Thomas Crooks practiced shooting for roughly five years before he tried to assassinate President Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, and his own father handed him the rifle that morning, federal documents now show.
FBI interview records reviewed by The New York Post paint a detailed picture of a 20-year-old who could barely hit a paper target when he first picked up a gun during the pandemic, then spent years methodically improving his marksmanship, buying equipment under a fake name, and 3D-printing a handgun, all while his father watched with unease but never intervened forcefully enough to stop what came next.
The documents were provided to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley as part of the Iowa Republican's ongoing inquiry into the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt at a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. They center on an FBI interview with Matthew Crooks, Thomas's father, conducted the day after the shooting.
Matthew Crooks told investigators that Thomas first developed an interest in firearms during the pandemic. At the start, he was hopeless. Matthew described his son as a "terrible" shot.
"He could not hit the paper [target]," Matthew told the FBI.
But Thomas kept at it. Over the course of roughly four to five years, he practiced until he could consistently land rounds on target. He purchased a prism sight, an optic designed for shooting at longer distances, and became what his father called "very knowledgeable" about measuring and zeroing in the device. He began returning from the range with shot groupings at 100-plus yards.
When Matthew asked why Thomas was shooting at such long distances, Thomas told him he just wanted to see how far he could shoot with basic sights. Matthew described this push toward long-range accuracy as Thomas "going out so far."
Thomas was not a hunter. His conversations with his father were usually brief and almost always about guns. He expressed interest in eventually owning his father's and grandfather's firearms. Every marker pointed toward obsession, not recreation.
Federal records show Thomas purchased "parts, tools and items to increase the capacity of his rifle" through Amazon using the pseudonym "Bob Dole." The prism sight may have been among those purchases, though the documents do not confirm that definitively.
Thomas also used a 3D printer to manufacture a Glock-19-style handgun. He showed it to his father. Matthew fired one round from the weapon, then barred Thomas from taking it to the range, not because of what it represented, but because he feared the plastic frame would explode.
At some point before the shooting, Thomas asked his father whether "he would have to do a background check" to purchase Matthew's Glock pistol. Matthew described the question as "odd." In hindsight, it reads as something worse, a young man probing for the path of least resistance to acquire a weapon outside normal channels.
On July 7, 2024, six days before the rally, Matthew Crooks watched his son through a surveillance camera in the family garage. Thomas was cleaning a gun. His behavior alarmed his father.
Matthew described what he saw: his 20-year-old son pacing with his "arms going up and down... frantically talking and not making any sense."
The records do not indicate that Matthew called police, contacted mental health services, or took any action to restrict Thomas's access to firearms after witnessing the episode. Six days later, on the morning of July 13, Matthew took a Panther Arms A-15 semi-automatic rifle from his locked gun safe and handed it to Thomas. He believed his son was heading to the shooting range.
Thomas drove to Butler instead.
Matthew told the FBI he believed Thomas "had ulterior motives", motives that became clear, he said, "the minute he pulled that trigger." It was a remarkable admission: a father acknowledging, after the fact, that something had been wrong all along.
The records also note that Matthew changed the combination to his gun safe frequently because he noticed Thomas looking over his shoulder to watch him enter the code. Even that precaution, a sign Matthew sensed something was off, did not prevent him from voluntarily handing over the rifle on the morning it mattered most.
Thomas Crooks fired eight shots at the Butler rally, killing rally attendee Corey Comperatore and wounding two others while grazing President Trump's ear. The FBI's subsequent investigation, involving more than 480 employees, over 1,000 interviews, 2,000-plus tips, and a review of half a million digital files across 13 seized devices, concluded that Crooks acted alone. Investigators found no clear ideological motive, though his online posts shifted from pro-Trump to anti-Trump sentiments over several years.
The security failures that allowed Crooks to reach the rooftop of a building near the rally site and fire without being stopped remain a source of deep institutional embarrassment. Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe, testifying before Senate committees, admitted the agency could not defend its performance. Rowe said he felt "ashamed" after he mimicked Crooks's prone position on the rooftop to understand the shooter's vantage point.
Local law enforcement sent the Secret Service a photo of Crooks 30 minutes before the shooting, but no one communicated that the suspect possessed a weapon. Poor cell service and bandwidth issues at the rally site delayed drone deployment and prevented detection of Crooks's own drone, which he had flown around the perimeter at approximately 3:51 p.m. Rowe attributed the cascade of failures in part to a "failure of imagination."
That phrase deserves scrutiny. The federal records now reviewed by The Post show that Thomas Crooks spent years building toward exactly the kind of attack the Secret Service claims it could not imagine. He practiced long-range shooting. He bought rifle upgrades under a fake name. He 3D-printed a handgun. He behaved erratically with a firearm days before the rally. None of these facts, individually, would have triggered an arrest. But taken together, they describe a trajectory that someone, his father, law enforcement, or the agencies responsible for protecting a presidential candidate, should have recognized.
The Butler shooting was the first of two assassination attempts against Trump in the span of 64 days. On September 15, 2024, Ryan Routh set up a sniper's nest at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, armed with a Chinese SKS semiautomatic rifle fitted with a scope and extended magazine. Secret Service Agent Robert Fercano spotted the rifle barrel moving toward him and fired, causing Routh to flee. He was arrested shortly afterward on Interstate 95.
Routh left behind a handwritten note that began "Dear World" and confessed his intent. "This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but I failed you," he wrote. "I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job." He offered $150,000 to anyone willing to carry out the assassination.
President Trump has publicly characterized the Butler shooting as a "Democrat Plot," claiming that new information supporting that assertion had been uncovered. The FBI's official findings, based on its extensive investigation, concluded that Crooks acted alone.
Senator Grassley's ongoing investigation continues to surface documents that fill in the picture of who Thomas Crooks was and how he prepared. The FBI interview with Matthew Crooks, conducted the day after the shooting, is among the most revealing pieces of that record. It shows a father who noticed warning signs, took partial precautions, and still placed the weapon in his son's hands on the morning of the attack.
Open questions remain. The federal records do not explain what specifically drove Thomas Crooks to target the Butler rally. They do not address whether Matthew Crooks faced any legal consequences for providing the rifle. And they do not resolve why a young man who bought gun parts under a fake name, 3D-printed a pistol, and exhibited erratic behavior with a firearm never drew the attention of law enforcement before July 13.
Former Secret Service agent Bill Gage offered a blunt assessment of the investigative limits. "The internet is too big of a place," he said. "Crooks was a mentally ill loner that slipped through the cracks. We will most likely never know his true motivations."
That may be true. But the federal records now in Grassley's hands show that the cracks Thomas Crooks slipped through were wide, visible, and ran straight through his own family's garage.
