FBI Director Kash Patel pushed back Tuesday when Fox News anchor Bret Baier pressed him on what the public still does not know about the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump in Butler, Pa.
Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pa., opened fire at Trump’s rally in Butler in July 2024. Secret Service agents killed him after an attack that left at least one attendee dead and forced Trump off the stage. During Patel’s interview on “Special Report,” Baier said Americans still lack a clear, comprehensive picture of the shooter and asked why key details still aren’t public.
“I don’t think we the public have a more robust picture of that shooter,” Baier said.
“I think that’s an unfair supposition. We [at] the FBI have put out all the information that we possibly and legally can while protecting any ongoing matters that are unrelated,” Patel said. “He’s very much dead. But at the same time Bret, we at the FBI have to follow the parameters of our investigation and what the law allows us to release.”
“I get it, but what were the cell phones? Why don’t we know who he was talking to? What exactly happened?” Baier asked.
“We’ve provided 40,000 pages of documents to Congress. That’s a 400% increase from the prior two directors. We will continue to provide this information with our partners on Capitol Hill, when we are legally able,” Patel said. “It’s never gonna be enough for everyone. It’s never going to be enough. We’re not saying trust us. We’re saying we did an exhaustive search of that. We presented that information to the Department of Justice, and a decision was made on what to release.”
Baier pressed Patel on whether federal investigators fully disclosed what they know about Crooks, prompting Patel to argue that the FBI releases information consistently across high-profile cases.
“You said we put out everything we could. Do you think that everything’s been put out about air crumbs, the alleged shooter?” Baier asked.
“Everything, whether it’s Epstein or Charlie Kirk or whether it’s this shooter in Butler, we always put out what the law permits us to put out,” Patel said.
Nearly two years after the Butler shooting, investigators have released limited information about Crooks. The FBI still has not identified a motive. Records show Crooks registered as a Republican but donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project through ActBlue in January 2021. An anonymous source told the Daily Beast that agents accessed his encrypted phone and found his final search involved pornography, along with recent texts from his parents asking about his whereabouts.
Federal officials said the FBI briefed Congress on a threatening online gaming post tied to the Steam platform but later determined the account did not belong to Crooks. Additional questions surfaced after the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project reported device-tracking data showing someone who regularly visited Crooks’ home and workplace also appeared near an FBI office in Washington, D.C.
The FBI said in November that Crooks acted alone when he shot Trump at a rally in Butler. Patel and then-deputy Director Dan Bongino disclosed the finding in a Fox News Digital interview, saying the investigation involved 485 FBI employees and more than 1,000 interviews worldwide.
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