More details are emerging about would-be Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks — and, some of the information is pretty wild.
On Tuesday, the Senate obtained never-before-seen federal records on the Butler assassination attempt containing evidence that has been hidden from the public for years.
These records contain shocking revelations that are calling into question the official FBI narrative that Crooks acted alone.
For example, just weeks before carrying out the assassination attempt at President Trump’s Butler rally, Crooks was reportedly spotted with two unidentified men at a gun store.
🚨#BREAKING: Newly released FBI files reveal a man resembling Thomas Crooks visited a PA gun store with two unidentified men weeks before the Trump assassination attempt, with no public indication investigators ever resolved who they were.
— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) September 15, 2026
According to those closest to him, Crooks did not have any friends, so this begs the question: who were these strange men?
Leading up to the Butler rally, Crooks also had packages of gun parts delivered to his home under the alias “Bob Doyle.”
Another revelation that is raising a lot of eyebrows is the fact that an unnamed, anonymous donor paid for Crooks’ body to be cremated just days after the assassination attempt in Butler, PA.
🚨 BREAKING: Attempted Trump assassin Thomas Crooks had packages of gun parts delivered to him under the pseudonym 'Bob Dole,' and an anonymous donor paid for his body to be cremated, according to federal records obtained by Fox News Digital pic.twitter.com/v1moKrwstG
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 15, 2026
The New York Post reported further on the “anonymous donor”:
An “anonymous donor” paid for the cremation of President Trump’s would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks, just days after the deadly Butler, Pa., rally shooting, according to federal records reviewed by The Post.
The revelation was included in a trove of documents provided to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), as part of his ongoing inquiry into the first Trump assassination attempt.
“Anonymous donor paid for cremation,” reads a note at the end of a summary of an interview the gunman’s father, Matthew, conducted with federal investigators.
Who on earth was this guy who paid for Crooks to be swiftly cremated right after the assassination attempt?
🚨 IT'S OFFICIAL: An "anonymous donor" PAID for the cremation of attempted Butler PA Trump assassin Thomas Crooks, and he received suspicious packages under the Alias "BOB DOLE" — Fox News
What in the world?!
Who is this ANONYMOUS donor paying to cremate his body and why are… pic.twitter.com/G46BFINQwI
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 15, 2026
IT’S OFFICIAL: An “anonymous donor” PAID for the cremation of attempted Butler PA Trump assassin Thomas Crooks, and he received suspicious packages under the Alias “BOB DOLE” — Fox News
What in the world?!
Who is this ANONYMOUS donor paying to cremate his body and why are they doing it?
ADVERTISEMENTThis entire case already STUNK to high hell and now it’s even more suspicious.
Apparently, practically nobody was ware of this alias “Bob Dole” used for Crooks
The documents have been turned over to the Senate.
Recall that the FBI released Crooks’ body to his family 10 days after the Butler rally where he tried to kill President Trump — before it could be examined.
At the time, Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins called this odd fact out:
REPORT: The FBI secretly released would be Trump assas*in Thomas Crooks' body to be cremated before Rep. Clay Higgins could examine it.
According to a preliminary investigative report from Higgins, the FBI cremated Crooks' body without telling anyone 10 days after the PA rally… pic.twitter.com/AP1Wx53PLi
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 16, 2024
REPORT: The FBI secretly released would be Trump assas*in Thomas Crooks’ body to be cremated before Rep. Clay Higgins could examine it.
According to a preliminary investigative report from Higgins, the FBI cremated Crooks’ body without telling anyone 10 days after the PA rally tragedy.
“My effort to examine Crooks’ body on Monday, August 5, caused quite a stir and revealed a disturbing fact… the FBI released the body for cremation 10 days after J13,” the report reveals.
“On J23, Crooks was gone. Nobody knew this until Monday, August 5, including the County Coroner, law enforcement, Sheriff, etc.”
ADVERTISEMENT“Yes, Butler County Coroner technically had legal authority over the body, but I spoke with the Coroner, and he would have never released Crooks’ body to the family for cremation or burial without specific permission from the FBI.”
“The coroner’s report and autopsy report are both “late.” As of Monday, August 5, they were a week late. The problem with me not being able to examine the actual body is that I won’t know 100% if the coroner’s report and the autopsy report are accurate. We will actually never know.”
Another little detail that doesn’t quite line up is that Crooks’ parents claimed they could not foot the bill for their son’s cremation, so this “anonymous donor” stepped in.
And yet, after the assassination, both of them stopped working.
It’s unclear how they could afford to do this.
Fox News has more:
After the shooting, his father, Matthew Crooks, took an early retirement, and his mother, Mary Crooks, went on leave from work to process the situation.
The documents, compiled as part of the investigation into the 2024 shooting at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, also include interviews with his father, who told FBI agents the gunman “never identified anyone as a friend throughout middle school and high school.”
When agents interviewed Crooks’ parents the day after the shooting, his father told investigators that although his son socialized with classmates, the gunman told him they were not his friends.
In the months before the shooting, Crooks’s father observed him talking to himself. His father, who worked in the mental health field, said he did not see other signs of a potential mental illness.
ADVERTISEMENTAlthough his father described him as a straight-A student who scored a 1400 on his first SAT attempt, without studying, he told investigators he son feared he might not get into college and showed a change of behavior between his freshman and sophomore years of high school. He became quieter and had a hard time speaking with teachers.
At one point, he floated the idea of joining the military to work on nuclear submarines, but it was unclear how serious he was about that ambition.
After studying, he retook the SATs and scored over 1500, according to the documents.
Crooks adopted the Dole pseudonym after his father’s checking account had been hacked and fraudulent gambling charges appeared, Matthew Crooks told investigators.
Thomas Crooks’ motive is still unknown.
But, independent journalist Tom Elliott broke down some additional weird things discovered in the newly-released FBI documents:
The 10 Weirdest Things I Found in the Latest Thomas Crooks FBI Drop
1. The FBI had the ladder. A private citizen found it in a wood lot in Bethel Park on July 17, 2024, along with Crooks' rifle bag and his gun-club ID. A week later Christopher Wray told Congress "we did not find… pic.twitter.com/o5baH4vtUU
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 15, 2026
The 10 Weirdest Things I Found in the Latest Thomas Crooks FBI Drop
1. The FBI had the ladder. A private citizen found it in a wood lot in Bethel Park on July 17, 2024, along with Crooks’ rifle bag and his gun-club ID. A week later Christopher Wray told Congress “we did not find the ladder at the scene.” Technically accurate, but misleading. The ladder was 40 miles away, in FBI custody.
2. Agents were searching a specific dumpster for a third Crooks phone. They had two of his phones already.
3. A gun store in Edinboro, two hours from home, reported someone who looked like Crooks browsing for an hour with two other men, a month and a half before Butler. The file gives us no further details, but the suspect’s ammo purchase matched one of Crooks’ rifles.
4. The day before the shooting, he spent two hours on the range talking with an unidentified man. Agents ran plates. No follow-up included in the file.
5. Crooks’ apparent bag had weird stuff: a Stanley 12-foot tape measure, a red Sharpie, a Hyper Tough stapler, and a box of light-duty staples.
6. He accessed four encrypted Belgian email accounts. The FBI sent formal requests to two foreign governments for records on them. The files does not include whatever came from those requests.
Benny Johnson also did a great job covering the details in this video:
The FBI File on Trump's Assassin Just Leaked…Everything They Told You is A Lie
New evidence just blew up the Thomas Crooks narrative.
Two mystery men were with him at a gun store weeks before Butler. Another unidentified man trained with him the day before.
Even more… pic.twitter.com/51DVuUmd18
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 15, 2026
The FBI File on Trump’s Assassin Just Leaked…Everything They Told You is A Lie
New evidence just blew up the Thomas Crooks narrative.
Two mystery men were with him at a gun store weeks before Butler. Another unidentified man trained with him the day before.
Even more damning, an anonymous donor paid to cremate him.
Who paid? What are they hiding?
This new information is disturbing.
In response to all of these new — and, frankly, disturbing — revelations, President Trump is calling out former FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Read what President Trump had to say on Truth Social here:
Everybody knows the Crooked Joe Biden FBI didn’t do what they should have with respect to the Lunatic who shot me in Butler, PA. By the time I got into Office, on January 20th, most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted, or gone. New info was just found! Why wasn’t it seen long ago? This was all a Democrat Plot, to get me out of the Election, that failed. Dirty Cop Christopher Wray should pay a price for the way he handled this assassination attempt, and certainly for the things he said. GOD BLESS AMERICA — MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Attorney General Todd Blanche also called out the FBI’s botched handling of the Butler assassination case.
Watch here:
🚨 JUST IN: AG Todd Blanche says the Biden FBI's handling of the Trump assassination attempt was TOTALLY BOTCHED after President Trump sounds the alarm that even more info is coming out about Thomas Crooks
"You have a situation where it's not really clear what the leadership of… pic.twitter.com/srkJSdLjmX
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 15, 2026
JUST IN: AG Todd Blanche says the Biden FBI’s handling of the Trump assassination attempt was TOTALLY BOTCHED after President Trump sounds the alarm that even more info is coming out about Thomas Crooks
“You have a situation where it’s not really clear what the leadership of the FBI were doing in the weeks and months ahead of the attempted assassination to protect President Trump!”
“That’s the same organization that was simultaneously trying to put him in prison until he DIES.”
“So his frustration and concern about what the former director was doing is something that is not new.”
Trump has EVERY RIGHT to be furious. They tried to not only k*ll him but imprison him for life. And he overcame all of it.
47 DESERVES TO KNOW EVERYTHING about Crooks, as do the families of those who were hurt!
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This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.







