired, A Senate report found, a local officer sent a radio alert that there was an armed individual on the building.
But that information was not relayed to key Secret Service personnel who were interviewed by Senate investigators.
The Senate panel also interviewed a Secret Service counter-sniper who said that they saw officers with their guns drawn running toward the building where the shooter was perched, but the person said they did not think to notify anyone to get Trump off the stage.
Another troubling finding from the bipartisan Senate investigation was how technical issues downed Secret Service drones during the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The agent responsible for overseeing the Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) called a toll free 888 tech support hotline ‘to start troubleshooting with the company.’ There were no backups.
It took several hours to get the drones back up and running – and the agent responsible for the drone operations only had three months of experience with the equipment.
USSS denied specific on-the-ground requests for additional C-UAS drone capabilities and a Counter Assault Team liaison in Butler that day.
Investigators found that there was no clear chain of command among the Secret Service and other security agencies and no plan for coverage of the building where the shooter climbed up to fire the shots.
Officials were operating on multiple, separate radio channels, leading to missed communications, and an inexperienced drone operator was stuck on a help line after his equipment wasn’t working correctly.
Communications among security officials were a ‘multi-step game of telephone,’ Peters said.
Who Was Thomas Matthew Crooks? Investigation Reveals More Facts About The Shooter
Thomas Mattew Crooks was born to his parents, Matthew and Mary Crooks, on September 20th, 2003 in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, a Pittsburgh suburb.
He grew up in a modest family home in Bethel Park with his parents, Matthew and Mary Crooks, both licensed professional counselors. He had an older sister, Katherine.
He was often characterized as quiet, intelligent, and socially withdrawn. Reports mention limited disciplinary issues growing up.
Crooks attended local public schools, including Bethel Park High School. He graduated high school in 2022 with high honors.
He received a $500 “star award” from the National Math and Science Initiative and belonged to the National Technical Honor Society. He scored 1530 on the SAT, which is considered to be an incredibly high score.
Crooks earned an associate degree in engineering science from the Community College of Allegheny County, graduating with high honors in May 2024.
He had planned to continue at Robert Morris University for mechanical engineering. The college reported no disciplinary issues in his records.
He worked as a dietary aide (kitchen/food-prep role) at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, a job he held for several years. Employers said he passed a background check and raised no concerns.
The trove of files includes FBI interviews with Thomas’ father, Matthew, who revealed he “never really had a father/son bond” with the gunman, and that his stoic son rarely expressed strong emotions, hardly laughed and was very difficult to read.
Thomas started getting into shooting and guns as a teenager, though he had little interest in the outdoorsman life, Matthew said he briefly took interest in hunting but said he couldn’t envision him actually killing an animal. He also “hated” fishing.
Matthew said his conversations with Thomas during this period were usually brief and gun-related, such as the then-teen wondering if “he would have to do a background check” to buy his dad’s Glock, a question he told investigators he considered “odd.”
He also asked if he could have his grandfather’s guns. Video has since surfaced of Crooks dry-firing a handgun in his bedroom.
Thomas started going to the gun club around the time of the pandemic and was a “terrible” shot — “he could not hit the paper [target],” Matthew told investigators, estimating it took 4-5 years of practice before he could even do that.
Eventually, with practice, Thomas became a better marksman, coming home with range targets showing off to his dad how well he did with a target placed over 100 yards away.
After he questioned his son about why he was “going out so far,” Thomas explained, “he wanted to see how far he could shoot with rudimentary sights.”
He found he was able to shoot even further distances after he bought a prism sight, eventually becoming “very knowledgeable” about how to measure and zero-in on a target, and knew exactly how many clicks it would take to change the specific angle on the sight.
As Thomas’ interest in guns grew, he started buying large numbers of Amazon packages, including “parts, tools and items to increase the capacity of his rifle.”
He took to using the pseudonym “Bob Dole” for his delivery address, a bit of misguided paranoia he picked up after his father’s Citizens Bank checking account was hacked and several fraudulent BetMGM charges were made on his account.
Matthew said Thomas believed if one were to purchase items under a pseudonym, such as the ex-GOP presidential candidate’s moniker, the buyer could never be hacked. The father explained that wasn’t how it worked, and that even under an assumed name for deliveries, the charge is still being made to a bank account under his name.
He also coached Matthew how to use identity-obscuring software like CyberGhost VPN and the Bravenet Browser — which Thomas would argue made them “less likely to be compromised by outside actors.”
Matthew further recalled Thomas using multiple different, privacy-focused encrypted email providers, including GMX and Mailfence.
It was around this time Thomas obtained a 3D printer, and once brought home a large container of an unknown substance he claimed was needed to clean it.
Matthew said he once tried to fashion his own handgun, which nearly ended in disaster.
“Using carbon fiber plastic, a dryer and a toaster oven, Thomas did once create a Glock 19,” Matthew told investigators.
But he said after he discharged a single round from it, he feared the frame would explode, and would not allow Thomas to use it.
From all angles, Crooks appears to be a lonely individual who was coaxed into committing political violence by somebody, yet no accomplice has yet to be revealed. Despite the fact that authorities flagged Crooks as a ‘suspicious person’ who was communicating on his phone and ‘not paying attention to the rally’ on the day of the shooting.
Reports claim that Crooks purchased the ammunition he would use during the attack that very morning, just before coming to the site of the rally to do his drone surveillance.
The documents revealed through the Senate Judiciary Committee reveal the similarities between Crooks and Lee Harvey Oswald, along with other political assassins throughout modern history. A lone gunman, acting without collaboroation.
As you can see through my New York Times Best-Selling book The Man Who Killed Kennedy, the evidence shows that Oswald collaborated with many different groups prior to the assassination of JFK, and that Lyndon Baines Johnson had the most to gain from Kennedy’s assassination. I lay out the facts in that work, which you can find at Barnes and Noble, online, or really any bookstore.
That leads us to the obvious question about Butler, given the time it happened, the effect Donald Trump’s potential assassination would have had on the 2024 election, and the impact it would have had on the psyche of the American people, who had the most to gain from a potential assassination that day?
Given the failures of our own government agencies, who at the time were under the direction of President Joe Biden, who also covered up the evidence surrounding Crooks prior to his leaving office, we are left wondering If the Democrat Party was complicit in this assassination attempt, or perhaps the very “Deep State” President Donald Trump has spent his entire political career fighting against.
There needs to be a full investigation into the DOJ officials who handled this case prior to President Donald Trump taking office.
We must get to the bottom of who exactly worked to cover-up facts surrounding this assassination attempt, and bring them to justice. The time to act is now.
The Eerie Similarities Between Lee Harvey Oswald and Thomas Matthew Crooks
When examining the scenarios which led to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump by Thomas Matthew Crooks in 2024, the similarities are impossible to ignore.
Crooks ordered over 25 gun accessories and parts to his home address using an alias, fearing that his identity would be exposed. Lee Harvey Oswald ordered his rife through the mail, using the alias “A. Hidell” / “Alek Hidell.”
Both Oswald and Crooks were young men in their early 20s from relatively ordinary backgrounds who were described by many who knew them as quiet, socially isolated, or hard to read.
Each killed at least one bystander in addition to wounding the intended target. Neither left a clear manifesto. Investigators in both cases struggled to pin down a single, coherent motive.
Both showed mixed or contradictory political signals.
Both men took action to kill the most important political figure of their time, one successfully, and another unsuccessfully.
The government has also worked to obscure evidence surrounding both alleged shooters, classifying documents to ensure secrecy.
Over two years after the near-assassination of President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and we know no more about Thomas Crooks today than we did they day that he fired the shot.
Who was Crooks communicating with in Butler that day? Why was he able to fly a drone around the site of the rally with Secret Service present, unable to fly their own drones for surveillance?
Why was the AGR building, from which Crooks took his shots, left unattended by Secret Service despite the fact that it was well-within the range which requires rooftop surveillance?
Why did law enforcement act so slowly, even as people screamed and warned of a shooter minutes before Crooks ever fired a single bullet?
We don’t have an honest set of facts when it comes to Butler shooting. That much is clear.
What did Joe Biden, Christopher Wray, and others in government fear being revealed in the Crooks investigation?
Why did they move to delete this crucial, relevant, and historical evidence before President Donald Trump took office?
There must be a complete investigation into the deletion of this information. The American people deserve the truth.
An assassin nearly killed Donald Trump in front of the country. Washington does not get to shrug and move on. Roger Stone is right to keep pressing, and Trump is entitled to demand answers about the investigation into his own attempted murder. If evidence disappeared, identify what vanished, who controlled it, and whether somebody deliberately destroyed it. Prosecute any proven criminal conduct. I will not substitute suspicion for proof, but neither will I accept bureaucratic excuses for failures this catastrophic. Corey Comperatore’s family and the wounded Americans deserve answers. Trump’s survival cannot become Washington’s excuse to bury the reckoning.
How Wray and the former head of the Secret Service at the time got away with both incompetence in doing their jobs and then concealing evidence needs to be investigated for crimes committed by them.