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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