The Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump By Thomas Crooks: An Independent Inquiry

 

By PIPR

 

 

5 July, 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Key points: One year on from the events, the Trump administration appears to have been blocked from investigating the attempted assassination. There are many discrepancies in the reported events.

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

At 11 minutes past six, local time, Donald Trump turned his head to look at a chart.ⁱ The date was the evening of 13^th July, 2024. Trump was standing in front of a crowd of 15,000 people at the Butler Farm Show Grounds, Pennsylvania.ⁱⁱ Seeking re-election, the former President was rallying his voters when shots rang out. Had Trump not turned his head at that second, the assassin’s bullet would have entered the right-side of Trump’s temple, almost certainly killing him.ⁱⁱⁱ Or at least that’s what we’re being told. The official narrative is that the agency responsible for protecting high-level politicians, the Secret Service, was incompetent. However, some anti-Trumpers believe that the Presidential candidate staged the events in order to look the hero.^iv By contrast, others suggest that the failed assassin was working for anti-Trump elements operating within the intelligence agencies—or “deep state.”^v

 

Bystanders were also hit, resulting in one death and two serious injuries. It is unclear which of the assassin’s—or assassins’—bullets injured the rally attendees David Dutch and James Copenhaver, and taking the life of Corey Comperatore.^vi It has been difficult to find a timeline determining who got shot first. Many on the political left suggest that Trump’s lack of scar tissue implies that the injury to his ear was either faked or very minor.^vii Few are questioning the loss of Comperatore and the injuries sustained by Dutch and Copenhaver. Questioning the events has been denounced by politicians. During hearings, several members of Congress suggested that “conspiracy theories” concerning the attempted assassination are not only damaging to national security but that they could incite other shooters.^viii This article looks at the background context and pieces together some of the vital information before, during, and after the events.

 

 

A BAD STEWARD OF EMPIRE

For many, the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963 was a coup by the Central Intelligence Agency against elected political leaders.^ix They argue that a network of behind-the-scenes bureaucrats operate outside of democratic control or oversight. The network consists of entities such as the National Communications System and exists to enable the continuity of government (COG) in the event of a major disaster. Some suggest that COG networks have operated as a secret government ever since the assassination of JFK.^x In her testimony concerning alleged Secret Service (SS) failures that led to the near-assassination of Trump, then-SS Director Kimberly Cheatle stated: “There is a difference between the sitting President and continuity of government.” This implies that the President has no—or has limited—control over COG. This further implies that COG can and thus might operate without Presidential approval.^xi

 

Until Donald Trump was elected President in November 2016, every US leader since Ronald Reagan had significant ties to the intelligence agencies. In the 1940s Reagan, the actor-turned-politician, became an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.^xii When elected Governor of California in 1967, he continued to enjoy “warm” relations with the Bureau.^xiii Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, had previously served as CIA Director (1976-77). Bush’s successor, Bill Clinton, had been a CIA informant during his college years in 1960s and continued close contact with the Agency while Governor of Arkansas.^xiv Former CIA Director Bush’s son, George W., suceeded Clinton. Both Bushes were members of Yale University’s Skull and Bones secret society.^xv Bush junior’s successor, Barack Obama, was born to a woman, Stanley Ann Dunham, who worked for Gordon Donald, an alleged CIA employee^xvi at the US State Department’s Agency for International Development.^xvii In the 1980s, Obama worked as an editor for Business International Corporation,^xviii which in the late-1950s had provided cover for CIA assets to pose as journalists.^xix

 

Putting aside CIA connections, would-be US Presidents overwhelmingly attend or are members of the same clubs, forums, and think-tanks: the Atlantic Council, the Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Grove, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the World Economic Forum. These and other such clubs are run by fellow politicians and businesspeople, usually men. They enculturate potential candidates to ensure that those candidates will act in the interests of the group, should they become leaders. Until he became President, Donald Trump attended none of the above. Even after inauguration, Trump had apparently attended no meetings of Bohemian Grove or the Trilateral Commission. In other words, Trump was not “in the club.” He was an outsider who, breaking with forty years of political norms, used his wealth and contacts to buy his way into office. Those who were in the proverbial club tried to stop him. Three months before the 2016 election, former Acting Director of the CIA, Michael J. Morell, wrote an op-ed in which he endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, citing Trump’s personal weaknesses, which Morell—and we can plausibly assume other high-level officers—saw as gifts to America’s enemies:

 

“[Trump’s] need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.^“xx

 

Whistleblowers, and ultimately Trump, alleged that the Obama administration demanded that America’s National Security Agency and other members of the “Five Eyes” (Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand) spy on the Trump campaign.^xxi Trump’s initial allegation, which if the whistleblowers are truthful turns out to have been correct, prompted Britain’s NSA-equivalent, Government Communication Headquarters, to issue an unprecedented denial.^xxii In addition to alleged spying, the Obama administration launched a major psychological operation against American voters in which they attempted to portray Trump as a Kremlin asset. “RussiaGate,” as it became known, included lurid and false allegations that President Putin had blackmail material on Trump. CIA Director John Brennan allegedly helped the Hillary Clinton campaign to imply that Trump’s Russian backers had interfered with the election by hacking the Democratic National Committee’s servers.^xxiii

 

There was widespread agreement among intelligence operatives that, as President-elect, Trump’s war of words with the “deep state” had undermined America’s global standing. Patrick Skinner, an officer who served during the Bush junior and Obama years, said: “The open disdain Trump has shown for the agencies is unprecedented.”^xxiv Another official is quoted as saying: “We’ve never seen something like this before [sic] … From dismissing the briefings to dismissing the current assessment on the Russia stuff, it seems like … [Trump’s] politicizing the intel.”^xxv In other words, the CIA was afraid that Trump might not do its bidding.

 

Elements of the intelligence agencies worked to undermine Trump in ways too varied to explore here (e.g., QAnon, January 6^th). We can get an idea from statements given by former and acting directors, officers, and agents. Ex-CIA Director Leon Panetta said: “I’ve seen presidents who have asked questions about whether […] intelligence is verifiable, what are the sources for that intelligence, but I have never seen a president who said, ‘I don’t want that stuff’.”^xxvi In May 2018, ex-Director Brennan tweeted: “Trump simultaneously lied about the Iranian nuclear deal, undermined global confidence in US commitments, alienated our closest allies, strengthened Iranian hawks, & gave North Korea more reason to keep its nukes.” He concluded: “This madness is a danger to our national security.”^xxvii During Trump’s first term, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer said: “you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you … So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”^xxviii

 

In August 2020, 73 members of Former Republican National Security Officials for Biden publicly backed the latter candidate for President.^xxix After the November election, TIME published a long article outlining an informal alliance of big business and labour unions whose members worked to get states to change their electoral laws, encourage postal voting, and network with big tech CEOs to censor pro-Trump content (or “disinformation,” as they called it).^xxx

 

 

PLAN B: ASSASSINATION?

Trump didn’t accept that he lost the 2020 election. He maintained that it was stolen and set about campaigning for 2024. Former intel operatives again voiced their opposition. Eighteen ex-Trump officials and intelligence analysts expressed to Politico their dread over the prospect of a second Trump term. One expressed fears that “Trump intends to go after the intelligence community … He started that process before and he’s going to do it again. Part of that process is to root out people and to punish people.”^xxxi

 

The “club” resorted to lawfare—using the courts as a weapon—to drain money and energy from the Trump campaign. In 2019, the FBI raided the home of Trump associate, Roger Stone, who was later indicted of seeking to obtain stolen emails.^xxxii In 2021, the FBI raided the home of journalist James O’Keefe to retrieve the diary of President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley,^xxxiii in which she suggested that her father may have sexually abused her.^xxxiv In 2022, FBI assets allegedly liaised with families of shooting victims to try to bankrupt one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, Alex Jones, in defamation suits.^xxxv In the same year, the FBI not only raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion, they were authorised to use deadly force,^xxxvi leading some to suggest that the raid was a pretext for a potential assassination attempt.^xxxvii By the start of 2024, Trump was the defendant in six major state and federal trials, ranging from civil to criminal.^xxxviii Meanwhile, two of Trump’s former advisors, Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, were jailed in separate cases on contempt of Congress charges.^xxxix

 

But these actions failed to intimidate Trump and his supporters. They also failed to damage the former President’s popularity. By April 2024 and regardless of political affiliation, just 13 percent of Americans agreed that Trump was being treated fairly.^xl For years, state-corporate media had been hiding and denying Biden’s cognitive decline. During the Biden-Trump debate of June 2024, the President’s mental condition was laid bare for all to see. Trump was leading in most national polls and looked to be on his way to reclaiming the White House.^xli On July 1^st, the Supreme Court ruled that any President has immunity from prosecution for any official act undertaken or authorised as President.^xlii After publicly denouncing the Supreme Court’s verdict, President Biden told his donors not to fear his cognitive decline but to focus on defeating Trump: “[I]t’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”^xliii

 

Enter Thomas Crooks. Basing their claims on FBI statements, state-corporate media have attributed the apparent attempted assassination of Trump to one Thomas Crooks, who was reportedly born in 2003. There is little to confirm details about the life and upbringing of Crooks. Some publications have alleged that Crooks’s parents are Jewish with Scottish roots,^xliv leading others to denounce such reporting as anti-Semitic (not anti-Scottish?).^xlv Both of Crooks’s parents are registered social workers who qualified within weeks of each other in 2002.^xlvi Crooks’s mother, Mary, is supposedly a registered Democrat^xlvii and his father, Matthew, is an alleged Republican gun-nut.^xlviii Profilers speculate that this dichotomous upbringing turned Crooks into a conflicted personality.^xlix

 

In early-2021, Crooks supposedly had an account with the right-wing social media company, Gab, on which he posted pro-Biden comments.^l In the same period, Crooks apparently donated to a pro-Democrat organisation called ActBlue.^li At the time, the chess- and videogame-playing Crooks was reportedly a student at the Bethel Park High School, Pennsylvania, where he learned coding and won $500 from the National Math and Science Initiative.^lii It has been widely reported from interviews with fellow pupils that Crooks was a slightly obnoxious, bullied loner: a claim denied by the High School and contradicted by other pupils, who also claim that Crooks was anti-Trump, despite being a registered Republican.^liii

 

In a seemingly bizarre coincidence, the world’s biggest private equity firm, BlackRock, decided to film an advert for teachers’ pensions at the Bethel Park High School, featuring Crooks among other students and staff.^liv In his spare time, Crooks reportedly practiced at the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, a firing range frequented by local and government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security,^lv which oversees the Secret Service. Crooks was allegedly a poor marksman^lvi who purchased an AR15-style rifle from his father^lvii and acquired shooting equipment and chemical precursors for explosives from online suppliers using an alias.^lviii Using open-source but anonymised cell phone data, the pro-Trump Heritage Foundation’s OverSight Project claims that during 2023, someone who regularly visited Crooks in Pennsylvania also visited a building close to FBI HQ in Washington, DC.^lix

 

There doesn’t appear to be any record of Crooks having nursing qualifications, yet he was employed at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. It is unusual that the vast majority of people interviewed about Crooks by state-corporate media were his school contemporaries, not work colleagues.

 

 

JULY 13TH

Since Trump left office, the Secret Service has repeatedly denied his team’s requests for additional protection.^lx It remains unclear whether this was the case on 13^th July. The Secret Service (SS) liaised with the Butler County Emergency Services Unit, visiting the site three days before the rally.^lxi Crooks had already booked his place at the event.^lxii In addition to the SS countersnipers, a team from Beaver County SWAT was assigned to protect Trump.^lxiii The day before the rally, the equity firm Austin Private Wealth sold 12 million shares in the Trump Media and Technology Group, which suggests that certain employees anticipated a major drop in the value of Trump’s company. The firm claims that the stocks were shorted as a result of clerical error, but others suggest that it hinted at insider knowledge of Trump’s impending assassination.^lxiv

 

An SS-Beaver County SWAT team meeting was scheduled for the morning of the rally, but the SS never attended.^lxv Acting Director Ronald Rowe said that he “cannot defend” why the roof of the American Glass Research (AGR) building was not covered by countersnipers.^lxvi The roof was in the direct line of Trump’s podium. The reasons given by the SS for not covering the roof have frequently changed. First, they stated that the building was excluded from the security perimeter,^lxvii which seems implausible. Second, they said that the roof was too slanted.^lxviii But this contradicts the first claim: the roof could not have been both too slanted and have been outside the secure perimeter. The third reason given was that personnel were assigned to the roof but that the temperature was too high, so they positioned themselves inside the AGR building.^lxix However, others have noted that personnel in the adjacent buildings had a clear view of the AGR building’s roof and would have surely seen the would-be assassin.^lxx

 

There is a question mark over a white van, which during the daytime of 13^th was parked (by whom?) under the water tower at the rally.^lxxi Footage suggests that a second assassin was positioned on the water tower.^lxxii The same white van was later found, supposedly full of explosives and abandoned by Crooks, ten miles from the rally site, which is impossible because “Crooks” was dead by then. The official story is that Crooks abandoned the van and rode his bike ten miles to the rally, which doesn’t explain the presence of the van under the water tower. There is police footage of the van being removed from a residential area later that evening,^lxxiii which suggests that it was removed from the rally site. However, other police sources say that Crooks had driven a Hyundai Sonata packed with explosives.^lxxiv So, which vehicle did he drive: a van or a car?

 

On the morning of the rally, Crooks supposedly purchased a ladder (a receipt was conveniently found on the corpse).^lxxv It is not clear if he is supposed to have driven to the site or cycled, carrying the ladder. He stayed seemingly unnoticed for an hour before leaving to purchase 50 rounds of ammunition and returning to the rally site where he flew a drone.^lxxvi SS made contradictory statements: that their counter-drone vehicle could not fly due to insufficient bandwidth.^lxxvii How, then, could Crooks have streamed footage from his drone? In another statement, local law enforcement claimed that their offer to supply SS with counter-drone support had been declined.^lxxviii So, did they have a drone but insufficient bandwidth or did they not have a drone?

 

Crooks was spotted by Beaver SWAT at 1626. “Someone followed our lead and snuck in and parked by our cars just so you know.”^lxxix This official text message suggests that Crooks had a vehicle, which contradicts claims that Crooks rode his bike 10 miles. At approximately 1750, “Crooks” climbed external pipes to mount the AGR building roof, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray.^lxxx This is contradicted by the fact that Crooks had purchased a ladder and that police bodycam footage shows a ladder propped against the AGR building wall.^lxxxi Beaver SWAT and local police were raising alerts about Crooks to their command centre, which apparently did not relay the information to SS. This is contradicted by bodycam audio of local officers personally alerting SS about Crooks.^lxxxii “Crooks’s” AR15-style rifle was supposedly collapsible, allowing him to conceal it in his backpack. SS claims that countersnipers did not see Crooks because their view was obscured by roof ridges. This is contradicted by the fact that “Crooks” was shot by countersnipers—so, they must have been able to see him to shoot him—and by the fact that footage later emerged of “Crooks” walking tall—not crawling—along the roof minutes before Trump was shot.^lxxxiii

 

When “Crooks” takes position with frantic Trump supporters watching him below, an hysterical woman is heard shouting “Crooks” repeatedly, ordering him to get down from the roof.^lxxxiv This woman has never been identified, which is implausible, given that the FBI would surely want to know how the woman knew Crooks. The official timeline has Crooks shooting eight rounds at Trump from 1812 (and 33 seconds). However, one rally-goer’s footage clearly captures nine shots.^lxxxv Independent audio analysts reckon that several of those shots are from different guns, suggesting that they may have come from the would-be assassin on the water tower or potentially from local law enforcement.^lxxxvi

 

Supposedly, an SS countersniper shot and killed “Crooks.” But there are several discrepancies. 1) A person identified as “Crooks” walking around the rally wears below-the-knee shorts.^lxxxvii The “Crooks” on the roof wears above-the-knee shorts.^lxxxviii The “Crooks” photographed by Beaver SWAT wears a greyish-blue Demolition Ranch t-shirt.^lxxxix Both the “Crooks” on the ground and the one on the roof wear grey t-shirts. This suggests that there were three people playing the role of—or identified as—Crooks. The “Crooks” in the media photos culled from his school days has different ears to the dead “Crooks” on the roof, who has ridged Stahl-type ears. 2) After being shot, “Crooks’s” spectacles are nowhere to be seen. 3) SS snipers use .300 and above cartridges,^xc which cause human heads to explode, yet “Crooks’s” head remains intact, suggesting that he was killed by another type of bullet.

 

 

CONCLUSION

The little that is known about Crooks gives the public the impression that he had a split personality, one torn between progressive and conservative politics, and that this inner conflict resolved itself in his attempt to kill a popular political figure. This perception is reinforced by the many pupils who give conflicting accounts of Crooks’s character and political beliefs. Trump just happened to be visiting close to his hometown and Crooks took the opportunity to try to assassinate the former and possibly future President. But this narrative doesn’t explain: the apparent shooter on the water tower; why, in the information age, almost nothing is known about Crooks; why the media rely almost solely on the testimonies of former pupils; the mysteries surrounding his use of aliases; the phone pings possibly linking him to the FBI; why the FBI claims to have struggled to break into Crooks’s devices,^xci despite their colleagues at the NSA having a total information dragnet; and the blatant lapses in security at the rally.

 

The CIA has denied that Crooks was a Manchurian candidate: an assassin programmed to kill Trump. “These claims are utterly false, absurd, and damaging … The CIA had no relationship whatsoever with Thomas Crooks.”^xcii That being said, it is not difficult to imagine that Crooks could have been a carefully-crafted public relations personality designed to make ordinary people think that he was a conflicted personality who snapped. As part of the CIA’s supposedly discontinued mind-control experiments—once codenamed MKULTRA—the Agency used unwitting subjects, including hospital patients, prisoners and military personnel, for a variety of purposes. Some were tortured to the point where the Agency hoped that a new personality would form to help the victim cope with the pain.^xciii In theory, the new personality could be programmed to kill or even take their own life.^xciv Producing a mind-controlled assassin was also attempted with hypnosis.^xcv

 

This is no evidence that the CIA ever created a Manchurian candidate, but certain high-profile assassins and would-be assassins have been linked to the Agency. They had degrees of mental illness, raising questions about whether the CIA made them mentally ill as part of mind control programmes or whether their mental illness combined with security failures led to them kill and attempt to kill politicians and celebrities. Sirhan Sirhan, the alleged killer of Robert Kennedy, was diagnosed as being schizophrenic. But he was highly susceptible to hypnosis and, according to his lawyer, William F. Pepper, had reportedly been programmed to kill Kennedy.^xcvi To give another example of an extremely mentally ill murderer, Mark Chapman, the alleged killer of John Lennon, had been visited in prison by CIA contractor and hypnotist, Milton Kline, leading some to plausibly suggest that Chapman was a programmed assassin.^xcvii A recent book demonstrates that the so-called Manson Family, who committed several high-profile, ritualistic murders in the 1960s, have also been linked to the Agency.^xcviii

 

When we look at the purported life of Crooks, a pattern emerges.

 

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