The FBI has concluded that Thomas Matthew Crooks acted alone when he tried to assassinate President Donald trump during a campaign rally last year in Butler, Pennsylvania.
In an interview Fox News reported Friday with FBI Director Kash Patel, Deputy Director Dan Bongino and an unidentified senior official, Bongino said “it is the FBI’s conclusion that Crooks acted alone.”
“It is our conclusion, and it is likely, given politically motivated assassination attempts in history,” Bongino said. “These are historical incidents that have already happened — Arthur Bremer; (Squeaky) Fromme; Sara Jane Moore; John Hinkley — those names should all ring a bell.”
“We’re not saying Crooks didn’t deal with anyone ever — we are just saying that the people he dealt with had no role in inspiring, motivating or directing this attack,” he said.
“We have reviewed this case over and over — looked into every nugget. We have spoken to the families, the president — there is no cover-up here,” Bongino said. “There is no motive for it, there is no reason for it.”
Patel said Trump has been in the loop.
“We fully briefed the president, as a victim of this case, at the White House, providing him with all of the details of our investigation, and the president was satisfied with the results and where we left it,” he said, calling the case, a “day one priority.”
The unnamed official — who “requested anonymity due to his sensitive work,” according to Fox — said 485 FBI employees worked on the case, conducting more than 1, 000 interviews.
The official said 13 electronic devices linked to the Crooks family were reviewed, as were 35 online accounts belonging to Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed by a Secret Service sniper. The accounts reviewed had 500,000 files that were reviewed.
Do you think Thomas Crooks acted alone?
“The FBI has been able to access all of the accounts,” the official said. “There has been reporting to inappropriately and incorrectly state that there was encryption that the FBI was not able to get into — that is not true. We have been able to get into every single account.”
The official said any account or device connected to the would-be assassin was checked.
“There is no foreign connection in this case,” the official said. “There is no individual that is outside U.S. borders or inside U.S. borders that had any role in directing him, inspiring him or assisting him in any way — and that includes foreign governments.”
The official said much of the online activity linked to Crooks came when in 2019 and 2020, when he was 16.
“He called our Republicans and Democrats. He went as far as saying, ‘In my opinion, the only way to fight the government is with terrorism-style attacks.’ I won’t try to get into his brain,” the official said.
“But there is a limited record of him making political statements and advocating for political violence in 2019 and Crooks also searched ‘how far was Oswald from Kennedy?’
“But Crooks left no manifesto. He had no seepage of any kind. He didn’t give any indication anywhere that he was going to do this or why he did this,” the official said. “There are many instances in notable assassinations that they do want folks to know why they did it, but we don’t know that here, because Thomas did not leave any of those artifacts.”
Bongino said he understands why Trump supporters want more to be found.
“The rage, the anger, I totally get it. I’m with you. [Trump] is a friend of ours, he was shot in the head on live television — we want an explanation, too,” Bongino said. “Where is the manifesto? The answer is — it doesn’t exist.”
Patel said that, prior to the shooting, there were no obvious red flags to draw attention to Crooks.
“People are asking why we didn’t act on his posts on certain sites. No one in law enforcement knew who he was. No one referred him to law enforcement, and we do not monitor every single American’s use of YouTube and Google and Twitter and Facebook,” Patel said. “Because then people come back and say to us: ‘Why are you on our First Amendment rights?’”
Patel said Congress has been thoroughly briefed, including details about an undetonated explosive device that was found in Crooks’ car after the shooting.
“We’ve even had members of Congress come to Quantico in our lab facility there and walk them through the exact investigative steps, the video and audio recordings, the repercussions of the explosion that did not occur that day and how that would have impacted the people that were attending the rally, and so they have been given a full inside view of what we did on those days,” Patel said.
“We gave them all of the material we are legally able to give them.”
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