Thomas Matthew Crooks traded coded messages about 3D-printed parts and shot dozens of drone photos before the Butler rally attack, and Judicial Watch says the FBI is still slow-walking the full file.
New FBI records obtained by Judicial Watch show the 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, exchanged odd one- and two-word texts for months and discussed 3D-printed parts with an “unknown contact” well before the July 13, 2024, shooting at President Donald Trump’s Butler, Pennsylvania, rally.
Fox News reported the document release also includes a DHL notice for a package from Hong Kong and 40 drone photos Crooks took in February 2024, including images of PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium. Secret Service agents killed Crooks at the scene after a bullet grazed Trump and other rounds struck people in the crowd.
Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old fire chief, died at once while shielding his family. James Copenhaver, a 76-year-old veteran, was hit in the triceps and midsection, suffered kidney and colon injuries, left the hospital a week later, and died on Sept. 23, 2026, from complications tied to those wounds.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton tied the latest release to Copenhaver’s death and pressed the bureau to stop rationing heavily blacked-out pages.
Fitton said:
"These latest records reveal more pieces of the puzzle surrounding Thomas Crooks. The FBI should stop the slow drip of heavily redacted records and immediately provide the full investigative record, especially since the death last week of James Copenhaver, who was severely injured from being shot during the assassination attempt on President Trump."
That demand lands on a simple point. Americans still lack a complete public accounting of what Crooks built, who he messaged, and what arrived at his door before he climbed onto a roof with a rifle.
On Feb. 9, 2023, an unknown contact asked Crooks a direct question.
The contact wrote:
"Did you 3D print the parts?"
Crooks answered:
"Yes, except for the fan blades."
The contact came back with:
"Woah that looks cool"
The same exchange shows the contact asking about the “parts” after a redacted Crooks message. The FBI labeled the other party an “unknown contact” and left key replies blacked out.
Crooks’ father, Matthew Crooks, later told investigators his son had already tried to fabricate a handgun at home. Records describe the attempt in plain terms.
Matthew Crooks stated:
"Using carbon fiber plastic, a dryer and a toaster oven, Thomas did once create a Glock 19."
The father forbade use of the homemade pistol, fearing it would explode. Those details surfaced earlier in documents reviewed with help from Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, and they now sit alongside the Judicial Watch release.
Between May 21, 2023, and Jan. 3, 2024, Crooks sent a string of one- and two-word messages that read like noise, not normal conversation. The FBI redacted whatever the other side may have answered.
The traffic included lines such as “Hello red,” “Yolo,” “Hdudhdbdbbd,” “7888ejdj,” “Ddodjjf,” “890,” “Yup red,” and long runs of repeated letters. Standing alone, the strings prove little. Sitting next to the 3D-print exchange, the drone survey, and a foreign package notice, they raise the same question Fitton is asking: why is the public still getting fragments?
From Feb. 6 to Feb. 27, 2024, months before Butler, Crooks took 40 drone photographs. The set included PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium. Large public venues are not a hobby detail investigators can shrug off after an open-air rally attack.
Records also show a DHL notification for a package Crooks received from Hong Kong. The release does not spell out the contents. That gap matters. So does the pattern of overseas shipping and homemade gun parts in the same case file.
President Trump has kept pressing the same accountability theme. In remarks covered by Breitbart, he said new information on Butler surfaced only after material went missing, altered, or disappeared by the time he returned to office, and he called the attack a Democrat plot to knock him out of the election. That coverage also notes Crooks received packages under the alias “Bob Dole,” that an anonymous donor paid for his cremation, and that Sen. Mike Lee said Americans still know very little about the gunman more than two years later.
Lee’s complaint matches the paper trail now in view. Coded printer chatter, a homemade Glock attempt, stadium drone shots, a Hong Kong shipment, heavy redactions, and an alias on packages do not read like a finished brief. They read like a case still being doled out on the bureau’s schedule.
Trump was rushed offstage with a bloodied ear. Comperatore never went home. Copenhaver fought complications for more than two years and died from them in September 2026. Those are the stakes attached to every blacked-out line.
The Secret Service ended the threat on the roof. What followed was supposed to be a full accounting of how a 20-year-old built capability, moved money and parts, mapped venues, and reached a firing position over a former president and a crowd of voters. Judicial Watch’s release adds pieces. It does not close the book.
Fitton’s demand is the right baseline for a country that expects equal protection and honest government: quit the slow drip and produce the investigative record. Printer parts, coded texts, drone grids, and foreign parcels are not curiosities. They are leads. Leads belong in the open when a gunman nearly murdered a president and did murder Americans who showed up to hear him speak.
When the FBI keeps the key pages dark, trust dies in the redactions, and the public is right to keep asking who helped, who knew, and what else is still hidden.
