In an explosive Truth Social post Tuesday, President Donald Trump implicated Democrats in the July 2024 assassination attempt against his life, claiming it was “all a Democrat plot” to get him out of the upcoming election.
During a rally in in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024, Trump was shot and wounded in his upper right ear by 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, who fired eight rounds from an AR-15–style rifle from a nearby building’s roof.
Trump said Tuesday that the FBI’s files on the case were “missing, altered, corrupted, or gone” by the time he returned to office, and blamed the problem on “Dirty Cop Christopher Wray.”
Until recently, remarkably little has been known about would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks, or the egregious security breaches that allowed him to lurk on a nearby building with a n AR rifle aimed at the then-Republican presidential nominee and former president.
“Everybody knows the Crooked Joe Biden FBI didn’t do what they should have with respect to the Lunatic who shot me in Butler, PA. By the time I got into Office, on January 20th, most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted, or gone,” Trump complained.
New info was just found! Why wasn’t it seen long ago? This was all a Democrat Plot, to get me out of the Election, that failed. Dirty Cop Christopher Wray should pay a price for the way he handled this assassination attempt, and certainly for the things he said. GOD BLESS AMERICA — MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
The president did not explain where the “new info” came from, but the FBI on Tuesday released its eighth tranche of files on Crooks containing 181 pages of heavily redacted interview summaries, invoices, evidence logs, and internal communications from FBI Pittsburgh. Of the 181 pages, 95 were completely withheld.
The heavily redacted documents reveal that packages of gun parts were delivered to 20-year-old Crooks under the pseudonym “Bob Dole,” and an anonymous donor paid for his cremation.
“Anonymous donor paid for cremation,” reads a footnote at the end of a summary of an FBI interview with Crooks’ father, Matthew.
The addendum goes on to note that Matthew was “retired” and that his wife was on leave from work, suggesting the family lacked funds for Thomas’ funeral arrangements.
Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) was the first to reveal in a preliminary report (released August 20, 2024) that he was unable to examine Crooks’ body on Monday, August 5, because of the “disturbing fact” that the FBI had released the body for cremation just ten days after July 13. 2024.
“On J23, Crooks was gone,” Higgins said. “Nobody knew this until Monday, August 5, including the County Coroner, law enforcement, Sheriff, etc. Yes, Butler County Coroner technically had legal authority over the body, but I spoke with the Coroner, and he would have never released Crooks’ body to the family for cremation or burial without specific permission from the FBI.”
The Louisiana Republican said the FBI’s behavior looked to him like obstruction of congressional oversight.
Higgins was also troubled that the FBI immediately cleaned up biological evidence from the crime scene, which he said was “unheard of.”
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“Cops don’t do that, ever,” the former law enforcement officer stressed at the time.
According to what is viewable in the new FBI documents, Matthew Crooks described his son Thomas as “emotionless from birth,” noting he did not cry when born and remained unusually quiet throughout his life, with a lack of genuine father-son bonding.
Crooks was a strong student (SAT score of 1500) with advanced technical skills, including building a Raspberry Pi security camera and attempting to manufacture a Glock 19 using carbon-fiber plastic. He had a long-standing obsession with long-range shooting and firearms modification.
Crooks allegedly did not strongly align with either party; he expressed dislike for “woke” ideology but also shocked by the January 6 Capitol breach and did not believe the 2020 election was stolen. He once donated $15 to a progressive political action committee.
The FBI has failed establish a clear ideological motive as Crooks left no manifesto or recorded grievances, and investigators found no foreign nexus or assistance.
The Bureau concluded in November 2025 after an extensive investigation involving 485 agents, thousands of interviews, 10+ search warrants, 100 subpoenas, and 13 seized electronic devices, that Thomas Matthew Crooks acted entirely alone.
A senior FBI official stated: “There is no information, no evidence anywhere in this investigation, that shows there was any foreign individual or foreign government or foreign organization tied to Thomas Crooks.”
However, among the newly released documents is a report that on May 25, 2024, a “person of interest who resembles the shooter” spent about an hour browsing Keystone Armory in Edinboro, Penn. (about two hours north of Bethel Park) “accompanied by a white male believed to be around his mid 30’s and another older white male with a gray beard.”
The Crooks lookalike bought 20 rounds of 7.62x54R Mosin-Nagant ammunition with a MasterCard. A follow-up 302 confirming or ruling out the identification has not been released, nor has there been an identification of the two men.
The documents also show that Crooks used “an encrypted email service hosted in Belgium” called Mailfence on his cellphone.
Asked about Trump’s Truth Social post during a press conference at the White House Rose Garden, Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged there is “new information about the shooter and about his background, about his history,” but declined to explain Trump’s “Democrat plot” claim, CNN reported.
He did side with Trump’s frustration toward the FBI, saying, “As far as the president’s frustration with the FBI, I was there with him, I lived it.”
FBI Director Kash Patel, testifying at a Senate oversight hearing Tuesday, reiterated there was no evidence the Butler shooter was working with others.
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