Our sister site Townhall covers some new information on the background, methods, and potential motivation of Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump at a Butler, PA rally in 2024. Crooks' attempt to take out Trump instead killed Firefighter Corey Comperatore and seriously injured two other people, before Crooks was shot and killed by Secret Service agents.
New information dropped this week about Thomas Crooks, 20, the would-be assassin who nearly assassinated Donald Trump at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024. Details following the incident were already scarce, and the lack of disclosure put the Secret Service under intense scrutiny, along with lapses in the security perimeter. Crooks scaled a rooftop overlooking the rally and fired numerous shots at Trump from less than 500 feet away. He was later gunned down by federal agents. Then the agency's appalling explanation for why that roof wasn't secure was pilloried. It was a circus.
These records were obtained by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) as part of his ongoing probe into the Butler debacle. The documents include an FBI interview with Matthew Crooks, Thomas Crooks' father, only two days after young Crooks' attempted murder of Trump.
According to the New York Post's review of the records, Thomas Crooks used the name "Bob Dole" to obtain his stocks of ammunition and gun parts from Amazon and other online retailers, and had these parcels delivered to his parents' home. The additional gun parts included "'tools and items to increase the capacity of his rifle,' the same weapon that his father would give to him on the morning of the rally at the Butler Farm Show Grounds in Pennsylvania."
It’s unclear why the younger Crooks, whose parents maintain he did not express much interest in politics, adopted the political moniker for the late senator from Kansas who failed to win the 1996 presidential contest as the Republican Party’s nominee.
Young Crooks' reasoning behind his use of the name of the late Bob Dole bordered on the conspiratorial. After his father's bank account was hacked, Crooks believed that if he used a pseudonym for online purchases, along with a virtual private network (VPN), it would prevent hackers from tracing the purchases back to the accounts.
The elder Crooks said his son believed that if one were to purchase items under a pseudonym, a person would never be hacked. However, his dad said even if you were to purchase an item using a pseudonym, those charges are still being made to a financial account under your real name.
Thomas apparently dismissed his dad’s logic and continued to use pseudonyms to make online purchases in an attempt to avoid having his accounts compromised.
As Grassley's investigation has unfolded, FBI officials testified last year that Crooks had at least 35 digital accounts, including several foreign-based email accounts from Germany and Belgium. The bureau was “able to access” these accounts, but the officials and FBI Director Kash Patel concluded that there was no foreign influence or corroboration found in the assassination attempt.
However, it is Matthew Crooks' admissions about his own knowledge — or lack thereof — of his son's behavior that is most disturbing. The elder Crooks admitted that he and Thomas "Never really had a father-son bond" and said, "his son rarely expressed strong emotions."
Matthew Crooks also admitted that from a young age, Thomas acted out in ways that should have raised red flags.
WATCH:
New FBI documents are revealing what Thomas Crooks' own father told investigators about the son he struggled to read long before the Butler assassination attempt.
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 15, 2026
Crooks' father described him as quiet, emotionally difficult to read and sometimes destructive when he got bored. As… pic.twitter.com/iFuVTJhLfW
New FBI documents are revealing what Thomas Crooks' own father told investigators about the son he struggled to read long before the Butler assassination attempt.
Crooks' father described him as quiet, emotionally difficult to read and sometimes destructive when he got bored. As Crooks grew older, his interest in firearms deepened, and at one point he asked his father whether he would need a background check to buy his Glock, a question his father considered "odd."
But his family told investigators they never saw warning signs that suggested he was capable of what came next.
On July 13, 2024, Crooks opened fire at then-candidate Trump's rally in Butler, hitting Trump in the ear, killing Corey Comperatore, and seriously wounding two other rallygoers before a Secret Service counter-sniper killed him.
The FBI has previously said Crooks carefully planned the attack, but investigators have struggled to establish a definitive motive. |
As Townhall noted:
Now we’ve learned that Crooks was a loner, quiet since birth, and that his antisocial tendencies may have stemmed from a lack of family interaction; his father lamented his son’s lack of participation due to work schedules. He also said he couldn’t identify a motive for why his son tried to kill Trump. He also noted that Crooks had conflicting political views, and that his GOP registration was mostly because he was a Republican — Thomas was critical of Trump and Biden.
According to an unidentified interviewee from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Crooks was a “big history buff” who was “interested in politics” and “spoke often about ‘Trump and Biden’ back when ‘Trump initially got elected.’”
On its face, the Matthew Crooks interview sounds like a father who is in deep denial about his son and seemingly pretends to be clueless about his son's aberrant behavior.
Editor’s Note: The American people overwhelmingly support President Trump’s law and order agenda.
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