The American folks deserve solutions about what drove Thomas Crooks to aim to assassinate President Trump, White Home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt instructed The Put up — after a damning report emerged suggesting the gunman left a path of digital clues the FBI didn’t beforehand share with the general public.
“These questions are positively deserving of solutions and I perceive why the general public desires these solutions, and I consider the president does too,” Leavitt lately instructed Miranda Devine on Pod Pressure One.
“It’s an excellent query, and it’s one I’d prefer to see the reply to — and I feel all People would,” she added.
Leavitt’s feedback got here as Devine dropped a bombshell report in The Put up Monday about newly unearthed social media posts that seem to indicate Crooks brazenly supporting political assassinations, ranting in opposition to Trump and utilizing they/them pronouns on-line.
Crooks’ motive is simply one of many main questions that stay unanswered within the 16 months for the reason that try on Trump’s life, which left one beloved firefighter lifeless and two different Trump supporters critically wounded.
Among the many different unanswered questions are:
- Whether or not Crooks acted alone, or had contact with brokers of a overseas authorities
- Why the FBI by no means observed or investigated Crooks’ violent rhetoric on-line
- Whether or not the FBI turned over all proof it had to congressional investigators
- Did FBI investigators discover all of Crooks’ on-line exercise — or was a few of it ignored?
The FBI didn’t reply to a request for remark Monday.
Leavitt’s feedback got here after sources revealed a trove of alarming posts Crooks is believed to have made throughout social media for years.
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On a number of events, he brazenly known as for political assassinations and violence, based on posts underneath his identify on YouTube.
“IMO the one option to combat the gov is with terrorism fashion assaults, sneak a bomb into a vital constructing and set it off earlier than anybody sees you, observe down any essential folks/politicians/navy leaders and many others and attempt to assassinate them,” Crooks wrote in a single publish Aug. 5, 2020.
The publish was made 4 years earlier than he fired eight photographs at then-presumptive Republican presidential nominee Trump throughout a marketing campaign rally in Butler, Penn., on July 13, 2024.
However the FBI beforehand mentioned Crooks – who was 20 when Secret Service counter-snipers killed him on the rally — was largely a ghost on-line and left behind no clues about his mindset or politics.
Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray additionally testified to Congress that Crooks was by no means on the bureau’s radar earlier than the capturing.
A congressional report on its investigation into the assassination additionally made no point out of any of the digital posts lately uncovered, the newly surfaced report famous.
FBI Director Kash Patel beforehand denied the findings within the report, insisting in a Nov. 14 X publish that Crooks’ on-line footprint was negligible.
Nonetheless, a sample of Crooks’ alarming conduct seems to have been there – and Leavitt steered Trump himself nonetheless had lingering questions on what actually occurred the day he was virtually killed.
“I don’t need to communicate for him on that as a result of it’s such a private factor, however I do know that he has inquired with the Secret Service and the FBI,” Leavitt mentioned.
“And it was earlier within the administration the place he requested them, ‘I would like an up to date briefing on what occurred. Do we all know any greater than once I was briefed instantly following the times after Butler?’ ” she added.
“[Trump has] been briefed by his personal folks on the matter, and whether or not he’s glad, that’s solely a query he can reply. I can’t reply it for him.”
The explosive report used Crooks’ telephone quantity and generally out there web scraping instruments to dig up a trove of on-line exercise going again to when he was 15 years outdated.
Crooks gave the impression to be an ardent Trump supporter on the time, turning his web wrath on the president’s opponents.
“I hope a fast painful demise to all of the deplorable immigrants and anti-trump congresswoman who don’t deserve something this nation has given them,” he wrote in a single 2019 Put up, and months later, “MURDER THE DEMOCRATS” in one other.
However by 2020 – with the COVID-19 pandemic unfolding — Crooks appeared to have made an about-face and develop into a Trump opponent.
He started prattling in regards to the want for violence to impact actual change in politics, with the posts being made in extensively accessible YouTube remark sections and Discord channels throughout a minimum of 17 totally different accounts Crooks operated.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) — chair of the Senate Homeland Safety and Governmental Affairs Committee — has mentioned he beforehand tried to acquire data from the FBI, and was pressured to situation a subpoena in July to acquire reviews and proof after he mentioned he was “stonewalled” by the Bureau.
