By Max Jones / ScheerPost Staff Writer
The FBI identified Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania as the suspect involved in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump that took place on 2024 July 13, in Butler, Pennsylvania at Butler Farm Show Inc.
Crooks was shot and killed by the Secret Service “seconds after he allegedly fired shots toward a stage where Trump was speaking on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania.” From the shots allegedly fired by Crooks, one hit Trump in the ear, one attendee died and two others were critically injured.
The Associated Press revealed that one local police officer actually climbed the roof and encountered Crooks before retreating back down after Crooks aimed his rifle at him. Crooks took the shots at Trump immediately after.
According to Reuters:
“State voter records show that Crooks was a registered Republican. The upcoming Nov. 5 election in which Trump is challenging President Joe Biden would have been the first time Crooks had been old enough to vote in a presidential race.”
However, when Crooks was 17, he made a $15 donation to ActBlue according to a 2021 Federal Election Commission filing. ActBlue is a fundraising platform that raises funds for Democratic politicians and initiatives through its online platform. Reuters reported that the donation was noted by the Progressive Turnout Project, whose mission is to “rally Democrats to vote.”
According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper, Crooks received a “National Math & Science Initiative Star Award” in 2022.
In 2023, Crooks was featured in a BlackRock advertisement.
Mary Priselac, 67, a neighbor of Crooks said “There’s never been a gun issue. There’s never been the police being called. You kind of have to wonder what didn’t he get in life? What led to this extreme?”
Law enforcement officials said that Crooks carried no identification, and “had to be identified using other methods,” according to Reuters.
Notably, the FBI has “assumed the role of the lead federal law enforcement agency in the investigation.”
How Did This Happen?
As The Washington Post reported, it is protocol for the Secret Service to “survey and secure all nearby structures to prevent gunfire from reaching a president or anyone else under the agency’s protection” — which raises questions about how this shooting occurred.
According to CBS News:
“Multiple law enforcement sources said [Crooks] was armed with a semi-automatic AR-style rifle and opened fire from the roof of a shed about 410 feet from the stage where Trump was speaking. The gunman’s location was outside of the security perimeter established by the Secret Service around Trump’s rally, according to law enforcement sources.”
Yet the accounts of multiple witnesses at the event, as well as satellite images of the rally grounds, raise questions as to why the building Crooks allegedly fired from was not included in the security perimeter established by the Secret Service, or at least surveilled/guarded more closely.
At least two witnesses — one that was allegedly at the rally and another that was allegedly closer to the building that Brooks fired from — have claimed that they saw the alleged shooter on the roof before any shots were fired, and that they, along with other people they were with, tried to inform law enforcement officials to stop him. Alas, it appears that their efforts were not enough to get law enforcement or Secret Service to stop the shooter before multiple people were shot, including the former President.
Local law enforcement officials also spotted Crooks before shots were fired. According to a senior law enforcement official that spoke with CNN, police spotted the shooter near the event and said he was acting suspiciously, and “put it out over their radio to keep an eye on him – and that information was passed to the Secret Service as well.”Further, imagery from Google Earth/CBS News appears to show a clear line of site from the spot on the building where Crooks’ body was located and Trump — only 400 feet apart from one another.
Based on satellite imagery collected from the event — located at Butler Farm Show Inc. — by ScheerPost, it appears that there were not many buildings near where Trump spoke, as one witness remarked as he questioned why Secret Service did not have eyes on the building Crooks allegedly shot from.
Journalist Bryce Greene, who often writes for FAIR, noted that the law enforcement snipers who appear to have fired back at the gunman were “very clearly looking in that direction when the shots began,” using a video taken from the event as demonstration for his analysis.
According to Senior White House correspondent for NBC Kelly O’Donnell, Trump’s secret service detail was “increasing size” in June, and an official from the Secret Service told her, “The Secret Service detail has been bulked up by additional special agents and support teams to ensure the highest level of security for not only the event sites but the travel in between events.”
Secret Service Spokesman Anthony Gugliemi seemingly corroborated this account, as he told the Washington Post, “recently the U.S. Secret Service added protective resources and capabilities to the former President’s security detail.”
Officials in Washington who have already criticized the Secret Service for similar shortcomings are raising questions about how the shooting happened. The Washington Post stated that, “Jason Chaffetz, a former chair of the House Oversight Committee who produced a sweeping 2015 investigative report on Secret Service security failures and the agency’s being stretched too thin, said he is deeply disturbed that the same problems identified nearly a decade ago remain and appear to have contributed to failure to detect the shooter at the Saturday rally.”
Chaffetz told the Post:
“This was a catastrophic failure. It should never have been a remote possibility.We did all these investigations and did an extensive report so this would never happen again. It’s as if they paid no attention to the bipartisan recommendations.”
While Gugielmi told The Washington Post that the Secret Service relied heavily on local police to “fill out significant parts of its typical array of specialized protective units” George Bivens, a lieutenant colonel with the Pennsylvania State Police, told reporters that local officials take orders from the Secret Service:
“Secret Service always has the lead on securing something like this. We work with them to provide whatever is requested by the Secret Service, but they’re the lead in that security.”
Interestingly, the Post talked to a senior Republican “involved in Trump’s election effort” who said there had been “months of disagreements with the Secret Service over the convention, with Trump’s team believing the Secret Service did not take the threats of violent protests and demonstrations seriously enough…This person said that both sides had grown to distrust one another — and ‘there will be a demand for answers on how a gunman could get on a roof that close to Trump and have a clear shot at him.’”
One former leader of Secret Service presidential protection told the Post; “When the incident occurred I was baffled when I heard the distance of the shot … How could that happen?”
Joe Hagin, who served as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations under Trump from 2017 to 2018, called for a “thorough and fair investigation by people who know what they’re talking about.”
Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI, told CNN’s “State of the Union” program that “Foundationally, one of the most basic elements of site security, especially a site that’s outside and largely uncontrolled, is (to) eliminate sight lines to this space where the protectee will be either speaking or just occupying…When you look at that map, it so clearly points to those buildings that are within it, clearly within shooting range.”
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Max Jones
Max Jones is the producer for The Chris Hedges Report, and a staff writer and video producer for ScheerPost. After graduating summa cum laude from the University of Southern California in 2023, where he studied communications and screenwriting, his journalism has been published in Unlimited Hangout, ScheerPost and republished at Popular Resistance. He has been featured on the Kim Iversen Show and Redacted with Clayton and Natali Morris. He has also interviewed a wide range of figures such as John Kiriakou, Ray McGovern and David Hundeyin. He continues to write fictional stories for the big screen, has directed an independent short film and produced multiple viral videos for both The Chris Hedges Report and ScheerPost.
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