Fresh Allegations: FBI Accused of Hiding What It Knew About Trump Assassin Thomas Crooks

Nearly a year after the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt on Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, new claims are surfacing that the FBI deliberately withheld critical information about shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks from the congressional task force investigating the incident.

Crooks, 20, climbed onto a rooftop and fired eight rounds from an AR-15-style rifle, grazing Trump’s right ear, killing rally attendee Corey Comperatore, and critically injuring two others before he was neutralized by Secret Service snipers.

For months the official line from federal law enforcement was that Crooks had virtually no detectable digital footprint or clear motive. But that narrative is now under heavy fire.

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX), who chaired the bipartisan House task force examining the attempt, says investigators were repeatedly stonewalled. Speaking to The National News Desk, Fallon claimed the FBI never turned over evidence that, as early as 2024, the bureau had recovered hundreds of violent, antisemitic, and anti-immigrant online posts believed to have been written by Crooks between 2019 and 2020.

“We definitely got stonewalled,” Fallon said. “When we finally thought we were getting straight answers, it turns out we weren’t.”

The task force’s final report concluded the assassination attempt was “preventable, citing a cascade of security failures.

Former FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate had briefed lawmakers on the existence of the inflammatory posts, yet Fallon insists that material never reached the task force. “Either it was deliberate or it was gross incompetence,” he said, adding that he plans to ask House Oversight Chairman James Comer to recall Abbate for further testimony.

The accusations gained more traction last week when Tucker Carlson posted on X that he could “prove” federal authorities misled the public about how much they actually knew regarding Crooks’s online radicalization.

Even some former senior FBI officials are expressing disbelief. Retired Special Agent in Charge Jody Weis told reporters he finds it hard to accept that the bureau couldn’t have identified Crooks as a threat earlier. “For them to say there just wasn’t much there and they couldn’t pin down a motive—that’s difficult to understand,” Weis said.

Current FBI leadership, including Director Kash Patel, has pushed back, pointing to the massive scope of the investigation: more than 1,000 interviews, 2,000 tips from the public, 13 seized devices, almost 500,000 digital files, and data pulled from 25 separate online accounts.

Still, the growing chorus of critics argues those numbers only highlight how inexplicable it is that obvious warning signs apparently slipped through the cracks—or were kept quiet.