Guns

Thomas Crooks was spotted ripping anti-Donald Trump signs from cars at a political event three days before attempting to assassinate the presidential candidate in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, the father of a former classmate told the FBI.

Crooks was killed by a Secret Service sniper after the 20-year-old fired eight shots at the former and future president from a nearby rooftop at a campaign rally, elevating Trump to a near mythic status days before he accepted the Republican Party nomination for president. Corey Comperatore, a rally attendee, was killed in the shooting, and two others were seriously injured.

Three days before the Butler rally, one of Crooks’ former high school classmates and his father encountered Crooks near an event center. After dropping his son off for work at the venue, the father told FBI task force officers he saw a young man “who he was 99% sure to be Thomas Crooks” in a parking lot removing “signs” from cars. ...

The White House released its long-delayed counterterrorism strategy in May, identifying “violent left-wing extremists” as a major terror threat, following a directive from President Donald Trump last September ordering the FBI to investigate antifascists based on a wildly varied set of characteristics that include “extremism on migration, race, and gender.”

Then, as Trump was preparing to celebrate his 80^th and the country’s 250^th birthdays with an Ultimate Fighting Championship event on the White House lawn last month, local law enforcement in Ohio uncovered an extraordinary plot by a national network to carry out a drone attack, with snipers positioned on rooftops to kill “high-value targets" including the president, Vice President JD Vance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Elon Musk.

The wide array of grievances and political beliefs of the defendants who spent weeks training with rifles and coordinating efforts to acquire drones are an awkward fit for the counterterrorism strategy authored by White House aide Sebastian Gorka, and a National Security Presidential Memorandum, or NSPM-7, issued by Trump in the weeks after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk....

Donald Trump Jr. has found yet another way to monetize his father's presidency — and this could have deadly consequences, a new analysis warns.

Salon columnist Heather Digby Parton on Thursday authored a withering editorial about the eldest Trump son's spokesman position at online retailer GrabAGun and his ownership of 300,000 in the publicly traded company.

"It’s pretty clear this is just another Trump family grift, and that it will likely have lethal consequences," wrote Digby. "Somebody’s going to make a profit at it, and the Trumps are always first in line to wet their beaks."...

A Utah prosecutor is facing a potential contempt of court charge after appearing on Fox News to discuss evidence in the high-profile Charlie Kirk shooting case, appearing to violate a judge's strict order limiting public statements about the proceedings.

According to NBC News, Deputy Utah County Attorney Christopher Ballard will appear before Fourth District Judge Tony Graf Jr. in Provo, where the judge is expected to rule on whether Ballard's April Fox News appearance "breached" the court's gag order.

Tyler Robinson's defense attorneys filed a motion characterizing Ballard's media appearance as a "contemptuous media tour" designed to circumvent the judge's restrictions on out-of-court statements. Robinson's lawyers have aggressively sought to limit media coverage, arguing that intense public attention threatens their client's right to a fair trial....

FBI records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit reveal that a Butler County Sheriff's deputy exchanged two emails with Thomas Matthew Crooks — the gunman who shot and wounded President Donald Trump at his Butler, Pennsylvania rally on July 13, 2024 — prior to the attack. The content of those emails remains unknown. The records are heavily redacted.

Judicial Watch announced it had forced the release of 48 pages of FBI records through a federal lawsuit. An FBI interview summary from July 17, 2024 shows a deputy telling investigators she had checked her records and found two email communications from Crooks — both "in regard to [redacted]." She told investigators she did not personally interact with Crooks and did not recognize him when news of the shooting broke, only learning of the connection when a New York Times reporter emailed her Sunday night asking questions.

The records also reveal that a Beaver County Emergency Services Unit medic who responded to the AGR building roof — where Crooks had positioned himself — told the FBI she observed a Washington County SWAT officer remove "a gray remote device with numerical push buttons and an antenna and a cell phone" from Crooks' right pocket after he was killed. Explosive ordnance disposal personnel subsequently arrived on the roof to examine the device. A police canine also "hit" on the building beneath the roof while the medic was present, prompting an evacuation — though Crooks' body remained on the roof....

Ryan Fournier, the co-founder and chairman of Students for Trump, was arrested early Tuesday in Washington, D.C., on domestic violence charges — the second time in less than two years he has faced accusations of assaulting a woman.

The Metropolitan Police Department charged Fournier with simple assault and attempted threats to do bodily harm after an incident late Monday night at the Apartments at CityCenter.

According to an affidavit obtained by Defector, the victim — a woman who told police she had been dating Fournier for about two months and was in town to visit him — tried to wake him after finding him passed out, apparently intoxicated, on the floor. Fournier responded by swinging his fists and striking her in the face with a closed fist two or three times, she told police. ...

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) suggested over the weekend that a Trump administration official may have quietly contacted a federal appeals judge to stall a contempt inquiry, and the legal analyst interviewing him declared that if so, “people are going to jail.”

In a clip flagged by political video aggregator Acyn Torabi from the Legal AF podcast, Whitehouse laid out a hypothetical involving D.C. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee.

“If some MAGA official communicated to Judge Rao or her chambers and that resulted in the administrative stay that held the door open and kept the facts from the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation and stalled investigation into misconduct by the DOJ,” Whitehouse began, “ask any judge how big a deal that is.”...

President Donald Trump cut off reporters and walked away after they repeatedly demanded evidence for his claim of widespread mail-in voting fraud in California.

Trump spoke to reporters outside the White House on Monday as he prepared to board Marine One for campaign events.

The midterm elections are less than a month away, on Nov. 3....

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) bragged about a road salt win at a Maine Senate debate, and her challenger's comeback had observers cheering.

On Tuesday, Collins faced Democratic challenger Troy Jackson in a debate weeks before the midterms. Asked what she would do about President Donald Trump's tariffs on Canada, Collins pointed to a specific victory.

"I was successful at getting road salt removed from the tariff list," Collins said. Jackson responded by pouncing on the answer....