Worrying new questions have emerged concerning how much prior information investigators had relating to Thomas Crooks, the gunman who made an attempt on the life of President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024.
US politics was shaken to its core last year, and the political landscape very nearly altered forever, after Crooks’ assassination attempt.
Crooks, 20, is said to have fired eight rounds from an AR-15-style rifle from a nearby building’s roof, killing an audience member present at the rally, as well as a fireman. Trump, then the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, was wounded in his upper right ear.
In the aftermath of the incident, the FBI claimed that not much was known about Crooks prior to the shooting. New information, however, has some people speculating that might not have been the case.
Rep. Pat Fallon, of Texas, told The National News Desk that crucial details were not shared with the congressional task force he chaired, whose job it was to review the assassination attempt.
“We definitely got stonewalled,” Fallon claimed.
“When we finally got answers that we thought were fully forthright, now it seems like they weren’t.”
The task force’s conclusion after their investigation was that the assassination attempt had been preventable.
In a 2024 briefing given by former FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate, he revealed that investigators identified over 700 online comments believed to have been written by Crooks between 2019 and 2020, many of which were antisemitic or anti-immigrant in nature.
Fallon, though, says the task force never received these.
“They didn’t share any of the information with us,” he said, as per CBS Austin. “It was either deliberate or incompetence.”
Rep Fallon also said he intends to speak with House Oversight Chairman James Comer about recalling Abbate to testify.
Political commentator Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, suggested last week that government officials are covering up what they knew about Crooks.
Carlson wrote on social media platform X that he can “prove” the FBI misled the public based on Crooks’ online activity.
Criticizing FBI Director Kash Patel, as well as former FBI officials Christopher Wray and Dan Bongino, Carlson drew attention to Crooks’ apparent digital footprint, openly questioning how Trump’s would-be assassin could have flown under the radar.
Kash Patel defended the FBI’s investigation, citing the more than 1,000 interviews, 2,000 public tips, 13 seized devices, nearly 500,000 digital files, hundreds of hours of video, 10 financial accounts, and data retrieved from 25 online profiles.
Speaking to The National News Desk, former FBI Special Agent in Charge Jody Weis stated his believe that the bureau should have detected Crooks’ threat before the July 23 shooting.
“For them to say we just didn’t see much there, that we couldn’t identify a motive – I can’t understand why,” Weis said.
What do you make of the attempted assassination of Trump? Let us know in the comments.
