Tipsheet

Everything We've Discovered About the Would-Be Trump Assassin

Mia Cathell
Mia Cathell  |  July 15, 2024 7:00 AM

In the early hours of Sunday morning, at approximately 1:34 a.m. EST, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s Pittsburgh Field Office officially identified the Trump shooter as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

Not much is known about Crooks. Now that the FBI has taken over as the lead federal investigative agency, expect further delays in the investigation's findings.

Here's what we were able to confirm as more details come to light:

According to a Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing corresponding to the shooter's residential address, a teenage Crooks, then age 17, donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a left-wing voter turnout PAC, through the Democratic donation platform ActBlue on January 20, 2021, the day of President Joe Biden's inauguration.

In a statement shared with Drop Site, an independent news project of The Intercept's co-founder Jeremy Scahill, the political action committee said Crooks had sent the donation "in response to an email about tuning into the inauguration."

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"The email address associated with the contribution only made the one contribution and was unsubscribed from our [mailing] lists 2 years ago," Progressive Turnout Project said.

Minors can legally make campaign contributions within certain limitations, the FEC stipulates.

The upcoming race in November marks when Crooks would have been old enough to vote in a presidential election.

However, according to Pennsylvania voter registration rolls, identifying information matching that of Crooks says he was a registered Republican.

Allegheny County Councilman Dan Grzybek, who represents Bethel Park, said in an interview with The New York Times that Crooks's mother was a Democrat and his father a Libertarian. "You've got a large spattering of different backgrounds and ideals and definitely have a lot of mixed households in Bethel Park," said Gryzbek, who had previously met Crooks's parents while canvassing the neighborhood.

Investigators reportedly believe that the rifle Crooks fired several shots from belonged to his father, Matthew Crooks, who allegedly purchased the firearm at least six months ago.

CNN contacted the elder Crooks, but the distraught dad declined to speak publicly about his son, saying he would rather wait until he talked to law enforcement first as he tried to figure out "what the hell is going on."

In June 2022, Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School, a suburban school district south of Pittsburgh and an hour away from the site of the shooting. Townhall has found footage of Crooks walking out during commencement to receive his diploma (1:08 timestamp on the right side of the split screen). Crooks, dressed in a black graduation gown designated for male graduates and donning a silver honors chord, crossed the stage and posed for a picture as few in the audience applauded him.

Crooks briefly appeared in the background of an old BlackRock advertisement filmed at BPHS. The company commercial spotlighted an economics teacher there. The firm confirmed Crooks's ad appearance, according to a press statement the world's largest money manager made on the matter. "We will make all video footage available to the appropriate authorities, and we have removed the video from circulation out of respect for the victims," BlackRock said, stressing that the students were unpaid. However, as of Sunday night, two clips, a 15-second version and a longer 30-second cut, are still up under BlackRock's X account.

At the school's annual Awards and Recognition Program, which honors BPHS graduates, Crooks earned the National Math & Science Initiative Star Award, a $500 cash prize, for his academic achievements, according to TribLive, a local outlet covering community news around Allegheny County.

Investigative journalist Meghan Schiller, reporting for Pittsburgh-based KDKA-TV, shared two yearbook pictures of a young Crooks. According to WPXI, a local NBC affiliate, the one photograph was taken in 2020.

TMZ also obtained what appears to be his Pennsylvania driver's license photo.

Crooks's former classmates described him to ABC News as "a loner" who was "a quiet kid," though they wouldn't say he "ever appeared as a threatening person." One student who sat behind Crooks in an AP statistics class remembered him as academically gifted, always excelling in math and sciences. Others said he was "relentlessly bullied" and often wore hunting outfits to class.

Neighbors told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Crooks seemed "a little odd" growing up, but they never anticipated he was capable of carrying out a shooting, much less trying to take out a former president. "It's crazy...you wouldn't expect that from that kid," one resident, who lived doors down from Crooks, said. "He was a little bit off. He was like the weird kid, but you wouldn't expect this."

Crooks worked as a dietary aide at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Marcie Grimm, the nursing home's administrator, said the facility was shocked to hear of his shooting spree, saying that the employee's background check came clean, per The New York Times.

According to Pennsylvania's public court records reviewed by Townhall, Crooks did not have a criminal history, at least as an adult anywhere in the Keystone State.

Bomb-making materials were found inside the shooter's vehicle, parked in the vicinity of the Trump rally, and at his home, according to The Associated Press.

Crooks opened fire at a campaign rally where Trump was speaking Saturday in Butler County, about a 50-minute drive northeast of the Steel City.

A viral video circulating on social media shows the body of the gunman lying motionless on the roof of a manufacturing plant, AGR International Inc., near Butler Farm Show grounds. The shooter was spotted by spectators "bear-crawling" on the building before a counter-sniper team of Secret Service agents returned fire, killing him.

A photograph making rounds appears to depict the assailant wearing a T-shirt that promotes Demolition Ranch, a popular YouTube channel for firearms enthusiasts. Known for its sensational experiments and demonstrations, the page frequently posts videos testing guns and teaching educational content on firearms safety.

Demolition Ranch's founder Matt Carriker reacted to the neutralized shooter sporting his merchandise, writing on Instagram, "What the hell."

The rooftop was less than 150 meters (or 164 yards) from Trump's podium, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target; for reference, that's the range at which U.S. Army recruits must shoot a scaled human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M-16 rifle, according to AP.

Crooks tried to join his high school's shooting club, but he was rejected for being "comically bad" at aiming and cracking "crass," "off-color" jokes, The New York Post reports.

Bethel Park's rifle team shoots Anschutz single-shot rifles with peep sights and .22-caliber ammunition, Crooks's ex-classmates told The Post. The school's shooting range is 50 feet long by 21 feet wide and has seven ranges.

Once, Crooks fired from the seventh lane, which was the closest to the right wall, and hit the left wall, missing every target on the back end. He was off by close to 20 feet, one teammate recalled. "[Crooks] tried out...and was such a comically bad shot he was unable to make the team and left after the first day," he said.

Crooks "couldn't shoot at all. He was a terrible shot," another BPHS alum added.

Even the coach, the team members continued, had concerns about Crooks. "Our old coach was a stickler, he trained Navy marksmen, so he knew people. He knew when someone's not the greatest person."

"We noticed a few things Thomas said and how he interacted with other people...He said some things that were kind of concerning," the source stated. "You know, obviously, we're using guns in a school setting so you need to be very careful in that regard," he explained, without elaborating on what exactly Crooks said that was inappropriate.

Reportedly, Crooks was asked not to return after a preseason session. However, he did belong to the Clairton Sportsmen's Club in a neighboring borough, the club's counsel confirmed to ABC News.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, narrowly survived the assassination attempt after literally dodging a bullet that grazed his ear, piercing the upper part and causing blood to gush.

At least one attendee has died, and two rally-goers remain critically wounded. A GoFundMe campaign has been launched for the family of the deceased victim, Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief and father who heroically shielded his daughter from the gunfire.

As Spencer covered, authorities held a midnight press conference on the shooting but offered nothing enlightening, sidestepping questions concerning the shooter's identity. Officials said they were "not prepared" at the time to release the name of Trump's would-be assassin until they had "100 percent confidence." 

The reason for the delay in positively identifying the shooter was partly because he didn't carry ID on his person, which was one of the "complicators," according to authorities. "It's a matter of doing biometric confirmations," officials explained, such as "looking at photographs" and testing his DNA to see if there's a match already in a system somewhere.

Investigators are "working tirelessly to identify what that motive was," officials said.

Internet trolls initially misidentified the shooter as Marco Violi, an Italian sports writer residing in Rome. The video blogger, who runs a YouTube commentary channel about AS Roma, the Italian soccer team, published a statement on his Instagram page saying he "strongly den[ies] being involved in this situation" and was "woken up in the middle of the night" from numerous notifications related to rumors spreading online, according to an Italian-to-English translation. The journalist added that he will file a complaint against the X accounts that "invented this fake news and all the news headlines that spread" the misinformation.

X user "@jewgazing," pretending to be the Trump shooter, posted a picture of himself to troll other X accounts and cause confusion. The image was widely reposted, with X users finding shared similarities in the troll's and shooter's facial features. Eventually, the troll scrubbed his X page after uploading a clip of himself in the car, declaring, "My name is Thomas Matthew Crooks. I hate Republicans. I hate Trump. And guess what? You got the wrong guy."