The attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, 2024, at the Butler County, Pennsylvania fairgrounds by Thomas Crooks came within a fraction of an inch of changing American history, had Trump not been “saved by God” that day. Yet, more than a year later, many critical questions remain unanswered because the FBI, the DOJ, the government actively hidden crucial information about the shooter and the attack.
Tucker Carlson, in a recent podcast (also see video podcast), confronts the evidence suggesting a widespread effort by federal authorities to prevent an honest, public investigation. The New York Post’s Miranda Devine contended the same thing in “FBI, Secret Service butchered the Thomas Crooks case and invited conspiracies – we deserve the truth” with nearly identical data a few days later, possibly using the same anonymous source as Tucker. Devine says “There is something very wrong with the official story and that invites conspiracy theories.”
1. Executive Summary: The Key Points
The core premise of this report is that the official narrative surrounding Thomas Crooks is false and deliberately misleading. The FBI claimed Crooks was a “virtual ghost online” and a lone-wolf right-winger. However, sources have obtained hundreds of comments and digital records confirming that Crooks was, in fact, active across more than a dozen accounts and left a detailed digital trail of violent threats years before the shooting.
The comments reveal that Crooks’s political ideology underwent an “amazing transformation” from a radical Trump supporter to an anti-conservative extremist. Furthermore, the Carlson presents evidence of alleged federal obstruction, including the hasty cremation of Crooks’s body and the hosing down of the crime scene.
The purpose of this report is to confront the government on why they have ignored subpoenas, withheld footage, and misled the public about Crooks’s true motives.
2. The FBI’s Assertions in the Aftermath of the Trump Shooting
Immediately following the attack, federal investigators put forth specific claims about Thomas Crooks. Then-FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress after the July 13, 2024, attack that the FBI had found nothing in Crooks’ online history that pointed to a motive or political ideology.
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate told Congress that Crooks acted alone, was an “online ghost,” and that his motive stemmed from right-wing ideology. Abbate testified that a social media account, possibly attributable to Crooks, reflected “anti-semitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence”.
However, the Tucker alleges that the FBI used a “selective read of those comments to lie about what Thomas Crooks was thinking”.
The evidence revealed that Crooks was far from a ghost; he had accounts on Snapchat, Venmo, PayPal (under the alias Rod Swanson), Zelle, Discord, Google Play, Quizlet, chess.com, and two foreign encrypted email accounts.
The FBI would have known the authenticity of these accounts since the day of the shooting. Furthermore, FBI officials, including the director, have cited “two open ongoing prosecutions” or claimed they must wait until “the trial is over” before releasing critical information, despite the fact that Crooks is dead and there is no trial against him.
3. What Was Uncovered About Thomas Crooks’s Political Evolution Timeline
The digital comments posted by Thomas Crooks between 2019 and 2020 detail a volatile ideological shift that contradicts the FBI’s initial claims that he was strictly a right-winger.
Phase I: Radical Trump Supporter (2019)
In 2019, Crooks’s comments were extremely right-wing and violent. He called Donald Trump the “literal definition of patriotism”. He espoused anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes, writing that “Ilhan Omar and others are invaders and should honestly be killed”. He openly called for a dictatorship and warned that if Democrats won, “we have guns and lots of them,” noting that “Cops can’t arrest me if they’re all dead”.
Phase II: Radical Shift (Early-Mid 2020)
During the Coronavirus pandemic, Crooks’s views “transformed, changed completely”. He began criticizing “Trump’s stupidity” and mocked the idea of the “deep state”. He attacked Trump supporters as “too brainwashed to realize how dumb you are,” comparing them to a cult, and labeled Trump and his followers “racist”. He argued that “public safety comes before your personal rights” during lockdowns.
Phase III: The Digital Manifesto (August 2020)
By August 2020, Crooks shifted “even further to the left” and issued what sounded like a digital manifesto. He declared the election outcome “irrelevant” and stated that the only way to fight the government is with “terrorism style attacks,” such as sneaking bombs into essential buildings or attempting to assassinate politicians.
Crooks’s online footprint abruptly ended after he exchanged comments with a mysterious user named “Willie Tempus,” who actively pressured Crooks to commit violence. Willie Tempus is linked to a foreign Antifa website and the Nordic Resistance Movement.
And later in 2021, he gave to ActBlue, an American Democratic Party political action committee and fundraising platform.
4. Allegations of FBI and DOJ Obstruction
Tucker contends that the level of obstruction surrounding the investigation is described as “shocking.” Miranda Device contends that it’s hard to believe the FBI and/or Secret Service missed Crooks.
At a minimum, it seems the FBI wanted to close out this case with expedience. But quickly closing the case gives the appearance of being highly suspicious and lacking in transparency, especially given the high-profile nature of the presidential assassination attempt.
- Hosing Down the Crime Scene: Photos from the day after the shooting show an FBI agent from the Technical Hazards Response Unit hosing down the exact site where Crooks died. High-level intelligence sources called this “very strange,” noting that the FBI usually hires third-party contractors for cleanup. This action eliminated blood and tissue samples for outside analysis.
- The Cremation: The FBI released Crooks’s body for cremation just 10 days after the attack, coinciding with the start of House committee investigations. This decision made it impossible for outside investigators to conduct a new toxicology screen or verify the autopsy. Congressman Clay Higgins described this action as an “obstruction” to any following investigative effort.
- Stonewalling and Withholding Records: The FBI has repeatedly failed to comply with subpoenas from senators, including Ron Johnson, who demanded records, video footage, forensic reports, and all records related to Crooks’s electronic and financial accounts. This includes surveillance footage from the gun range where Crooks trained, which the FBI confirms exists but refuses to release.
5. Restating the Unanswered Questions
If there is truly “nothing there,” as some officials claim, the FBI should easily be able to answer why evidence was destroyed and key facts were withheld.
Per Tucker, the central unanswered questions remain:
- Was Thomas Crooks known to federal or local law enforcement before the shooting, and if not, how was he able to post hundreds of overt threats of violence under his real name without being detected?
- Who is Willy Tepes, and is he linked to any violent organizations or governments?
- Why did the FBI destroy potential evidence by hosing down the crime scene and clearing the body for immediate cremation?
- Why does the FBI refuse to release surveillance footage from the gun range where Crooks trained?
- Why did the FBI cite a non-existent “trial” as the reason for stonewalling the release of information?
Here are just a few of the many unresolved questions Tucker Carlson has raised. At the very least, the FBI’s failure to act on Thomas Crooks represents a colossal mistake. A thorough, independent investigation is urgently needed into every aspect of the agency’s handling of the case—both before and after the attempt—and those responsible must be held accountable.
Detailed timeline of Thomas Crooks political transformation
Phase 1: Radical Trump Supporter (Mid-to-Late 2019)
Crooks’s earliest comments retrieved show him aligning closely with Donald Trump and espousing extreme political violence. He left multiple references to political power coming from “the barrel of a gun”.
| Date | Political View Expressed |
| July 19, 2019 | Wrote that “Ilhan Omar and others are invaders and should honestly be killed and their dead bodies sent back”. |
| July 20, 2019 (1:17 a.m.) | Called “Donald Trump… the literal definition of patriotism”. |
| July 20, 2019 (Later that day) | Wrote that “Every one of the Trump-hating Democrats deserve to have their heads chopped off and put on stakes”. |
| July 20, 2019 (Later that day) | Hoped for “a quick painful death to all the deplorable immigrants and anti-Trump congresswoman”. |
| Following Day | Called for a dictatorship and suggested putting “Hispanics back in their place”. |
| September 30, 2019 | When discussing civil war, noted that “We’d be going to Washington” and stated, “Cops can’t arrest me if they’re all dead”. |
| General 2019 | Wrote that “being patriotic was lining up a bunch of socialist Jews like the ones who booed Trump and blasting their useless brains out with an AR”. |
Phase 2: Radical Ideological Shift (Early-Mid 2020)
By early 2020, during the Coronavirus pandemic, Crooks’s views underwent an “amazing transformation”. He abruptly shifted away from supporting Trump and began criticizing the right-wing.
| Date | Political View Expressed |
| January 23, 2020 | Referred to “Trump’s stupidity”. Mocked the “deep state” as a code word for “anyone who disagrees with the right-wing”. |
| February 2020 | Called out Trump supporters as “too brainwashed to realize how dumb you are,” comparing them to a cult, and labeled Trump and his supporters “racist”. |
| April 2020 | Argued that “public safety comes before your personal rights” during lockdowns. Criticized conservative media for suggesting that viruses “spread through race”. |
| May 2020 | Attacked Republican concerns about mail-in voting fraud as “ignorant”. |
Phase 3: Advocacy for Terrorism-Style Attacks (August 2020)
By August 2020, Crooks shifted “even further to the left,” declaring the election outcome “irrelevant”. He then published what the program describes as a “digital manifesto”.
August 2020 Manifesto: Crooks stated that “the only way to fight the government is with terrorism style attacks“. He suggested sneaking bombs into essential buildings or attempting to assassinate important people or politicians. He concluded that any “head-to-head fight is suicide”.
Final Encounter: These remarks came at the end of Crooks’s commenting activity, around the time he was pressured by a mysterious user named Willy Tepes. Tepes, whose account links to a foreign Antifa website and the Nordic Resistance Movement (designated a terrorist group by the US State Department), told Crooks, “We have nothing to lose and everything to win”.
Crooks’s online footprint abruptly ended after this encounter.