The American folks deserve solutions about what drove Thomas Crooks to aim to assassinate President Trump, White Home Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt informed The Submit — 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 undoubtedly deserving of solutions and I perceive why the general public desires these solutions, and I consider the president does too,” Leavitt just lately informed Miranda Devine on Pod Drive One.
“It’s a very good query, and it’s one I’d prefer to see the reply to — and I believe all People would,” she added.
Leavitt’s feedback got here as Devine dropped a bombshell report in The Submit Monday about newly unearthed social media posts that seem to point out Crooks brazenly supporting political assassinations, ranting towards Trump and utilizing they/them pronouns on-line.
Crooks’ motive is simply one of many main questions that stay unanswered within the 16 months because the try on Trump’s life, which left one beloved firefighter useless 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 international 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 missed?
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, in accordance with posts underneath his identify on YouTube.
“IMO the one method to struggle the gov is with terrorism model assaults, sneak a bomb into a vital constructing and set it off earlier than anybody sees you, monitor down any vital folks/politicians/army leaders and so on and attempt to assassinate them,” Crooks wrote in a single submit Aug. 5, 2020.
The submit was made 4 years earlier than he fired eight pictures at then-presumptive Republican presidential nominee Trump throughout a marketing campaign rally in Butler, Penn., on July 13, 2024.
However the FBI beforehand stated 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 just lately uncovered, the newly surfaced report famous.
FBI Director Kash Patel beforehand denied the findings within the report, insisting in a Nov. 14 X submit that Crooks’ on-line footprint was negligible.
However, a sample of Crooks’ alarming habits seems to have been there – and Leavitt prompt Trump himself nonetheless had lingering questions on what actually occurred the day he was nearly 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 stated.
“And it was earlier within the administration the place he requested them, ‘I need an up to date briefing on what occurred. Do we all know any greater than after 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 obtainable web scraping instruments to dig up a trove of on-line exercise going again to when he was 15 years outdated.
Crooks seemed to be an ardent Trump supporter on the time, turning his web wrath on the president’s opponents.
“I hope a fast painful loss of life 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 Submit, 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 change into a Trump opponent.
He started prattling concerning 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 at the least 17 completely different accounts Crooks operated.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) — chair of the Senate Homeland Safety and Governmental Affairs Committee — has stated he beforehand tried to acquire data from the FBI, and was pressured to problem a subpoena in July to acquire stories and proof after he stated he was “stonewalled” by the Bureau.
