Rampaging Butler shooter targeted Trump foes days before assassination attempt: FBI
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.
It’s unclear whether the signs were poster board placards or car stickers, but the father paraphrased the messaging as, “Keep Trump out of office.”
The father also told investigators an unidentified male with Crooks who was sitting in a truck nearby made a remark about “commies” — a derogatory reference apparently aimed at those opposing Trump.
The former classmate who was working the event told the FBI he ran into Crooks in the parking lot while taking trash out. The two had not seen each other since high school, and the former classmate described Crooks’ demeanor as “energetic and excited.”
The FBI report indicates investigators confirmed through a separate interview that the setting of the former classmate’s encounter with Crooks was “a peaceful democratic political event.”
Screenshot of FBI interview with Thomas Crooks associatesCourtesy FBI
The interview notes, alongside other FBI reports and handwritten notes, and community college and employment records, were released by the agency last week in response to a Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit by the conservative nonprofit Judicial Watch.
Two years after the attempted assassination, Crooks’ motive remains unknown. Previous reporting on his political stance has presented an ambiguous picture of a person who didn’t hold particularly strong views or obvious extremist ties.
The tranche of files released last week does not include any other references to the individual who was allegedly yelling “commies” while he was with Crooks. It is unclear whether the FBI ever identified him and spoke with him. But former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino told Fox News Digital last November that following “one of the largest mobilizations of FBI resources in history,” the agency concluded that Crooks acted alone.
The FBI responded to an email from Raw Story about this story by declining to make a fresh statement.
The newly released FBI files also include an interview with an unidentified friend from middle and high school who described Crooks as a conservative-leaning person.
“Thomas called himself a Republican,” the report says. “Thomas did not like the Welfare State and was against the ‘woke’ ideology but never really espoused the Republican ideology.”
The friend, who grew up nearby in the Pittsburgh suburb of Bethel Park, told investigators that the two “did not feel strongly one way or another politically,” and their conversations would typically lead to them “just making fun of the politicians.”
Despite his opposition to “woke” ideology, Crooks appears to have been far from a MAGA partisan: The friend told the FBI that Crooks “expressed shock over the events surrounding the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021,” and “did not believe the 2020 presidential election was rigged.”
The friend told the FBI that he and Crooks frequented a gun range, where Crooks honed his marksmanship skills. Both the friend and Crooks’ father, whose FBI interview is also included in the newly released files, told investigators that they each “introduced Thomas to shooting.” Crooks’ father revealed that he sold his son the DMPS Panther Arms Rifle that he used to shoot at Trump.
Crooks’ interest in distance shooting made an impression on his friend, who told investigators Crooks would show him targets from 50 to 150 yards when he came back from the range.
Crooks told the friend “he wanted to see how far he could shoot with rudimentary sights after” the friend questioned why he was “going out so far,” the report says.
Crooks’ father similarly told investigators that his son expressed interest in “action shooting” and participating in a special program at the range for shooting distances of more than 200 yards.
When Crooks opened fire at Trump from the rooftop of the nearby AGR International building, he was reportedly about 147 yards away.
Crooks’ father told the FBI his son took a hunter’s safety class, but never went hunting.
Crooks also took a shooting class at a firearms superstore outside of Pittsburgh, with the final session taking place roughly three weeks before the assassination attempt. A couple who attended the class with Crooks told the FBI they were impressed with his aim, describing a paper target riddled with 50 rounds tightly clustered together.
The records also include a Myers-Briggs personality test completed for Crooks in 2018, when he was 15 years old. The test listed some of Crooks’ possible strengths and blind spots in his “interpersonal negotiating style.”
Among his possible strengths, the test identified Crooks as a “creative problem solver; often gifted at devising innovative options” and a “brilliant strategist.”
But the test flagged a handful of blind spots. Crooks “may not communicate clearly; what makes sense to him may be confusing to others,” the test found. And he “may be impatient with others who are not as quick or smart as he is.”