President Trump accused the FBI of mishandling the investigation into the July 2024 attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, calling it a "Democratic plot" after newly released documents revealed disturbing details about gunman Thomas Crooks' preparations.
Trump took to Truth Social on Tuesday to level the charge directly at the bureau and its former director, Christopher Wray, hours after the New York Post reported new details from FBI documents showing Crooks used the pseudonym "Bob Dole", the late senator's name, to order Amazon packages containing parts, tools, and items designed to increase the capacity of his rifle. The revelation added fresh fuel to questions about how a 20-year-old managed to meticulously plot a shooting that killed one supporter, wounded two others, and clipped the president's ear, all while the FBI, by Trump's account, sat on or lost critical evidence.
Attorney General Todd Blanche reinforced the president's frustration from the White House Rose Garden, telling reporters that FBI leadership's actions before the July 13, 2024, shooting remain unexplained, and that the same agency was simultaneously pursuing criminal cases against Trump.
The president's Truth Social post laid out the accusation in blunt terms. Trump wrote:
"Everybody knows the Crooked Joe Biden FBI didn't do what they should have with respect to the Lunatic who shot me in Butler, PA."
He went further, alleging that by the time he returned to office on January 20th, the trail had gone cold, not by accident.
"By the time I got into Office, on January 20th, most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted, or gone. New info was just found! Why wasn't it seen long ago? This was all a Democrat Plot, to get me out of the Election, that failed."
Trump also singled out Wray, the man he himself nominated to lead the FBI during his first term, on the advice, Trump has said, of former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Trump wrote that Wray "should pay a price for the way he handled this assassination attempt, and certainly for the things he said."
The new FBI documents do not connect Crooks to any broader conspiracy. And Crooks' motives, even with the fresh material, remain unknown. But the gap between what the FBI knew, what it apparently lost, and what is only now surfacing is exactly the gap Trump is driving through.
At the Rose Garden briefing, Blanche, who served as Trump's defense attorney before becoming attorney general, did not hold back about the bureau's conduct. He told reporters:
"It's not really clear what the leadership of the FBI were doing in the weeks and months ahead of the attempted assassination to protect President Trump."
Then he connected the dots to the broader institutional conflict between Trump and the Wray-era FBI.
"That's the same organization that was simultaneously trying to put him in prison until he dies. So his frustration and concern about what the former director was doing is something that is not new."
Blanche was referring to the FBI's role in criminal prosecutions against Trump related to the handling of classified documents and challenges to the 2020 election results. For Trump and his allies, the bureau's dual posture, pursuing the president legally while failing to prevent an assassination attempt against him, is not a coincidence worth ignoring. It is a pattern worth investigating.
Blanche left the lectern without answering a shouted question about whether he expects investigators to ever determine Crooks' motive.
The details that emerged Monday paint a picture of a young man who planned carefully and left few obvious traces. Crooks, 20 years old at the time of his death, purchased Amazon packages under the name "Bob Dole." Those parcels contained parts, tools, and items to increase the capacity of his rifle, the weapon he would use on July 13, 2024, at the Butler rally.
His personal profile defies easy categorization. Crooks registered as a Republican two years before the shooting. Yet on the day of President Biden's inauguration, he contributed $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project through ActBlue, the Democratic donor platform. His father was reportedly unnerved by his quiet demeanor. People who knew him described a young man who had been, in the words of the new documents, "emotionless since birth."
None of it adds up to a clear motive. And the FBI's newly surfaced documents do not supply one.
After a Secret Service sniper returned fire and killed Crooks at the scene, an anonymous donor paid for his body to be cremated, another loose thread in a case full of them.
Trump has been circling this subject for months. Last April, when asked whether he had received intelligence briefings on "what really happened" at Butler, the president gave a guarded answer.
"I have. I'll keep that to myself. It's very personal."
That restraint is gone now. The release of new FBI material appears to have broken whatever patience Trump had with the slow drip of information. His decision to publicly call the shooting a "Democratic plot" marks a sharp escalation, one that goes well beyond criticizing the FBI's competence and into alleging intentional political sabotage.
Whether the evidence supports that specific charge is a separate question. The documents released so far do not establish a connection between Crooks and any political operation or conspiracy. But the charge lands in a context where the FBI's credibility with roughly half the country was already in tatters, damaged by the bureau's own conduct during the Russia investigation, the classified-documents case, and the January 6th prosecutions.
For Trump, the argument is straightforward: the same FBI that pursued him relentlessly failed to protect him when it mattered most, then lost or corrupted the evidence that might explain why. He wants Wray held accountable. He wants answers about what the bureau knew before July 13, 2024, and why so much information was unavailable by the time he returned to office.
Those are fair questions. Corey Comperatore, the Trump supporter killed that day in Butler, deserves answers. The two rally-goers who were wounded deserve answers. And a president who took a bullet to the ear has every right to demand them.
When a federal agency cannot explain how a 20-year-old with an Amazon account and a borrowed name nearly changed the course of American history, the public is entitled to more than silence and shrugs from the people who were supposed to prevent it.
