FBI Director Kash Patel shared particulars Friday in regards to the bureau’s investigation into Thomas Crooks, after Tucker Carlson alleged President Trump’s would-be murderer left digital warning indicators that he was planning an assault.
The previous Fox Information host has accused the FBI of mendacity about Crooks’ “on-line footprint” and revealed disturbing social media feedback Friday purportedly made by the 20-year-old within the years main as much as the July 13, 2024, taking pictures at a Trump rally in Butler, Pa. – suggesting he could not have been a “lone wolf.”
“The investigation, performed by over 480 FBI staff, revealed Crooks had restricted on-line and in particular person interactions, deliberate and performed the assault alone, and didn’t leak or share his intent to interact within the assault with anybody,” Patel wrote on X, offering an outline of the case.
As a part of the investigation, the FBI director stated the bureau “performed over 1,000 interviews, addressed over 2,000 public suggestions, analyzed information extracted from 13 seized digital gadgets, reviewed almost 500,000 digital recordsdata, collected, processed, and synchronized lots of of hours of video footage, analyzed monetary exercise from 10 totally different accounts, and examined information related to 25 social media or on-line discussion board accounts.”
The FBI’s new “fast response” X account had beforehand dismissed Carlson’s characterization of the bureau’s findings.
“This FBI has by no means stated Thomas Crooks had no on-line footprint. Ever,” learn a put up from the account on Thursday.
Carlson, host of “The Tucker Carlson Present,” claimed to have obtained entry to Crooks’ Google Drive account and a trove of violent feedback the gunman left on YouTube between 2019 and 2020.
The conservative commenter stated Crooks left a “detailed digital path of violent threats, together with requires assassination and political violence.”
“Thomas Crooks got here inside 1 / 4 inch of destroying this nation, and but, a yr and a half later, we nonetheless know virtually nothing about him or why he did it. That’s as a result of, for some motive, the FBI, even the present FBI, doesn’t need us to know,” Carlson argued.
The feedback, together with Crooks’ back-and-forth with one other unidentified YouTube consumer, lead Carlson to imagine Trump’s would-be murderer “was not some secretive lone wolf who by no means warned anybody that he was planning violence.”
Carlson famous that Crooks’ was initially pro-Trump, and his threats had been geared toward outstanding Democrats, earlier than he “radically” turned towards the president amid the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
“It was a tremendous transformation,” Carlson stated.
The FBI has not launched a motive for why Crooks’ opened hearth on the Butler Farm Present Fairgrounds final yr.
The taking pictures left Trump wounded, two rally-goers severely injured and hearth chief Corey Comperatore useless.
Crooks, who took goal on the president from an unsecured rooftop lower than 200 yards from the stage, was shot useless by a Secret Service counter-sniper simply moments after opening hearth.
