A new bombshell has dropped in the case of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the individual who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year.
Ever since the shooting, questions have remained about Crooks’ motive and his history. The government has not exactly been forthcoming with information about the would-be assassin.
But a New York Post report has revealed details that have been hidden until now.
Then-FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress after the July 13, 2024, attack that the bureau had found nothing in Crooks’ online history that pointed to a motive or political ideology.
A week later, Wray’s deputy Paul Abbate told Congress that comments posted on one of Crooks’ social media accounts “appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature.”
Thanks to an enterprising source who uncovered Crooks’ hidden digital footprint, we can see that Abbate misled Congress by omission, because he left out an entire section of Crooks’ online interactions from January to August 2020 when he did an ideological backflip and went from rabidly pro-Trump to rabidly anti-Trump and then went dark, never seeming to post again.
Among the 17 accounts uncovered by our source were ones on YouTube, Snapchat, Venmo, Zelle, GroupMe, Discord, Google Play, Quizlet, Chess.com and Quora.
The online interactions from when Crooks was ages 15 to 17 give us a better understanding of his evolution into an assassin, and invite more questions about what — or who — reversed his ideology.
“The danger Crooks posed was visible for years in public online spaces,” says the source. “His radicalization, violent rhetoric and obsession with political violence were all documented under his real name. The threat wasn’t hidden.”
However, a deeper dive revealed that Crooks “was not simply some unknowable lone actor … He left a digital trail of violent threats, extremist ideology and admiration for mass violence,” a source told The New York Post.
Crooks frequently wrote social media posts in which he promoted the idea of assassinating government officials. Yet, his comments did not raise any alarm. But even more disturbing is that none of these details were mentioned in the congressional report published in December.
The attempted assassin had been an ardent Trump supporter between the ages of 15 and 17. In a 2019 social media post, he said Trump is “the literal definition of Patriotism.”
Crooks also posted vitriol against Democratic officials — especially progressive lawmakers. He wished ‘a quick painful death to all the deplorable immigrants and anti-Trump congresswoman who don’t deserve anything this country [sic] has given them.”
He even promoted the idea of murdering Democrats.
The New York Post reports that Crooks’ political views took a turn in 2020 when he began criticizing Trump.
The first time he criticized Trump was on Jan. 23, 2020, when he commented on a video of law professor Jonathan Turley talking about Trump’s first impeachment.
“Keep in mind the only reason we may know about any of this is because of Trump’s stupidity,” Crooks wrote.
He started describing Trump supporters as a cult: “How can you people call others sheep, but you are do [too] brainwashed to realize how dumb you are,” he wrote on Feb. 26, 2020. “I mean literally you guys sound like a cult at times.”
The same day he described Trump as “racist.”
By April 2020, Crooks was constantly criticizing Trump’s pandemic response, saying he was “too slow and everything he’s doing now should have been done.”
Crooks also suggested “terrorism style attacks” such as planting bombs in government buildings.
Even more bizarre was that Crooks had reportedly developed a “furry” fetish and had been delving into gender ideology. The report states that he began using the pronouns “they/them” for himself on the platform DeviantArt, which is popular with the “furry” community, which is interested in animals with human characteristics.
The would-be assassin had also befriended neo Nazis, according to The New York Post. Members of a Norwegian Nazi group encouraged Crooks’ radicalization.
This report raises a flurry of questions. Did the FBI know about Crooks’ online radicalization? Did they know about his repeated calls for violence? Has the government actually investigated Crooks’ ties to Nazi groups?
Also, why are we just now hearing about this? If the details in The Post’s report are accurate, it doesn’t seem likely that the FBI would have also uncovered this information. If this is the case, why hide it?