Miranda Devine: FBI, Secret Service butchered the Thomas Crooks case and invited conspiracies – we deserve the truthhttps://nypost.com/2025/11/17/opinion/fbi-secret-service-butchered-the-thomas-crooks-case-and-invited-conspiracies-we-deserve-the-truth/We are all owed a better explanation from the FBI and Secret Service about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump 16 months ago at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa.
The president himself remains unsatisfied with the answers he’s been given about the circumstances leading to 20-year-old Thomas Crooks climbing on a rooftop with an AR-15-style rifle and firing eight times at Trump, narrowly missing his head but hitting his ear.
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There is something very wrong with the official story and that invites conspiracy theories.
The president demanded answers months ago. A man was murdered. What is going on?
Then-FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress after the July 13, 2024, attack that the bureau had found nothing in Crooks’ online history that pointed to a motive or political ideology.
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.”
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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.
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The official narrative claimed he acted alone and without a clear motive, ideology or digital footprint.
Yet the source found reams of information that shows Crooks “was not simply some unknowable lone actor … 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.
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The FBI refused to comment when asked on Sunday whether Crooks was ever investigated, visited or in some way brought to the attention of the agency before he tried to assassinate Trump, or whether there was an FBI file on Crooks before Butler.
The FBI also refused to comment on why it has not been forthcoming on congressional oversight requests.
Wray told Congress on July 24 2024, 11 days after the shooting, that the bureau “did not have any [prior] information about the shooter” and that “he was not in our holdings before the shooting.” He said the FBI ran a search for Crooks through its databases, and he was not found.
Were he still FBI Director, Wray would continue to be full-Sergeant-Schulz. Hopefully Patel can extract an explanation of whether the "investigation" was monumentally incompetent and incurious or the FBI covered up and lied.
