BUTLER, Pa. — Sixteen months ago, shots were fired at then-former president Donald Trump at his rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds.
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On Monday, the New York Post reported new details about the shooter’s online history — and the questions that still remain.
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt on Trump, Republican Congressman Mike Kelly of Butler led a congressional task force to investigate the shooter and the failed security protocol that allowed the shots to be fired.
“We worked so hard to get the answers we thought the American people need to hear,” Kelly said. “We didn’t get them. Now they’re coming out, so that’s disappointing.”
A new report from the New York Post details the online history of the shooter, Thomas Crooks.
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The New York Post reported their sources used emails linked to Crooks and found accounts linked to him on Youtube, Snapchat, Paypal, Discord, Chess.com, Quora and DeviantArt.
The report said Crooks had an “increasing obsession with violence and increasingly radical comments and artwork”
The NY Post said the digital history goes back about a decade, to when Crooks was in high school. They said Crooks was “almost exclusively pro-Trump, while he also made a number of violently antisemitic comments and racist remarks about Hispanic immigrants.”
But they report in 2020, he appeared to do a 180 and turn on Trump based on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The New York Post also obtained a video, which they said shows Crooks with a gun in his bedroom.
The White House Press Secretary was asked about this coming to light on a New York Post podcast.
“Those questions are definitely deserving of answers and I understand why the public wants those answers, and I believe the president does, too,” Karoline Leavitt said.
“So, why don’t we have them?” the host asked.
“It’s a good question, and it’s one I’d like to see the answer to, and I think all Americans would,” Leavitt responded.
Congressman Kelly agreed, saying the task force was stonewalled by the feds last year.
He said there is a bigger question that he, the former task force, and Americans should know the answer to.
“You knew he was on the grounds, you knew he was a suspicious person,” Kelly said. “You lost him, you found him, you lost him, you found him. Why didn’t you tell candidate Trump, ‘you know what sir, we are not sure the area is safe, we’re going to keep you back for a while until we find out where this person is.’”
Kelly said it takes time and money to re-launch the task force, but believes his colleagues and staff on that task force would sit down to review these new findings.
“I do believe our citizens can handle the truth; what they can’t handle are the lies,” Kelly told Channel 11’s Andrew Havranek.
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