A shadowy area surrounds the 20-year-old who allegedly shot Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13. With no criminal record and fresh out of high school, was he motivated by the tensions of the political campaign?
On Saturday, July 13, while he was in the middle of a presidential rally in the town of Butler, Pennsylvania, Republican candidate and former President of the United States Donald Trump ducked behind his lectern after several gunshots rang out around him and the activists who had come to listen to him. A few seconds later, he got back up, surrounded by members of the Secret Service – the government agency attached to the United States Department of Homeland Security – his cheek bloodied, he appeared to have been hit in the ear.
America discovers live on television that the billionaire and former president of the United States has been the victim of an assassination attempt. At the same time, a member of Donald Trump’s close guard, posted on a roof near the platform where the Republican candidate was speaking, fires a shot in the direction of the person who appears to be the alleged shooter. In the general panic, Donald Trump is evacuated and the crowd, in shock, discovers the lifeless body of a man posted on the roof of a hangar, with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle: the assailant is neutralized but one victim is to be deplored as well as several injured, including Donald Trump.
Within hours of the incident, the FBI identified him as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a young man from Bethel Park, a Pennsylvania town 43 miles south of Butler. Crooks, 20, had graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022 and had no prior criminal record, according to Pennsylvania public court records.
Elector Republican or Democrat support?
Among the elements that allowed him to be identified, Pennsylvania state records show that he had registered as a Republican voter. At age 20, he would have experienced his first presidential election as an elector on November 5. He also allegedly donated $15 to ActBlue, a political action committee that raises money for the Democratic Party, when he was 17.
The police have not yet made any connection between the assassination attempt and the election campaign between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, but several Republican elected officials have attacked President Biden. On X, Mike Collins considers that the Democratic president’s way of portraying Donald Trump as a fascist is not insignificant: “Joe Biden gave the orders,” he wrote. As for Senator JDVance, tipped for the position of Vice President in the event of a Republican victory, he also wrote this commentary: “This is not a simple isolated incident today. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. This rhetoric led directly to the attempted assassination of President Trump.”
A semi-automatic and explosives
According to Kevin Rojek, the agent from the Pittsburgh office who is leading the investigation for the federal police, the weapon used by Thomas Matthew Crooks belonged to his father, it was a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle that he had legally purchased. Investigators do not yet know if it was given to him by his father, or if he took it without informing him. Aside from his school career, we know that Thomas Matthew Crooks was a member of the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, a shooting club that is not far from his home. Sunday evening, the club also declared “fully condemning the gratuitous act of violence that occurred yesterday.”
Explosives were also discovered in the car and at the young man’s home, reports CNN. FBI National Security Advisor Bobby Wells said: “We are investigating this assassination attempt but also consider it a potential act of domestic terrorism.” The suspected shooter’s rifle, explosives and phone have since been sent to the FBI lab.