New York NY USA-July 14, 2024 Headlines of New York newspapers report on the previous days attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump. (Photo credit: rblfmr / hutterstock)
An "anonymous donor" paid for the cremation of a gunman who tried to assassinate President Donald Trump at a July 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The detail was buried in a trove of documents about would-be assassin Thomas Crooks provided to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) as part of his ongoing inquiry into the assassination attempt, reported the New York Post.
"Anonymous donor paid for cremation," reads a note at the end of a summary of an FBI interview with the gunman's father, Matthew Crooks, information that appears to have come from a family lawyer.
The addendum noted that Matthew was "retired" and his wife was on leave from work, suggesting the family lacked the money for funeral arrangements.
Matthew told investigators elsewhere in the records that he was "unemployed" at the time of the shooting.
The cremation was first revealed in 2024 by Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), who was "infuriated and disturbed" that the FBI released Thomas' body to the family less than two weeks after the shooting.
"The FBI released the body for cremation 10 days after," Higgins wrote in a letter to the congressional task force investigating security failures around the attack.
The revelation adds to a growing body of unsettling detail from the same FBI records, previously reported by the Post, describing Thomas as emotionally distant from birth and obsessed with long-distance shooting, and describing increasingly erratic behavior in his final days, including pacing the family garage while "talking and not making any sense" a week before the attack.
Matthew Crooks said he did not view their shared interest in guns as bonding, believing his son "had ulterior motives."
The Post's attempts to reach Matthew Crooks for comment on the cremation funding were unsuccessful.