The FBI has concluded that Thomas Crooks, the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooter, acted alone when he tried to assassinate Donald Trump some 16 months ago, according to a Fox News exclusive report. This comes on the heels of several news stories criticizing America’s top law enforcement agency for the lack of transparency that created an information vacuum in the case.
For sure, conservatives were getting restless about the Thomas Crooks affair – and for good reason. Crooks is the 20-year-old who showed up at a Trump rally in Butler, PA, packing a rifle. He climbed a ladder onto a roof, and from that perch, he managed to fire off eight shots in an effort to assassinate Donald Trump. He was unsuccessful, as everyone knows, but an innocent man was murdered that day, and two other bystanders were seriously injured. Little was known about Crooks then, and for the 16 months since that fateful day, little has been said about him.
With almost no information from government sources, enterprising media outlets started digging. What they found about Thomas Crooks was nothing less than astonishing.
Despite being told that the Pennsylvania man had an insignificant online presence, amateur sleuths uncovered a sizable, if not hefty, digital footprint – most of it is downright chilling.
Tucker Carlson and his team acquired videos of Crooks dry-firing a pistol in his bedroom. The computer trail shows a confused young man who swings from the political far right to the far left. They’ve uncovered hundreds of posts made by Crooks like this one:
“Everyone (sic) of the Trump hating (sic) democrats deserve to have their heads chopped of (sic) and put on steaks (sic) for the world to see what happens when you f*** with America.”
Not only is this an indictment of the public school system for failing to teach basic spelling, but it also illustrates a young man with a violent temper. In reply to one of Crook's online rants, one post read:
“You are on YT threatening to shoot government officials. I sure hope the FBI is monitoring social media for violent nutcases. Trump’s cult is literally insane.”
Somewhere in the middle of the COVID crisis, the young Pittsburgher turned into a deranged Trump hater, saying his supporters are “too brainwashed to realize how dumb you are.” Carlson referred to the about-face as an “amazing transformation.”
The New York Post’s Miranda Devine also hammered away at the authorities about their slow-walking information regarding the Butler shooting. She recently chimed in with a column on Crook’s online posts on a website called DeviantArt. She also featured his interaction with a member of a Norwegian neo-Nazi group who wrote, “Political power comes from the barrel of a gun,” a Maoist quote which Crooks took a shine to and repeated in his own digital commentary.
Butler and the FBI: Connecting the Dots
FBI Director Kash Patel must have been feeling the heat from his perch atop America’s number one cop shop because on November 14, he posted a seemingly defensive message about the Butler/Crooks affair, which read in part:
“The FBI’s investigation into Thomas Crooks identified and examined over 20 online accounts, data extracted from over a dozen electronic devices, examination of numerous financial accounts, and over 1,000 interviews and 2000 public tips.
“The investigation, conducted by over 480 FBI employees, revealed Crooks had limited online and in person interactions, planned and conducted the attack alone, and did not leak or share his intent to engage in the attack with anyone.”
Patel and his wingman, former conservative media personality Dan Bongino, and another unnamed senior FBI official, reportedly sat down with Fox’s Brooke Singman ostensibly to convince her of their hard work and due diligence regarding their investigation into the Butler shooter. Bongino is reported to have told her:
"We have reviewed this case over and over — looked into every nugget. We have spoken to the families, the president — there is no cover-up here. There is no motive for it, there is no reason for it."
Bongino went on to say: "The degree of his [Crooks] digital footprint was not messaged correctly at all by prior leadership.” Also quoted was the anonymous official who claims the investigation was “one of the largest mobilizations of FBI resources in history that, frankly, continued to this day."
FBI officials say they were able to debunk theories that suggested foreign entities or persons were involved. They also denied the existence of any manifesto left by Crooks. As well, they maintain that no adjacent involvement was uncovered from the anthropomorphic “furry” community in which Crooks was involved. Nor were there any “phantom rounds,” and no evidence whatsoever of a second shooter.
Until this recent news from the FBI, there have been too many questions and too few answers from the authorities regarding the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump in Butler, PA. Most of them come down to, “What did the FBI know about Crooks and when did they know it?” A lack of transparency only serves to fire up conspiracy theorists.
Americans are a suspicious lot, and perhaps justly so. It took decades for the government to release records pertinent to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Documents were sealed in other cases as well – Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy are two of the most prominent. Lately, the taffy pull over releasing the records of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein came to a head after conservatives put up a hue and cry over all the secrecy.
If the recent Jeffrey Epstein fiasco taught us anything, we should have learned that Americans need government authorities to be transparent and release whatever documents they have in their possession. Nothing less will do.
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