President Donald Trump sharply rebuked the Biden FBI and its director, Dirty Cop Christopher Wray, after federal authorities quietly released new details about would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks.
The presidents broadside followed fresh disclosures to Congress about the 20-year-old gunman who opened fire on Trump during a July 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
According to Western Journal, the new information provided by the FBI to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has only intensified conservative concerns that federal law enforcement under President Joe Biden has been both politically weaponized and disturbingly lax when it comes to protecting Trump.
Crooks was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper after he climbed onto a rooftop overlooking the rally site and unleashed a volley of shots toward the stage.
One bullet grazed Trumps ear just after he turned his head, while three other attendees were struck, and one of them later died from his wounds, underscoring how close the nation came to another presidential assassination.
Trump, who has long argued that federal agencies have been turned into tools of partisan warfare, took to Truth Social on Tuesday to blast the bureaus handling of the case.
Everybody knows the Crooked Joe Biden FBI didnt do what they should have with respect to the Lunatic who shot me in Butler, PA, he wrote, tying the incident directly to what he portrays as a broader pattern of misconduct and politicization.
The president went further, alleging that crucial evidence was mishandled or disappeared once he left office and Bidens team took control of the executive branch.
By the time I got into Office, on January 20th, most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted, or gone. New info was just found! Why wasnt it seen long ago? This was all a Democrat Plot, to get me out of the Election, that failed, he added, framing the episode as part of a failed effort to derail his political comeback.
Trump then turned his fire directly on the FBI director, whom he originally appointed but has since denounced as emblematic of the entrenched Washington bureaucracy.
Dirty Cop Christopher Wray should pay a price for the way he handled this assassination attempt, and certainly for the things he said, Trump declared, signaling that a future Trump administration would likely move aggressively to overhaul or purge the bureaus leadership.
The New York Post reported that the FBIs newly disclosed materials to Grassley shed light on Crooks preparations and mindset in the months leading up to the attack.
Investigators found that Crooks, who developed a late-teen fascination with firearms, began ordering a flood of Amazon packages under the pseudonym Bob Dole, including parts, tools and items to increase the capacity of his rifle, suggesting deliberate planning rather than a spontaneous act.
The Panther Arms A-15 semi-automatic rifle used by Thomas to carry out the assassination attempt was given to him by his father the morning of the shooting, the Post said, a detail that raises further questions about what, if anything, authorities knew about the familys firearms and Crooks behavior.
Fox News added that FBI documents show an anonymous donor paid for Crooks cremation shortly after he was killed in Butler, an unusual twist that has fueled public suspicion and demands for greater transparency.
Wray, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in late July 2024, acknowledged that Crooks had conducted a chilling online search related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
On July 6, he did a Google search for, quote, how far away was Oswald from Kennedy? Wray said, noting that the search occurred the same day Crooks appears to have registered for the Butler rally.
Thats a search thats obviously significant in terms of his state of mind, the FBI director observed, implicitly conceding that Crooks was studying historical assassination tactics.
Wray further testified that, beyond this and a general interest in public figures more broadly, the FBIs review of Crooks laptop had not yet produced a clear ideological or political motive, a claim many conservatives view with skepticism given the pattern of violence against right-of-center figures.
The director also told lawmakers that Crooks flew a drone for 11 minutes at approximately 4 p.m. on July 13, about 200 yards from the rally site, in what appears to have been a reconnaissance operation.
Trump was shot at 6:11 p.m., leaving a two-hour window during which, critics argue, security failures and missed warnings may have allowed the gunman to position himself unchallenged on the rooftop.
Wray testified that the shooter fired at least eight rounds before a counter-sniper neutralized him, a barrage that should have left a clear ballistic trail.
Yet when pressed by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan about where those rounds ended up, Wray admitted, I dont have that in front of me, and reverted to speculation about the nature of Trumps wound, further eroding Republican confidence in the bureaus candor.
During that same hearing, Wray suggested that Trump might not have been struck by a bullet at all, but possibly by shrapnel, a comment that many on the right saw as an attempt to minimize the severity of the attack.
Rep. Kevin Kiley of California asked, Director Wray, to the best of your understanding, how close did the assassins bullet come to killing President Trump? and Wray responded, My understanding is that either it or some shrapnel is what, you know, grazed his ear, so I dont know that I have the actual distance.
That equivocation did not sit well with Trump, who publicly contradicted the FBIs characterization of his injury.
ABC News reported that Trump wrote on Truth Social, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress yesterday that he wasnt sure if I was hit by shrapnel, glass, or a bullet (the FBI never even checked!), before flatly asserting, No, it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard. There was no glass, there was no shrapnel. The hospital called it a bullet wound to the ear, and that is what it was.
Faced with mounting criticism and medical documentation, Wray issued a clarifying statement the following day that effectively walked back his earlier testimony.
What struck President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subjects rifle, he said, belatedly aligning the bureaus public position with what doctors and eyewitnesses had already confirmed.
For many conservatives, the evolving narrative from the FBI from uncertainty about whether Trump was hit by a bullet, to unanswered questions about missing rounds, to the opaque handling of Crooks remains and background reinforces a broader concern that federal law enforcement is more eager to police political speech than to forthrightly confront violence against a leading Republican candidate.
Trumps charge that This was all a Democrat Plot, to get me out of the Election, that failed may be dismissed by his opponents as hyperbole, but the pattern of obfuscation, delay, and defensive testimony from the Biden FBI under Christopher Wray ensures that demands for a full, independent accounting of the Butler attack will only grow louder.
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