Trump would-be assassin in Butler had massive ‘digital footprint,’ alleges columnist

The digital trail of President Donald Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Crooks tells “quite a different story” than the FBI’s congressional statements about the 20-year-old, New York Post columnist Miranda Devine told “America Reports” Monday.

“We were sort of led to believe that Thomas Crooks was really a ghost, that there was no motive that could be ascertained from his online accounts,” Devine discussed. “And yet a source has provided us with a lot of information from 17 different online accounts that Thomas Crook had.”

In an op-ed Monday, Devine demanded a “better explanation” from the FBI and Secret Service about what led Crooks to attempt to assassinate Trump over a year ago in Butler, Pa.

On July 13, 2024, Crooks fired off eight shots from a rooftop at Trump during his rally, killing 50-year-old firefighter Corey Comparatore and hitting Trump in the ear. He also injured two rally attendees.

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Devine credited a source for several online findings about Crooks, adding fresh scrutiny to the FBI’s statements about the investigation.

The columnist described a commonality between Crooks and Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin Tyler Robinson, who is charged with the murder of the late conservative activist.

“[Crooks’ accounts] range from, you know, Google Play to that site…called DeviantArt, which is probably the biggest, or one of the biggest hubs online for this sexual fetish called Furries, where people dress up or fantasize about animal characters, cartoon characters that are sort of humanized,” Devine told Fox News anchor Sandra Smith.

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She continued, “And so it’s very bizarre, but we also saw that with Charlie Kirk’s killer, alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, who was also involved in this bizarre furry culture.”

Crooks allegedly used they/them pronouns on the platform, Devine added. The columnist also sounded the alarm on Crooks appearing to “flip 180 degrees” in his political ideology in January 2020.

“His online comments from — he was very young, I mean 15, 16, 17 — show us about how he became increasingly violent and sort of radicalized against Democrats. He was pro-Trump,” Devine explained. “Something happened to make him become rabidly anti-Trump. And again, his rhetoric took more and more of a violent turn. He started brushing up against, there was a neo-Nazi by the name, fake name probably, William Teppers, who started encouraging Crooks in more and more violent rhetoric. And then suddenly something happened in August of 2020, and he just disappeared online.”

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Although former FBI Deputy Director Paul Abatte told Congress in July 2024 that Crooks’ comments “appear to reflect anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence” and “are described as extreme in nature,” he did not trace a change in Crooks’ political views.

“We see now from the exposure from our source of this online presence that there is a lot of other information that the FBI either chose not to look at or is somehow keeping it under wraps,” Devine asserted.