Wednesday, September 16, 2026

More Dribbles Out On Thomas Crooks

As of yesterday, there were a few headlines with new data points on Butler shooter Thomas Crooks, such as:

President Trump’s would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was born without making a sound on Sept. 20, 2003, a trait that would follow him right up to the end of his short life when the 20-year-old died in a hail of Secret Service gunfire seconds after missing Trump’s head with a bullet by a hairsbreadth.

“When Thomas was born he did not scream and he was always quiet from that point on,” his father, Matthew, told feds in newly unearthed documents about the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.

. . . The trove of files includes FBI interviews with Thomas’ father, Matthew, who revealed he “never really had a father/son bond” with the gunman, and that his stoic son rarely expressed strong emotions, hardly laughed and was very difficult to read.

Or this, in a completely separate story:

An “anonymous donor” paid for the cremation of President Trump’s would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks, just days after the deadly Butler, Pa., rally shooting, according to federal records reviewed by The Post.

The revelation was included in a trove of documents provided to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), as part of his ongoing inquiry into the first Trump assassination attempt.

“Anonymous donor paid for cremation,” reads a note at the end of a summary of an interview the gunman’s father, Matthew, conducted with federal investigators.

. . . The addendum noted that Matthew was “retired” and that his wife was on leave from work, suggesting the family couldn’t come up with the money for Thomas’ funeral arrangements.

Matthew explains in other parts of the federal records viewed by The Post that he was “unemployed” at the time of the shooting.

Neither the FBI nor the Post reporters seem to have done much to try to tie these separate bits together. Surprisingly, Kevin Downey Jr at one of Salem Media's normally somnolent outlets does the most digging:

Keystone Armory told the FBI that a man who looked like Crooks spent an hour in their store with two unidentified men about two weeks before the shooting. The store turned over video surveillance recordings, but nothing further was mentioned.

. . . Crooks met an unknown man at the Clairton gun range the day before the shooting. The FBI ran a DMV check on his car, but no name is listed in the FBI files.

The FBI found that Crooks had four encrypted email accounts, located in Germany, Belgium, and New Zealand. The FBI requested that the countries send any and all information regarding these accounts. What, if anything, was sent back is also not in the recently released files.

But even this adds little to the picture we already have, for instance this 2025 story:

Thomas Matthew Crooks — the 20-year-old gunman who nearly assassinated Donald Trump a year ago Sunday — spent his childhood in a strange, emotionless environment dictated by a “very strict” father, according to a relative.

. . . The last time [first cousin] Mark [Crooks] saw Thomas, his sister and their parents was in March 2019 at their grandfather’s funeral, where the future assassin and his sibling “stood next to [parents Matthew and Mary] like statues.

“It’s like they were under strict orders. Like, they didn’t budge. It was really weird. We all said that,” Mark recalled.

Shortly thereafter, Matthew “pretty much told us, ‘You’ll never see us again,’” Mark said – and they didn’t.

The Downey story cites this reaction from Bret Baier: But a commenter notes that even if Crooks had 27 devices, he didn't talk to anyone. If any breakthroughs emerge on this story, it's going to take someone with more insight and more energy than anyone with either the FBI or media has yet shown.

UPDATE:

This seems entirely consistent with what we've learned so far about Crooks.

posted by test @ September 16, 2026   0 Comments