New Revelations Spark Scrutiny of FBI’s Prior Knowledge in Trump Assassination Attempt
Serious new concerns are emerging over how much advance information investigators actually had about Thomas Crooks, the gunman who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024.
The political world was shaken in 2024 — and nearly changed forever — when Crooks opened fire. The 20-year-old reportedly discharged eight rounds from an AR-15–style rifle from the roof of a nearby building, killing an audience member and a firefighter. Trump, then the presumptive Republican nominee, was struck in the upper right ear.
In the days following the attack, the FBI stated that investigators had little prior knowledge about Crooks. However, new revelations are prompting many to question whether that was truly the case.
Texas Representative Pat Fallon, who chaired the congressional task force reviewing the incident, told The National News Desk that key details were withheld from his team.
“We definitely got stonewalled,” Fallon said.
“When we finally got answers that we thought were fully forthright, now it seems like they weren’t.”
The task force ultimately concluded that the assassination attempt could have been prevented.
A 2024 briefing from former FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate disclosed that investigators had identified more than 700 online comments believed to have been written by Crooks between 2019 and 2020 — many containing antisemitic and anti-immigrant sentiments.
But according to Fallon, the task force never received any of that information.
“They didn’t share any of the information with us,” he said, according to CBS Austin. “It was either deliberate or incompetence.”
Fallon also stated that he plans to speak with House Oversight Chairman James Comer about recalling Abbate to testify again.
Meanwhile, political commentator Tucker Carlson suggested last week that government officials may be concealing what they knew about Crooks. Carlson wrote on X that he can “prove” the FBI misled the public by referencing Crooks’ online activity. He criticized FBI Director Kash Patel, along with former FBI officials Christopher Wray and Dan Bongino, and questioned how someone with Crooks’ digital footprint could have avoided detection.
Kash Patel defended the FBI’s work, highlighting the scope of the investigation: more than 1,000 interviews, 2,000 public tips, 13 seized devices, nearly 500,000 digital files, hundreds of hours of video, 10 financial accounts, and data pulled from 25 online profiles.
Speaking to The National News Desk, former FBI Special Agent in Charge Jody Weis said he believes the bureau should have identified Crooks as a threat long before the July 13 shooting.
“For them to say we just didn’t see much there, that we couldn’t identify a motive – I can’t understand why,” Weis said.
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