Two House Republicans who helped lead the congressional probe into the Thomas Matthew Crooks assassination attempt on President Donald Trump say the FBI “stonewalled” their investigation, and new revelations about Crooks’ alleged violent digital footprint are raising fresh demands for answers.
Reps. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Pat Fallon, R-Texas, told the New York Post the bureau withheld critical information about Crooks’ online history, even though new reporting shows the would-be assassin posted extremist content for years under his real name.
“I think there’s so many unanswered questions,” Kelly told the Post. “They don’t want people to handle the truth.”
Fallon agreed, saying he doesn’t recall ever being shown the violent posts that have now surfaced publicly.
“You can’t investigate these things enough,” he said.
The two lawmakers served on the bipartisan House committee that released its report in December, five months after Crooks managed to fire eight shots at Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing his ear and killing Corey Comperatore, 50.
The report concluded Crooks left behind “little notable digital footprint.”
But a new trove of posts reveals the opposite.
Miranda Devine’s Monday column in the Post laid out Crooks’ extensive online trail: at least 17 accounts across YouTube, Snapchat, Discord, Quora, and more.
Between the ages of 15 and 17, he glorified mass violence, researched bomb-making, practiced AR-15 shooting stances, praised political assassination, and issued threats against politicians — including calls to “MURDER THE DEMOCRATS.”
Crooks’ ideology also flipped sharply. Once a self-described hardcore Trump supporter, he suddenly turned rabidly anti-Trump in early 2020, attacking the president and GOP concerns about mail-in voting.
Devine reported this ideological shift, combined with his increasingly violent rhetoric, should have triggered multiple federal red flags.
Yet FBI Director Kash Patel insisted publicly that Crooks’ digital footprint was “unremarkable,” while former FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress the bureau had no prior information on Crooks at all.
Devine noted that Wray’s deputies offered contradictory testimony and that the FBI is refusing to say whether Crooks was ever previously investigated.
Kelly said the House committee was blocked at nearly every turn, from Crooks’ rapid cremation to the cleaning of blood evidence at the rooftop shooting site.
“We were stymied so much by the feds,” he said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told “Pod Force One” that Trump wants answers.
“Those questions are definitely deserving of answers … and the president does, too,” she said.
Newsmax Wires contributed to this report.
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