Reports Reveal 411 About Trump Shooter Crooks That FBI Supposedly Knew Nothing About

Almost 18 months ago, Thomas Matthew Crooks tried to assassinate then-GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

A Secret Service agent shot Crooks dead after Crooks’ gunshot nicked Trump’s ear, barely missing his head.

Yet since then, neither Trump nor Americans have learned much about Crooks, New York Post columnist Miranda Devine explained today. Tucker Carlson delivered the same information as Devine on his program a few days ago.

FBI, Secret Service Foul-up

Devine argued that the FBI and Secret Service have “butchered” the case. “Something is very wrong,” she concluded, which naturally “invites conspiracy theories.”

Former FBI chief Christopher Wray, Devine noted, claimed in congressional testimony that Crooks’ online footprint didn’t show a political ideology.

But “a week later, Wray’s deputy Paul Abbate told Congress that comments posted on one of Crooks’ social media accounts ‘appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature’,” Devine wrote:

Thanks to an enterprising source who uncovered Crooks’ hidden digital footprint, we can see that Abbate misled Congress by omission, because he left out an entire section of Crooks’ online interactions from January to August 2020 when he did an ideological backflip and went from rabidly pro-Trump to rabidly anti-Trump and then went dark, never seeming to post again.

Among the 17 accounts uncovered by our source were ones on YouTube, Snapchat, Venmo, Zelle, GroupMe, Discord, Google Play, Quizlet, Chess.com and Quora.

The online interactions from when Crooks was ages 15 to 17 give us a better understanding of his evolution into an assassin, and invite more questions about what — or who — reversed his ideology.

In other words, Crooks left a trail a blind man could follow. He “was not simply some unknowable lone actor,” the source told Devine:

“He left a digital trail of violent threats, extremist ideology and admiration for mass violence. He spoke openly of political assassination, posted under his real name and was even flagged by other users who mentioned law enforcement in their replies. Despite this, his account remained active for more than five years — and was only removed the day after the shooting.

“None of this online activity was referenced in the final congressional report released in December 2024, making this even more troubling,” the source said.

In His Own Words

The source divulged to Devine the evolution of Crooks’ political ideology from Trump backer to Trump hater with myriad social media posts.

On July 20, 2019, Crooks called Trump “the literal definition of Patriotism.” Same day, he threatened the Squad on Capitol Hill, a group of far-left Democratic congressmen:

I hope a quick painful death to all the deplorable immigrants and anti-trump congresswoman who don’t deserve anything this country [sic] has given them.

That December, he offered this: “MURDER THE DEMOCRATS.”

But then something happened to the boy. In early 2020, Devine wrote, he turned on “Trump, Fox News and Republican complaints about mail-in voting.”

“Keep in mind the only reason we may know about any of this is because of Trump’s stupidity,” Crooks wrote on January 23, 2020 of Trump’s first impeachment. On February 26, 2020, he called Trump supporters a “cult” and declared that Trump is a “racist.”

“By April 2020, Crooks was constantly criticizing Trump’s pandemic response,” Devine continued, and during the summer, his “online rhetoric became increasingly radical and violent”:

On Aug. 5, 2020, Crooks wrote: “IMO the only way to fight the gov is with terrorism style attacks, sneak a bomb into an essential building and set it off before anyone sees you, track down any important people/politicians/military leaders etc and try to assassinate them.

“Any sort of head-to-head fight is suicide and even ambush/surprise attacks likely aren’t going to end well. A large portion of the war will also be propaganda/information wars — both sides will want people to join them, and a big deciding factor in wars is often which side has more popular support for them,” he wrote.

Devine’s source dug up 17 social media accounts, including a PayPal account with the name “Ron Swanson.” That is the name of the former FBI agent who headed the probe of the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017. Swanson told Devine the bureau had to know about Crooks before Butler.

Using the agent’s name was probably a “private  joke,” the source said.

Sex Pervert, Neo-Nazi Link

But like Tyler Robinson, charged in the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Crooks was a sex weirdo. He was involved in the “furry” community of fruits and nuts who pretend they are animals for a deviant sexual thrill.

He used “they/them” pronouns on a site called “DeviantArt, which is one of the biggest online hubs for ‘furry’ art and the ‘furry’ community,” Devine explained:

Two accounts linked to Crooks’ primary email were found on DeviantArt, under usernames “epicmicrowave” and “theepicmicrowave.” The account suggests he had an obsession with scantily clad cartoon characters sporting muscle-bound male bodies and female heads.

A name that surfaces in Crooks’ social media is that of “Willy Tepes,” a member of the Nordic Resistance Movement, which the State Department calls a neo-Nazi terror outfit. Tepes urged Crooks on, “using a Maoist phrase, ‘Political power comes from the barrel of a gun,’ which Crooks repeated several times.”

The mysterious “Tepes,” whoever he is, told another user that “people who ask you to contact them when they just as easily could contact you, are Feds. This is how they avoid entrapment. Both American and Russian intelligence does this. I have chatted to both.”

That’s when Crooks went dark, Devine reported.

Frighteningly, the columnist reported, the FBI wouldn’t discuss whether it looked at Crooks, or whether he was “brought to the attention of the agency before he tried to assassinate Trump, or whether there was an FBI file on Crooks before Butler.” Nor would the bureau comment on its stonewalling congressional inquiries about the assassination attempt, including a subpoena from GOP Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Carlson’s nearly 35-minute video cites the same source, asks the same questions, and includes video of Crooks’ dry-firing a semiautomatic pistol in his bedroom. Carlson disclosed that some of Crooks’ threats were YouTube comments.