Report reignites suspicions would-be Trump assassin wasn't working alone



The New York Post recently published a report suggesting that the July 13 attempt on President Donald Trump's life in Butler, Pennsylvania, may not have been solely the work of Thomas Matthew Crooks but rather the doing of a "criminal network" that has benefited from alleged efforts by law enforcement to suppress critical information about the shooting.

Dana Kennedy, a reporter who previously worked at CNN and MSNBC, did her apparent best to justify the Post's claim of an exclusive by speaking to various people who knew Crooks. The report hinged, however, on a well-established theory, this time restated by a Pennsylvania private investigator who has reportedly done some digging in Butler.

Doug Hagmann told the Post that he was hired by a private client to look into the assassination attempt shortly after the deadly rally and has been working the case for several months with a team of six other investigators.

After interviewing over 100 people and conducting geofencing analysis of cellular devices not belonging to Crooks that were detected at his home, the rifle range where he practiced, and at the high school where he graduated two years prior to the shooting, Hagmann concluded, "We don't think he acted alone."

Various individuals who spoke to the Post characterized Crooks as a happy and "nerdy" individual — as someone whose transformation into a killer must have been private and possibly even nurtured.

'This took a lot of coordination.'

Mark Sigaroos, one of Crooks' friends from high school, told the Post, "It's presented like an open-and-shut case like, 'Oh, he went crazy,' but it doesn't really add up. It's like JFK. Do we think we've become so modern that wouldn't happen again?"

Xavier Harmon, a teacher who taught Crooks in his computer technology class at Steel Center for Career and Technical Education for two years, said Corey Comperatore's killer "was the quirky, funny little guy who also loved to excel in class. When he was finished, he'd always go back and help his classmates. He was very intelligent."

"I don't think he set out to kill the president," said Harmon. "My guess is, he messed with the wrong individuals about what they were going to do and it was different from what he thought it was going to be. Anyone planning to do this would leave some sort of breadcrumbs. But there's nothing — no paperwork, no itinerary, no even [him] going to websites to [research]."

Jim Knapp, a recently retired guidance counselor at Crooks' high school who also knew the shooter's parents and sister, told the Post, "I believe evil exists in the world and the devil caused him to snap. Something got into his brain and controlled it. The devil fed on him and got him, hook, line, and sinker."

Hagmann suggested that it would have taken more than Crooks and his inner demons to pull off the shooting.

"This took a lot of coordination," said Hagmann. "In my view, Crooks was handled by more than one individual, and he was used for this [assassination attempt]. And I wouldn't preclude the possibility that there were people at the rally itself helping him."

Hagmann, who claims on his website to be a "former informational and operational asset for the FBI and US Department of Justice," is no stranger to coordinated operations at political rallies. Apparently an associate of at least one Jan. 6, 2021, provocateur who managed not to get arrested, Hagmann reportedly directed elements of his team at the U.S. Capitol to "breach the chambers" on Jan. 6, 2021, while broadcasting his weekday show, "The Hagmann Report."

The former FBI asset also told the Post that one of the electronic devices that his geofencing analysis indicated had traveled with Crooks to several different places around the time of the attempted assassination is still live and pinging at Bethel Park High School, which Crooks attended until his graduation in 2022.

Hagmann is neither the first to suggest that Crooks may have been groomed nor the first to track mobile devices linked to Crooks, his known associates, or the places he frequented.

'I'd need as little as three days to prep him for the specific operations.'

Blaze News investigative reporter Steve Baker, who has reported extensively on the Butler shooting with Blaze Media investigative reporter Joseph Hanneman, indicated that their sources have been sounding the alarm about the likelihood of handlers for several months.

"Our sources, which are all intelligence community and Department of Defense special operations guys, all tell us that everything about the Butler incident screams that Thomas Crooks was groomed and could not have done what he did alone without preparation," said Baker.

A top-tier U.S. military special operations expert told Blaze News in July that "a 20-year-old with no military or government training doing so many things correctly — range finder, drone, recon, turning off his phone — had to have been 'groomed' into this process. He was likely paid by some government or dark money source."

"I don't think he went rogue or was a rogue operator," the expert said. "I've seen and been involved in these types of ops for too many years. He had instructions."

The expert further indicated that a single special operator can easily train or groom about eight to 12 youths in short order.

"Depending upon the op, I'd need at least nine months for the source vetting and grooming, but I've done it in as little as six months," said the expert. "Then I'd need as little as three days to prep him for the specific operations, after the requisite number of months of grooming."

"I don't know anyone in the intelligence community who believes that Crooks did this on his own," Baker told Blaze News Thursday, adding that a number of special operations experts have told him that when reviewing the Butler case, they recognize their "own handiwork" customarily conducted overseas.

Hagmann's geofencing insights into devices in Crooks' orbit are no more novel than his theory about handlers or co-conspirators.

The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project revealed last year that it flushed out some of the would-be assassin's connections through an "in-depth analysis of mobile ad data to track movements of Crooks and his associates. To do this, we tracked devices that regularly visited both Crooks's home and place of work and followed them."

"We began this investigation on the night of the shooting," an Oversight Project spokesman told Blaze News last year. "We've been working 24/7 since then."

The Oversight Project noted that one frequent visitor to the Crooks household had also paid a visit to the Gallery Place complex in Washington, D.C., in June 2023 — "in the same vicinity of an FBI office."

Former FBI Special Agent Kyle Seraphin told Blaze News that while the location was home to various retail stores and restaurants, there were offices of the FBI on the upper floors. Oversight Project investigators indicated that the phone associated with the ID number detected in D.C. likely did not belong to Crooks but rather someone who visited him at home.

Another device, this time linked to Crooks' work, traveled from the shooter's home in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, to Butler on July 4 and 8 — just days before the shooting. The device apparently went silent on the eve of the Trump rally.

'The people who do this kind of thing don't talk.'

Hagmann insinuated that there may be a cover-up under way, stating, "One can assist in an operation like this by omission or standing down. There are people still out there involved in this case that need to be brought to justice."

Blaze News reached out to Hagmann for comment about his conclusions and his past ties to federal agencies but did not receive a response by deadline.

Kennedy also did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment regarding the exclusive nature of her piece or Hagmann's inputs.

Baker cast doubt on whether the change of leadership at the FBI will mean greater transparency about Crooks' radicalization and the possibility that the bureau may have had been involved.

"Everybody thinks that Kash Patel is going to open a file drawer somewhere and he's going to pull the names of dozens or hundreds or thousands of agents that have been involved in the assassination attempts of Trump and the solicitation of violence at the Capitol on January 6," said Baker. "I'm just telling you right now that's not going to happen. In order for a conspiracy to be successful, it has to be very compartmentalized, with very few people in the know."

"I hope that we do find out. I hope it is revealed," continued Baker. "But the reality is that, as I said, the circle of people in the know will be so small. There will be no paper trail. And the people who do this kind of thing don't talk."

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Would-be Trump assassin's rampage ended when SWAT hit his rifle with a bullet, report says



Would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks' wild rifle assault on former President Donald J. Trump and a Pennsylvania rally crowd July 13 was ended by a “total badass” SWAT operator who hit Crooks' rifle with a bullet from ground level 100 yards away, U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) said.

Crooks, 20, was “fragged” in the face when a Butler County Emergency Services Unit SWAT operator fired at him from ground level and blew apart his rifle's stock, Higgins said Aug. 15.

In a report to the bipartisan House task force investigating the attempted assassination of former President Trump, Higgins credited the SWAT operator with ending Crooks' attack after eight shots — about 10 seconds before a police counter-sniper shot and killed Crooks. A source earlier told Blaze News the counter-sniper shot was fired from 448 yards southwest of Crooks' position.

“Shot 9 hit Crooks’ rifle stock and fragged his face/neck/right shoulder area from the stock breaking up,” Higgins wrote. “The SWAT operator who took this shot was a total badass. When he had sighted the shooter Crooks as a mostly obscured-by-foliage moving target on the [American Glass Research] rooftop, he immediately left his assigned post and ran towards the threat, running to a clear-shot position directly into the line of fire while Crooks was firing 8 rounds.”

Higgins said his preliminary report was based on about 20 hours of investigative work at the scene in Butler County Aug. 4-6.

“As always, my investigation was focused on hard evidence and facts, specific observations guided by instinct and experience,” he wrote. “My overall mission was to personally observe and investigate the available crime scene site, along with consideration of both anticipated and unanticipated interactions with witnesses, the crime scene landscape, hard evidence, corroborative evidence, and circumstantial evidence.”

Even after being identified by local police 90 minutes before the shooting as a suspicious person, Crooks was able to slip onto the roof of the sprawling AGR complex between 6:06 and 6:08 p.m. and run at least two-thirds the length of the roof to a concealed shooting perch on Building 6, bodycam footage showed.

A Pennsylvania State Police trooper broadcast a warning at 6:08 p.m. that someone was on the roof, but the Secret Service apparently did not hear it. The Secret Service had no personnel in the local police command center and failed to use the special radios provided by police for communicating with the local command center, officials have said.

Crooks shot Trump in the right ear at 6:11:32 p.m. during an initial burst of three rifle shots, followed by a rapid discharge of five more bullets. Killed in the gunfire was volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, of Sarver, Pa. The seriously wounded included David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, Pa., and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township, Pa.

In a briefing last week with U.S. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), local police officials said the U.S. Secret Service has not even acknowledged the heroic action taken by the Butler County SWAT officer in stopping the attack. “That's not being widely reported,” Johnson said Aug. 11.

'This pattern of investigative scorched earth by the FBI is quite troubling.'

Higgins said it is possible that the bullet from the SWAT operator disabled Crooks’ weapon and prevented him from firing a ninth or subsequent time.

“On his own, this ESU SWAT operator took a very hard shot, one shot,” Higgins said. “He stopped Crooks, and importantly, I believe he damaged the buffer tube on Crooks’ AR. … This means that if his AR buffer tube was damaged, Crooks’ rifle would not fire after his eighth shot.”

The buffer tube on an AR-15-style rifle houses a system to control recoil when the weapon is fired.

When the SWAT bullet hit his AR-15, Crooks initially went down from his prone shooting stance, the report said, perhaps stunned by the debris striking his face and neck. After a few seconds, the Butler SWAT operator reported, Crooks “popped back up.”

Video shot from the west side of Building 6 by eyewitness Jon Malis shows Crooks almost sitting up after his rifle was hit. “Then when I looked back later with my video zoomed in,” Malis said. “Sure enough, you could see him sit up and sling his weapon around and aim it right towards us right before the Secret Service shot him.”

Higgins served in a variety of law enforcement roles in Louisiana before first taking office in the House in 2017. Most recently he served as deputy marshal for the city of Lafayette and previously held law enforcement positions at city, town, and parish departments.

FBI releases shooter's body

Higgins said he had planned to examine Crooks’ body on an investigative trip to Butler Aug. 5 but discovered the FBI had released it to the family for cremation on July 23. “Nobody knew this until Monday, August 5,” Higgins said.

“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,” Higgins wrote. “Yes, we’ll get the reports and pictures, etc., but I will not ever be able to say with certainty that those reports and pictures are accurate according to my own examination of the body.”

He said the FBI released the crime scene after just three days, harming the efforts of other investigations examining the shooting.

'Cops don't do that, ever.'

“I interviewed several first responders who expressed everything from surprise to dismay to suspicion regarding the fact that the FBI released the crime scene so early after J13,” he said. “It should be noted that the FBI was fully aware of the fact that Congress would be investigating J13. The FBI does not exist in a vacuum. They had to know that releasing the J13 crime scene would injure the immediate observations of any following investigation.”

The FBI also scrubbed the scene before releasing it.

 A Beaver County Emergency Services SWAT operator and a medic enter the building from which Thomas Crooks shot former President Donald J. Trump at a rally July 13 in Butler, Pa.Butler Township Police Department via Judicial Watch

“The FBI cleaned up biological evidence from the crime scene, which is unheard of,” he said. “Cops don’t do that, ever.”

Higgins described the actions of the FBI as “obstruction” of congressional and other investigations that were started since the FBI opened its criminal probe of the shooting. The FBI was surely aware of the U.S. House task force appointed by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), he said.

“Why, then, by what measure would the FBI release his body to the family for cremation? This pattern of investigative scorched earth by the FBI is quite troubling,” Higgins said.

Blaze News has contacted the FBI for comment on the Higgins report.

The Higgins report confirmed information published by Blaze News Aug. 12 that indicated Crooks took a path along the roof to his shooting perch that minimized his exposure to the counter-sniper teams. The view of the Secret Service counter-snipers was badly obscured by two large trees just southeast of the building from which Crooks fired. Crooks likely used his drone just before 4 p.m. to confirm the route he would take on the roof, a Blaze source said.

“Crooks’ firing position was also several feet back from the actual peak of the AGR rooftop,” Higgins said. “By choosing this position, Crooks effectively minimized the sky-lined profile of his head and upper body.”

No second shooter

The report discounted widely circulated internet theories that a second gunman was located atop the blue water tower at the edge of the AGR property. Higgins said the tower was checked and cleared using a drone in the morning. The retractable ladder to access the tower was never lowered that day, and local police squads sat underneath the tower much of the day, he said.

To reach the top of the tower, someone would have had to scale the first 25 feet with no ladder, then climb 75 feet to the catwalk, then make it up the “intimidating and precarious” dome vent access ladder.

“I do not believe it was possible for a '2nd shooter' sniper to be on top of that water tower on J13, nor have I seen any evidence that supports the theory of a 2nd shooter. I’m not saying conclusively that there was no other shooter somewhere or that no other conspirators were involved in J13, but I’m saying that based on my investigation thus far, there were 10 shots fired on J13, and all shots are accounted for, and all shots align with their source.”

Higgins also quashed the idea that a muzzle flash was seen in a first-floor window of the AGR building at the time of the shooting. He said he examined the window and determined it does not open.

Higgins gave high marks to the tactical teams and other local police officers who staffed the event and responded to the shooting. “My assessment of the local law enforcement's overall performance on J13 is that the ESU was very professionally deployed and commanded,” he said.

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Trump rally attendees tell ALL: Assassination attempt was ‘an INSIDE job’



When former president Donald Trump was nearly assassinated, it wasn’t only his life that was forever changed but his supporters that attended the rally.

And two attendees, Mia and Eric, are telling Alex Stein everything that happened that day — including how one of them was detained by the Secret Service.

“They were rushing him out, I ended up running up, I got within 30 feet of Trump in his motorcade driving off after he had just got shot. That was a failure of the Secret Service, terrible, terrible work,” Eric tells Stein.

“So then, I was coming back, and they said, ‘Put your hands up,’” he continues, noting that he complied. “I was definitely riled up. A lot of adrenaline.”

While Eric saw what happened firsthand, there have been plenty of conspiracies forming, particularly on the left, that it was all staged.

“I do think that the government, the Secret Service, and probably the CIA wanted it to happen, and they didn’t follow the proper procedures in stopping this,” Stein says before asking Eric what he believes.

“I do not agree with them,” Eric says of the “staged” conspiracies. “I definitely saw him get shot and go down. I think it was definitely an inside job of some sort because there’s no way he should have been able to get on that roof. It’s like a direct perimeter for the Butler Fairgrounds.”

“I mean, that would’ve been covered. Even I would have done that and I’m not like Secret Service or nothing,” he adds.

Mia, the other attendee, actually got the shots on video.

“When it first happened, we thought it was firecrackers to be quite honest, but after I’ve listened to the videos,” she explains, “you can hear multiple [shots being fired].”


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Alex Stein reacts LIVE to ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT on Donald Trump



The attack on former President Donald Trump was just taken to an entirely new level — in the form of an assassination attempt.

During his rally speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday evening, a shooter who set himself up about 150 yards away on a roof to the north of the former president took his shot.

Thankfully, he missed.

The shooter, who was later identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired multiple shots and did not accomplish what he set out to do. Rather, one bullet grazed Trump’s ear.

After initially ducking, Trump rose quickly to his feet while Secret Service agents huddled around him and began moving him off the stage.

Trump yelled out “wait” before pumping his fist in the air.

It was an image that will go down as one of the most historic America has ever seen.

While it was undeniable to everyone watching that Trump had survived an assassination attempt, the mainstream media jumped on the incident and refused to call it what it was.

One CNN headline read “Secret Service rushes Trump off stage after he falls at rally.”

Alex Stein of “Prime Time with Alex Stein” isn’t pleased with network's original reaction.

“That’s disgusting,” Stein says in response to the headline, before noting that no one was ready for a situation like this — not even the Secret Service agents themselves.

“You play that video, they’re like, what do we do? What do we do?” Stein says, adding, “They have protocols and stuff to follow, but they still don’t know what to do. Do they lift him up, do they rush him with the ambulance, like they’re still kind of confused what to do.”

Stein, who was in Tampa with his girlfriend at the time of the shooting, stopped to ask dozens of people what their reactions were to the assassination attempt on Trump.

Oddly enough, most of them were unaware or refused to talk.

"Are you guys happy that Trump got shot?" Stein asked, confused as to why no one would answer.

"Trump got shot by a BB gun," one man shouted while he passed by.

"No," Stein responded.



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