On Monday, July 15, the FBI announced that its agents had succeeded in extracting data from the cell phone of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the perpetrator of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. They found nothing beyond the typical content expected of a 20-year-old engineering student with an interest in coding and video games. There was nothing suspicious on his computer either. No manifesto, no signs of radicalization.
Investigations into his whereabouts in the days leading up to the attack, on the other hand, revealed methodical – if last-minute – preparations. On Friday, the day before Trump's rally in Butler, Crooks went to train at the shooting club where he was a member. On Saturday morning, he went to the Home Depot hardware store. There, he bought a 1.50-meter-high ladder. Then he went to Allegheny Arms & Gun Works in Bethel Park, not far from his home, where he bought 50 rounds of ammunition.
The young man took his car – a Hyundai Sonata – and an AR-15, the automatic rifle legally purchased by his father in 2013. He drove about an hour north to Butler, where several thousand people were converging to attend Trump's rally on the agricultural fairgrounds. He parked the car outside. He reportedly used the ladder to climb to the roof of the building, from where he fired at least five times before being shot. On condition of anonymity, investigators also claimed that he was carrying a remote detonator, while the trunk of his car contained a box of explosives linked by wires to a receiver.
Police closed off access to the family home in Bethel Park, a red brick house on a tree-lined street like the others in the neighborhood. News reports showed pro-Trump signs on the front lawns. Two-thirds of voters in the county supported Trump in 2020. The shooter's father, Matthew Crooks, owns around 20 firearms. The father and son sometimes went together to the Clairton Sportsmen's Club, which has a 200-meter-long shooting range. After graduating with honors from Allegheny County Community College in May, Thomas had been accepted but declined to attend the University of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh. For the fall, he enrolled at Robert Morris University, some 40 kilometers from his parent's home.
The Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting the president and former presidents and has been in the hot seat since the events, tried to justify itself on July 15. The agents "moved quickly" assured the federal agency's director, Kimberly Cheatle, in her first statement since the shooting, "with our counter sniper team neutralizing the shooter and our agents implementing protective measures to ensure the safety of former president Donald Trump."
You have 49.71% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.