WASHINGTON (TNND) — How much information was available on President Donald Trump’s gunman, Thomas Crooks, who nearly killed him in Butler, Pennsylvania?
Despite the FBI previously stating there was not much out there on the would-be assassin, Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, told The National News Desk that “that doesn’t seem to seem to be true now.”
Fallon said the information was withheld from a task force that he headed on the assassination attempt. Crooks shot at Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. The bullet clipped Trump in the ear, just nearly missing his head. A year and a half later, Fallon questioned what came out of the task force, which found that the shooting was preventable.
We definitely got stonewalled. When we finally got answers that we thought were fully forth right, and now it seems like they weren’t,” Fallon said in an interview with The National News Desk.
To take action on this, Fallon said he would speak with House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., about calling former FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate back to testify on the investigation. In July 2024, Abbate said the agency discovered over 700 social media comments they believe were made by Crooks around 2019 and 2020 that he described as antisemitic and anti-immigrant.
They didn’t share any of the information with us so we felt like we were getting stonewalled,” Fallon said.
He added that keeping the information about the antisemitic and anti-immigrant comments was either “deliberate” or “incompetence.”
I’m going to talk to Chairman Comer, who does a great job with the Oversight Committee and I think that’s where this should land. Further investigations and turning over rocks. I think the Oversight Committee is the perfect platform in which to do that,” Fallon said.
Besides attempting to kill Trump, Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old firefighter, was killed at the rally. Two other men, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, were also injured.
Last week, political commentator Tucker Carlson said he thinks members of the Trump administration are covering up facts about Crooks.
“The FBI lied, and we can prove it because we have his posts. The question is why?” Carlson wrote on X.
Carlson was referencing Crook’s digital footprint. He also aimed at current FBI director Kash Patel, as well as former FBI director Christopher Wray and FBI deputy director Dan Bongino.
Patel responded on X without referencing Carlson. He detailed on the platform how the FBI handled the case.
“Employees conducted over 1,000 interviews, addressed over 2,000 public tips, analyzed data extracted from 13 seized digital devices, reviewed nearly 500,000 digital files, collected, processed, and synchronized hundreds of hours of video footage, analyzed financial activity from 10 different accounts, and examined data associated with 25 social media or online forum accounts,” Patel wrote.
Former FBI Special Agent in charge Jody Weis told The National News Desk, the bureau has incredible capabilities to look very deep into someone’s digital footprint and Crooks should have been flagged.
For them to come out and say that we just didn’t see much there, we couldn’t identify a motive. I can’t understand why,” Weis said.
If flagged, Weis said the FBI would then dig deeper. Ultimately, leading to an interview to determine possible intent.
Does he have the opportunity to commit some of the stuff he’s talking about? Or is he just a young man spouting out to get some clicks on social media?” said Weis.
