The CHILLING online trail of Trump's would-be assassin



Donald Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks’ digital footprint has been exposed — but not by the FBI. Rather, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has revealed disturbing comments Crooks allegedly made on social media leading up to his decision to fire at President Trump.

This online history dates back years and includes him engaging in conversations in YouTube comment sections where he explains that the “only way to fight the gov is with terrorism style attacks.”

Crooks' Google searches also reveal a mentally unwell young man, with searches as far back as 2019 centering around mass shootings, how to build a bomb, and “firing an AR15 as fast as possible.”

Prior to 2020, Crooks' comments appeared to be pro-Trump and against the left. But all that switched, seemingly overnight.


While the FBI has countered Carlson’s claims, BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales isn’t buying it.

“This is a guy who is not well. And I’m just wondering, with so many people on the FBI radar, and the fact that the FBI radar can be so vast at times — I mean, they can track down anyone for anything. Unless you’re the pipe bomber and unless you try to assassinate the president, then running for office,” Gonzales says.

“And all of a sudden, we can’t find anything. … I’m telling you guys, this man was on their radar,” she says. “They won’t tell you that. This is my opinion.”

Gonzales believes that the YouTube comments — where Crooks was replying to an anonymous account discussing violent attacks — point to the possibility that he was "programmed to want to kill Trump.”

Gonzales also points out that while Crooks was engaging in violent rhetoric in the YouTube comment sections, she herself was getting censored for far less.

“I know for a fact YouTube is all over their stuff because I’ve been demonetized for two years of my life, two-plus years of my life, for saying something far more benign than calling for assassination. I misgendered someone, and I almost lost my entire YouTube account,” she explains.

“We deserve answers. … We deserve more answers than, ‘Trust us, bro, we’re the FBI,’” she adds.

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Report: Biden Admin Hid Online Footprint Of Trump’s Would-Be Assassin

Without transparency, institutions like the FBI and the Department of Justice will continue to lose credibility with vast swathes of the American people.

Effort to release Epstein files finally advances after newly sworn-in Democrat becomes final signatory



Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie's highly anticipated discharge petition to release the Epstein files received its final signatory on Wednesday, allowing lawmakers to force a vote in the House.

Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva of Arizona became the 218th signatory on the Epstein discharge petition just moments after being sworn into office on Wednesday. Grijalva joined the 213 Democrats who unanimously supported the discharge petition while just four Republicans — Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Massie — signed on.

'Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.'

With 218 signatures, lawmakers will be able to force a House vote on releasing the Epstein files.

Just hours before Grijalva's swearing in, the White House confirmed that members of President Donald Trump's administration met with Boebert in the Situation Room to address the discharge petition.

RELATED: 'Hoax': Republicans slam Democrats for sharing altered Epstein documents to 'create a fake narrative' around Trump

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

This meeting included a phone call from Trump as well as a face-to-face with Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel. Despite the apparent pressure campaign, Boebert did not rescind her support for the discharge petition.

Despite the bipartisan uproar over the administration's handling of the Epstein files, Trump maintains that the scandal is a Democrat "hoax" to distract from their disastrous shutdown.

"The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects," Trump said in a Truth Social Post. "Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap. The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country, while at the same time putting many at risk — and they should pay a fair price."

RELATED: Supreme Court rejects Ghislaine Maxwell's appeal on first day of session

Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

"There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!"

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Trump 'shuts off' deadly fentanyl pipeline by securing 'historic' deal with China: Patel



FBI Director Kash Patel traveled to Beijing last week to finalize a deal with China to end the fentanyl production pipeline.

'The Chinese government agreed on a plan to stop fentanyl precursors.'

Patel joined White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday in the briefing room to share the results of that visit.

Patel credited the accomplishment to Trump’s “historic engagement with [Chinese] President Xi,” referring to the leaders' meeting in October.

Patel reported that the FBI has seized 1,900 kilograms of fentanyl — enough to kill 127 million — so far this year, noting that it was a 31% increase compared to the same time frame last year.

“Fentanyl precursors are what makes up fentanyl. While we, the inner agency, the Department of Justice, have been fighting hard to seize and stop drug traffickers, we must attack fentanyl precursors — the ingredients necessary to make this lethal drug,” Patel stated.

RELATED: Trump reveals what's at stake if Supreme Court rules against his tariffs: 'Devastating'

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

He noted that he is the first FBI director to travel to China in over a decade.

“The Chinese government agreed on a plan to stop fentanyl precursors,” Patel said.

“The People’s Republic of China has fully designated and listed all 13 precursors utilized to make fentanyl. Furthermore, they have agreed to control seven chemical subsidiaries that are also utilized to produce this lethal drug.”

“Effective immediately, essentially, President Trump has shut off the pipeline that creates fentanyl,” he continued.

“This historic achievement has saved tens of thousands of lives.”

RELATED: Trump scores win for American farmers as China commits to ‘massive’ soybean purchases

Photo by DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images

China’s Commerce Ministry announced early this week that it would adjust requirements for some precursor chemicals, requiring a license to export them to the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Most fentanyl that enters the U.S. is from Mexico, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The office reported in September that fentanyl continues to be the leading cause of overdose deaths in the country.

— (@)

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Evidence Contradicts Comey’s Claim That His Indictment Is Purely Political

U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan backed up the James Comey charges with evidence far surpassing what is necessary to survive a motion to dismiss.

James Comey’s Own Notes Prove He Knew The Russia Hoax Was A Clinton Plot

It was always implausible that Comey was unaware that Russiagate was a Clinton smear — and now his own notes prove that untrue.

Illegal alien learns his fate after a Wisconsin judge allegedly helped him evade ICE



The illegal alien whom a Wisconsin judge allegedly helped to evade Immigration and Customs Enforcement received his sentence for a criminal conviction following months in custody.

On Wednesday, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, 31, was sentenced to time served and will be deported after being arrested by federal officials in Milwaukee in April.

Prosecutors claim Dugan escorted Eduardo and his lawyer out of the courtroom through a back door.

He pled guilty on September 4 to re-entering the United States, WTMJ reported.

U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper handed down the sentence at a hearing on Wednesday following a plea deal including a promise to never return to the United States.

RELATED: Masked anti-ICE agitators are in for a rude awakening as new DHS policy goes into effect

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

According to the AP, Judge Pepper told Flores-Ruiz: "I very much hope you can find a way to make a living back home rather than coming back here."

Flores-Ruiz will remain in custody until his deportation.

Flores-Ruiz's attorney, Martin Pruhs, told the AP that his client was awaiting deportation in "the near future" but declined to provide further comment.

The full story, however, started more than seven months ago.

In March, ICE agents were alerted that Flores-Ruiz was due in court for three counts of battery. At a court appearance the following month in connection with the battery charges, Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan allegedly interfered with federal ICE agents who were attempting to arrest Flores-Ruiz at the conclusion of his hearing.

Prosecutors claim Dugan escorted Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer out of the courtroom through a back door on April 18. Flores-Ruiz was able to flee the agents on foot before his apprehension.

The following week, FBI Director Kash Patel announced Dugan's arrest for obstruction, saying, in part, "Thankfully, our agents chased down the perp on foot, and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public."

Dugan was indicted in May, and U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman denied a motion to dismiss the charges against her in August.

“There is no basis for granting immunity simply because some of the allegations in the indictment describe conduct that could be considered ‘part of a judge’s job,'” Adelman wrote in the order, according to WTMJ.

Dugan's trial is scheduled for December 15.

Flores-Ruiz pled no contest to one count of battery in October. He was sentenced to time served in that case as well.

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'Whack-a-mole': FBI allegedly fires, rehires, then refires agents linked to Jack Smith's anti-GOP Arctic Frost crusade



Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) published damning documents last month detailing how the Biden FBI not only secretly obtained the private phone records of numerous Republican lawmakers but subpoenaed records for over 400 Republican individuals and entities as part of what the Iowa senator called a "fishing expedition."

Grassley noted last week that Operation Arctic Frost, the "fishing expedition" in question, "was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors could improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus."

'The road to reform is long.'

Amid the backlash over the latest insights into the Biden administration's yearslong apparent campaign to criminalize its political opponents, the FBI began canning some of the agents involved in Arctic Frost whose names appeared in the newly released documents. While the bureau handed out numerous pink slips in recent days, it evidently had issues making them stick.

Last week, the FBI reportedly fired at least two agents who had worked on the Arctic Frost investigation.

CNN originally reported that Aaron Tapp, the special agent in charge of the FBI's San Antonio office who previously had an oversight role on Arctic Frost, was among those fired, though it has since indicated that he was forced into retiring.

RELATED: Bondi exposes ‘UNPRECEDENTED’ Arctic Frost action against Trump by Biden admin

Jack Smith. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

On Monday, the bureau allegedly canned another four agents who worked on Smith's team: Jeremy Desor; Blaire Toleman, a Chicago-based agent who once led a now-defunct public corruption squad; David Geist, a former assistant special agent in charge of the bureau's Washington field office; and Jamie Garman, an agent who was placed on administrative leave early last month, reported Reuters.

"The public has a right to know how the government's spending their hard-earned tax dollars, and if agents were engaged in wrongdoing they ought to be held accountable," Sen. Grassley said in a statement. "Transparency brings accountability."

Multiple sources told Reuters that at least two of the terminations — Toleman's and Geist's — were rescinded later in the day, along with a number of other terminations that allegedly took place on Monday.

Sources familiar with the matter told CNN that Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, had intervened on Monday to reverse the firings of least four fired FBI agents. One source said she weighed in on account of the agents' involvement in the Trump administration's crackdown on criminality in the national capital.

This last-minute rescue was, however, apparently as short-lived as the initial terminations. The FBI reportedly fired the agents again on Tuesday.

It's presently unclear how many agents were officially canned.

The FBI and Pirro's office did not immediately respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

The FBI Agents Association complained in a statement on Tuesday that "the actions yesterday — in which FBI Special Agents were terminated and then reinstated shortly after — highlight the chaos that occurs when long-standing policies and processes are ignored. An Agent simply being assigned to an investigation and conducting it appropriately within the law should never be grounds for termination."

"Director Patel has disregarded the law and launched a campaign of erratic and arbitrary retribution," added the group.

Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News, "Individual accountability for participation in or oversight of weaponized operations such as Arctic Frost should absolutely be imposed. I'm glad some have been fired for this, and I am sure they will sue and be well represented."

"The personnel laws are very restrictive to accountability, which certainly makes accountability harder, especially when considering termination versus reassignment," continued Howell. "That being said, you can't have weaponized individuals still at the FBI, that just should not ever be an acceptable option. The road to reform is long."

Howell added, "I'd like to see more thought given to systemic reform at the FBI so it can't operate institutionally as it did during the Biden years especially. Whack-a-mole on weaponized individuals is tough work, but the FBI and government should also mitigate the potential for them to abuse power again."

Editor's note: Mike Howell is a contributor at Blaze News.

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Presidential Pardons Are Needed For Trump Electors Persecuted By Biden DOJ

President Trump should immediately pardon every person indicted by the partisan Democrat prosecutors doing the bidding of the Biden DOJ.

Damning new docs reveal who's on Biden admin's 'enemies list,' expose extent of FBI's Arctic Frost



It's no secret that the Department of Justice and the FBI were weaponized against President Donald Trump and his allies under the previous administration.

Damning new revelations about the FBI's Arctic Frost investigation indicate, however, that the campaign waged by former Attorney General Merrick Garland's lawfare regime to hound and potentially lock up individuals supportive of Trump and/or skeptical of the results of the 2020 election was far worse than previously imagined.

'[Biden] thought basically half of America were domestic terrorists.'

"Arctic Frost was not just an attack on Democracy; it was a coordinated and sustained invasion of it," Mike Howell, president of the watchdog group Oversight Project, said in a statement.

"Everyone responsible should be held accountable and banished from public life," continued Howell. "The long continuum of a decade-long campaign by the Federal government against Trump can get complicated. What you should know is that they were so out of control, and thought they never would get caught, that they named this investigation after an orange to mock Trump."

This week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and the House Judiciary Committee published thousands of pages of additional documents altogether providing a better sense of the vastness and invasiveness of the Arctic Frost dragnet, which was launched in April 2022.

Grassley published documents earlier this month detailing how the Biden FBI sought private cellphone records from numerous GOP lawmakers during Arctic Frost — an operation greenlit by Garland and former FBI Director Christopher Wray that morphed into at least one case brought against Trump by Garland's special counsel, Jack Smith.

Apparently the covert surveillance of Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), and other lawmakers was just the tip of the iceberg.

On Wednesday, Grassley made public 197 subpoenas obtained through whistleblower disclosures showing that Smith and his team demanded testimony, communications, and records related to at least 430 Republican individuals and entities.

RELATED: The bureaucracy strikes back — and we’re striking harder

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Grassley stated, "Arctic Frost was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors could improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus. Contrary to what Smith has said publicly, this was clearly a fishing expedition."

Among the recipients of the subpoenas were:

  • financial institutions and platforms such as Avidia Bank, Bank of America, Capital One, JP Morgan Chase, TD Bank, BILL, and Wells Fargo;
  • various campaign, consulting and legal outfits including the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, the Republican National Committee, Parscale Strategy, and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee; and
  • 34 individuals including former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, Trump 2020 communications director Tim Murtaugh, GOP campaign operative Thomas Datwyler, former acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, and deputy national security adviser Robert Gabriel.

Grassley indicated that Smith and his team squeezed some of these individuals, banks, and businesses for their records concerning and communications with:

  • media companies such as CBS, Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, and Sinclair;
  • "any member, employee or agent of the Legislative Branch of the U.S. Government";
  • White House advisers including Stephen Miller, Dan Scavino, and Lara Trump;
  • conservative groups including Turning Point USA and the Republican Attorneys General Association;
  • data concerning Republican donors and fundraising efforts; and
  • financial data relating to conservative individuals and entities.

'I think they're being sabotaged within.'

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) said Wednesday that "what is revealed in those 1,700 pages of documents, in those 197 subpoenas, is nothing short of a Biden administration enemies list. I'm old enough to understand how toxic a term that was under Richard Nixon. This is far worse — far worse, orders of magnitude worse."

"People need to understand how politicized the Biden administration turned all these agencies," continued Johnson. "[Biden] thought basically half of America were domestic terrorists."

Johnson emphasized that the records Grassley made public were not obtained from the FBI but rather from a whistleblower and suggested that Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel are being hindered by bad actors within their respective agencies.

"We need to do everything we can to assist Director Patel and AG Bondi in making sure they have the staff to take control over these agencies. They're the heads of them — I don't think they have the control," said Johnson. "I think they're being sabotaged within."

— (@)

The House Judiciary Committee released over 230 pages of additional documents on Tuesday providing insights into the nature and origins of Arctic Frost.

Among the heavily redacted documents turned over by Patel is a April 13, 2022, memo issued by the Washington, D.C., field office that discusses the flimsy predicate for the Arctic Frost investigation — a probe allegedly named after a type of orange to mock Trump.

RELATED: GOP senator to sue Jack Smith after his lawyers try gaslighting on Biden FBI surveillance

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The memo requesting the investigation alleged that "subjects corruptly conspired to obstruct the United States Congress' certification of the 2020 Presidential election results by submitting fraudulent certificates of electors' votes to the United States Government" and cited supposed evidence that individuals linked to the 2020 Trump campaign allegedly attempted to convince former Vice President Mike Pence to support alternate electors in 2021.

At the time of Arctic Frost's conception, the lawfare regime appeared particularly interested in hounding former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and legal scholar John Eastman.

However, the documents suggest that hundreds of other conservatives may have also been targeted for investigation, including Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro; Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.); Steve Bannon; former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; former co-chair of the Republican National Committee Youth Advisory Council CJ Pearson; and the chief operating officer of Turning Point USA. Tyler Bowyer served as COO of TPUSA until recently.

Other documents in the trove provided by Patel indicate that the scope of the Arctic Frost "fishing expedition" grew rapidly such that just months into the probe and days after the agent who requested the opening of the investigation celebrated the indictment of Peter Navarro, investigators requested additional funds and bodies.

"The Arctic Frost team is requesting approximately $16,600 from [the Public Corruption Unit] for travel in June to conduct more than 40 interviews, serve subpoenas, and execute several cellular device search warrants," said an email dated May 25, 2022. "We would be requesting assistance from 11 [Washington Field Office] individuals to travel to various locations, in addition to utilizing individuals from the various field offices."

By January 2023, the Arctic Frost operation — which was formally assigned to Jack Smith in November 2022 — had targeted individuals in at least seven states, interviewed over 150 individuals, served over 400 subpoenas, and secured scores of search warrants, including for lawmakers' phones and Trump's Twitter account.

Missouri Rep. Bob Onder (R) noted that the revelations about the Arctic Frost probe have revealed "an alarming weaponization of government power at the highest levels."

Editor's note: Mike Howell is a contributor at Blaze News.

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