The Biden administration hid critical information about Thomas Matthew Crooks — the person who shot President Donald Trump and three others in Butler, Pennsylvania — throughout the 2024 election, according to a report from the New York Post.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under Biden appears to have knowingly lied to Congress, misled the American people, and, at best, was negligent in its duty to track Crooks after he reportedly made numerous statements about committing political violence and assassinations.
The NYP received information from a source showing that Crooks did have a history of significant online activity, despite then-Biden FBI Director Christopher Wray testifying that Crooks had no “online history that pointed to motive or political ideology.” Wray also attempted to downplay Trump’s being shot by suggesting he may have been hit with a piece of shrapnel from his podium, despite no evidence of that whatsoever.
Paul Abbate, former FBI deputy director under Wray, seemed to muddy the water even more, telling Congress that some social media accounts connected to Crooks “appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature.”
That is true, but the posts Abbate was referring to — which appear to paint Crooks in some sort of right-wing extremism light — were quite a bit older than posts showing a left-wing, anti-Trump ideology Crooks seems to have adopted over time.
Crooks’ online footprint appears to show someone who has always been interested in political and mass violence, who grew to openly hate Trump and called for “terrorism style attacks” and assassinations. He also seemingly became involved with “furry” fetish platforms — often a sexual deviancy associated closely with gender ideology. Furry fetishes and transgender ideology are more and more common among those who commit left-wing violence, and the person who allegedly assassinated Charlie Kirk in September was apparently immersed in both.
In light of Crooks’ online threats, it seems impossible that he was not known to the FBI before he attempted to assassinate Trump, and yet his online footprint was completely omitted from the final report about the shooting released in December 2024.
It is important that the American people get answers about Crooks and his attempted assassination of a former president who, by all serious accounts at the time, was the leader in the presidential race. But it is also important to keep in mind that, in addition to nearly killing Trump, Crooks’ bullets took the life of rallygoer Corey Comperatore and wounded rallygoers David Dutch and James Copenhaver. They and their families deserve answers too.
Crooks was 20 years old when he tried to assassinate Trump. He was shot dead by the Secret Service on the scene, but not before he was able to fire eight bullets.
His online history goes back at least to when he was 15, showing a political evolution from Trump supporter (though violent) to left-wing terrorist. The source cited by the NYP found 17 online accounts on platforms YouTube, Snapchat, Venmo, Zelle, GroupMe, Discord, Google Play, Quizlet, Chess.com, and Quora.
Crooks’ “radicalization, violent rhetoric and obsession with political violence were all documented under his real name,” the NYP source stated. “The threat wasn’t hidden.”
And, far from the all-too-common “lone wolf with no discernible motive” narrative peddled by officials after acts of mass violence or political violence, Crooks’ political development was out in the open for anyone to see — and for the FBI to monitor.
Crooks’ uncovered activity took place primarily on YouTube, with 737 comments made publicly from one account created on Jan. 14, 2019, and suspended the day after the assassination attempt, July 14, 2024.
In July 2019 he began calling for the deaths of immigrants and members of the Democrat Party, stating, “I hope a quick painful death to all the deplorable immigrants and anti-trump congresswoman who don’t deserve anything this country has given them.”
In December of that year, he stated, “MURDER THE DEMOCRATS.”
But Crooks appears to have adopted a violent left-wing ideology in the weeks after that post. On Jan. 23, 2020, Crooks posted his first criticism of Trump in response to a video of Jonathan Turley, a law professor, talking about Trump’s first impeachment.
“Keep in mind the only reason we may know about any of this is because of Trump’s stupidity,” he wrote.
Soon after, on Feb. 26, he started criticizing Trump supporters, too, stating, “How can you people call others sheep, but you are do [too] brainwashed to realize how dumb you are. … I mean literally you guys sound like a cult at times.”
He called Trump a “racist” the same day.
Crooks criticized the Trump administration’s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic in April, and over the summer started posting more violent comments.
“IMO the only way to fight the gov is with terrorism style attacks, sneak a bomb into an essential building and set it off before anyone sees you, track down any important people/politicians/military leaders etc and try to assassinate them,” he posted Aug. 5. “Any sort of head-to-head fight is suicide and even ambush/surprise attacks likely aren’t going to end well. A large portion of the war will also be propaganda/information wars — both sides will want people to join them, and a big deciding factor in wars is often which side has more popular support for them.”
For his PayPal account, Crooks appears to have avoided using his real name, utilizing the alias “Rod Swanson,” the name of a former FBI agent who was in charge of investigations in Nevada during the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting.
Swanson also served on former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s security detail, and has ties to Pennsylvania, having been a firearms instructor there, according to the NYP.
Despite telling the NYP he had no idea who Crooks or his family were, Swanson did offer that it would be shocking if the FBI did not know about Crooks, given his online activity.
“No matter how ridiculous the allegation, no matter if it’s COVID or not, somebody is going to knock on somebody’s door,” he told the outlet. “If they investigated that kid there’s a record of it and there’s an assessment that some leader made that this was not a threat or it rose to a level and they did something else.”
Swanson also said that if the FBI was aware of the PayPal account Crooks reportedly opened in his name, the agency almost certainly would have contacted him.
Crooks also used an alias on the platform DeviantArt, which hosts many people in the “furry” subculture. There, Crooks, under the usernames “epicmicrowave” and “theepicmicrowave,” identified with “they/them” pronouns and displayed an interest in images of cartoon characters wearing little clothing and “sporting muscle-bound male bodies and female heads,” the NYP stated.
Toward the end of Crooks’ online radicalism arc, before he apparently ceased activity completely leading up to the Butler shooting, Crooks came into contact with a person named “Willy Tepes,” who appears to be a member of a Norwegian neo-Nazi group.
Engaging with Crooks’ ideas, Tepes used a famous phrase from Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, “Political power comes from the barrel of a gun.” It appears to have had an effect on Crooks, as he used it multiple times.
According to Tepes, posting on Oct. 5, 2025, American and Russian intelligence services had made contact with him. What remains unanswered, however, is whether Tepes’ encouragement had anything to do with Crooks ultimately pulling the trigger.
According to NYP, the FBI refuses to say whether it had any knowledge of Crooks prior to the assassination attempt, whether someone was tracking him, and if not, how that was possible given his online comments.
Days after the shooting, Biden’s FBI told Congress that it had no prior knowledge of the shooter, which is probably just as bad as knowing and doing nothing. One of the two is true, it seems, and the American people deserve to know which.
The Secret Service also claimed it had no idea who Crooks was before the shooting.
Whatever the answers are in this case, the American people have witnessed a pattern in recent years that many of the people who commit acts of violence were already known by the FBI or components of the government, including Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz, Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen, and others.
With this pattern, as well as the federal government’s pattern of keeping the American people in the dark about shooters, the Trump administration’s FBI must be as forthcoming as possible about Crooks.
Without such transparency, institutions like the FBI and, by association, the Department of Justice will continue to lose credibility with vast swathes of the American people.
Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
