President Donald Trump dropped a bombshell Tuesday, claiming the July 2024 assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania was “all a Democrat plot” orchestrated to knock him out of the election.
In a Truth Social post, Trump accused Democrats of the conspiracy and blamed former FBI Director Christopher Wray for botched files on the case. The president said the Bureau’s records were “missing, altered, corrupted, or gone” by the time he returned to office in January.
“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. Dirty Cop Christopher Wray should pay a price for the way he handled this assassination attempt, and certainly for the things he said.”
Trump was shot and wounded in his upper right ear during a campaign rally on July 13, 2024, when 20-year-old Thomas Crooks fired eight rounds from an AR-15-style rifle from a nearby rooftop.
The FBI on Tuesday released its eighth batch of files on Crooks to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). The 181 pages — heavily redacted, with 95 pages completely blacked out — revealed disturbing new details.
Gun parts were delivered to Crooks under the pseudonym “Bob Dole.” An anonymous donor paid for his cremation.
The cremation happened just ten days after the attempt. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), who tried to examine the body in August 2024, was told Crooks was already gone — “nobody knew this until Monday, August 5, including the County Coroner, law enforcement, Sheriff, etc.”
Higgins called it obstruction of congressional oversight. He also flagged that the FBI immediately cleaned up biological evidence from the crime scene — “unheard of,” the former cop said. “Cops don’t do that, ever.”
According to the new documents, Crooks’ father described his son as “emotionless from birth” — he didn’t cry when born, remained unusually quiet throughout life, and lacked genuine father-son bonding.
Crooks scored 1500 on the SAT and had advanced tech skills. He built a Raspberry Pi security camera and tried to manufacture a Glock 19 using carbon-fiber plastic. He had a long-standing obsession with long-range shooting and firearms modification.
The FBI concluded after an extensive investigation involving 485 agents, thousands of interviews, 10+ search warrants, 100 subpoenas, and 13 seized electronic devices that Crooks acted entirely alone. A senior FBI official stated: “There is no information, no evidence anywhere in this investigation, that shows there was any foreign individual or foreign government or foreign organization tied to Thomas Crooks.”
But recently released FBI documents raise questions. On May 25, 2024, a “person of interest who resembles the shooter” spent about an hour browsing a gun store in Edinboro, Pennsylvania — two hours north of Crooks’ hometown — accompanied by two older white males. The lookalike bought 20 rounds of 7.62x54R Mosin-Nagant ammunition with a MasterCard.
The FBI has not confirmed or ruled out whether the person was Crooks. It has not identified the two men.
The documents also show Crooks used an encrypted email service hosted in Belgium called Mailfence on his cellphone.
Asked about Trump’s “Democrat plot” claim at a White House Rose Garden press conference, Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged there is “new information about the shooter and about his background, about his history,” but declined to elaborate on the plot allegation.
Blanche did side with Trump’s frustration toward the FBI, saying, “As far as the president’s frustration with the FBI, I was there with him, I lived it.”
FBI Director Kash Patel, testifying at a Senate oversight hearing Tuesday, reiterated there was no evidence the Butler shooter was working with others.
Trump’s explosive allegation lands as the FBI’s handling of the case — from the rushed cremation to the cleaned crime scene to the missing files — continues to fuel conservative distrust.
