A newly released FBI document offers a curious glimpse inside the device of the gunman who nearly killed President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The record, pried loose through a Freedom of Information Act request and a follow-up lawsuit by Judicial Watch, states that "numerous images of guns and various political and other key figures were found on Crooks' device." The disclosure is the latest piece of a federal file that investigators have released only slowly since the July 2024 assassination attempt.
"There were multiple images of President Biden (POTUS) and FPOTUS, while other individuals were represented in only one to two images," the document said. In the FBI's own memo, "FPOTUS" refers to President Donald J. Trump, who was the target of the July 13, 2024, attack.
The bureau also downplayed the significance of the files. "A review of file paths associated with these images concluded the majority of the images appeared in cache and likely were web images, not photographs or video files," the document said.
Some early posts about the record claimed it showed images of then-First Lady Jill Biden. The FBI memo itself does not say that.
According to Judicial Watch, the passage appeared in a July 22, 2024, "Foreign Dissemination Request" sent to international intelligence partners. The memo said the FBI was still working to identify additional details related to the images.
The same batch of 142 heavily redacted pages revealed that Venmo suspended Crooks' account for "unusual activity" the day after the shooting. PayPal emails repeatedly addressed him as "Rod Swanson," an alias he used online.
The pace of the releases has frustrated the watchdog group. The Justice Department has indicated the Crooks file runs to roughly 75,000 pages, and at about 500 pages a month, Judicial Watch says it will take more than 12 years to receive it all.
"The FBI is abusing FOIA by hiding, redacting, and slow-walking documents on the Butler assassination attempt on President Trump," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. "The FBI's handling of this matter is a scandal."
More than two years later, a definitive motive remains elusive. "Crooks left no known written explanation. His political leanings remain unclear. Was the Butler rally just a convenient option for a young man planning mass violence, or was he committed to shooting Mr. Trump?" CBS News wrote in summing up the case.
In September, President Trump laid blame on his predecessor's administration. "Everybody knows the Crooked Joe Biden FBI didn't do what they should have with respect to the Lunatic who shot me in Butler, PA," he posted on Truth Social.
"By the time I got into Office, on January 20th, most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted, or gone," the President wrote. "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."
Wray is a former FBI director. Earlier releases obtained by Judicial Watch showed that Crooks purchased "a chest rig and ceramic plates" before the attack and that his behavior had grown increasingly erratic, according to The Western Journal.
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