BS BULLETIN:
- Newly obtained FBI records contain extensive interviews with Thomas Matthew Crooks’ father about the future Trump assassin’s childhood and increasingly unusual behavior.
- Matthew Crooks told investigators his son was remarkably unemotional from birth and that the two “never really had a father/son bond.”
- The records also detail Crooks’ growing fascination with firearms, privacy technology, pseudonyms and even an attempt to build his own handgun.
More than two years after Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed onto a rooftop in Butler, Pennsylvania, and tried to assassinate Donald Trump, newly obtained FBI records are providing an extraordinary look inside the gunman’s home and childhood.
And some of the most striking observations came from his own father.
The records were provided to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley as part of his continuing investigation into the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt and were exclusively reviewed by the New York Post.
Matthew Crooks told federal investigators there was something unusual about his son from the very beginning.
“When Thomas was born he did not scream and he was always quiet from that point on,” he said, according to the FBI records reviewed by the Post.
That emotional distance apparently continued throughout his life.
Matthew told investigators he “never really had a father/son bond” with Thomas and described a child who rarely displayed strong emotion, hardly laughed and could be extraordinarily difficult to read.
At one point, according to the records, the father became so frustrated by his son’s lack of reaction after Thomas dumped fish food into his sister’s aquarium that he deliberately pushed him emotionally until he finally cried.
By middle school, Thomas’ parents suspected he might have ADHD.
Later, his father noticed him becoming “a little more quiet and reserved.”
There was another behavior that became increasingly noticeable:
Thomas talked to himself.
His father told investigators that he observed it more frequently as his son grew older.
Those observations aren’t entirely new. Previous investigative reporting based on Pennsylvania State Police records also documented Matthew Crooks telling investigators that his son had increasingly talked to himself and behaved unusually in the period before the shooting.
But the newly disclosed FBI material goes considerably deeper into the father’s account.
Crooks was also extremely bright.
His father said Thomas scored about 1400 on the SAT without studying and later pushed the score to roughly 1500.
But socially, the picture was dramatically different.
He reportedly had little interest in dating and struggled with ordinary social interaction. His father described him as lacking “street smarts,” even as he excelled academically.
Then came the guns.
Crooks developed an increasingly serious interest in firearms as a teenager and began practicing at a shooting range.
He wasn’t exactly a natural.
His father recalled that initially “he could not hit the paper” target.
But Crooks kept practicing.
Eventually, his father said, Thomas became highly knowledgeable about sights, distances and zeroing a firearm. He would bring home targets showing his progress at distances exceeding 100 yards.
His father once asked why he was practicing from so far away.
Thomas reportedly answered that “he wanted to see how far he could shoot with rudimentary sights.”
That exchange reads considerably differently after Butler.
The FBI records reviewed by the Post also describe an increasingly intense interest in technology and privacy.
Crooks received numerous packages containing gun-related equipment and used the name of an unlikely political figure for some online purchases: “Bob Dole.”
His father said Thomas became convinced that ordering products under a pseudonym could protect him from hackers after Matthew’s bank account had previously been compromised.
Dad tried explaining the obvious problem: the purchase was still connected to a bank account carrying the buyer’s real identity.
Thomas apparently wasn’t persuaded. He continued using pseudonyms.
He also taught his father about VPNs and privacy-oriented internet tools and used multiple encrypted email services.
Then there was his home gunsmithing experiment.
“Using carbon fiber plastic, a dryer and a toaster oven, Thomas did once create a Glock 19,” Matthew told investigators.
His father said the homemade handgun successfully fired a round, but he became worried the frame could explode and refused to let Thomas continue using it.
Crooks also built his own gaming computer and constructed a security camera using a Raspberry Pi.
Asked who his son’s role model might have been, Matthew reportedly gave investigators an unusual answer: Iron Man.
The records also add more nuance to the continuing mystery surrounding Crooks’ politics.
His father told investigators Thomas called himself a Republican and “did not like the welfare state and was against the ‘woke’ ideology,” but said his son never strongly embraced Republican ideology.
Crooks reportedly didn’t believe the 2020 election had been stolen and was shocked by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
His father was surprised to learn that Thomas had once donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project.
Another person interviewed by investigators reportedly described Crooks as a history buff interested in politics who discussed both Trump and Joe Biden.
None of it provided his family with an answer to the biggest question.
Why Trump?
Matthew told investigators that the family had been “racking” their brains trying to understand why Thomas attempted the assassination.
His son, he said, “never showed any signs indicating something was wrong.”
Crooks left no manifesto explaining his motive.
On July 13, 2024, he opened fire from the roof of the AGR building outside Trump’s Butler rally, wounding Trump, killing rallygoer Corey Comperatore and seriously wounding two others before a Secret Service counter-sniper killed him.
Two years later, investigators have accumulated an enormous amount of information about Thomas Crooks.
What they still haven’t produced is the one thing everyone has wanted since Butler:
A convincing explanation for why he did it.
DBS WIRE SOURCES:
- New York Post — Chilling details of Thomas Crooks’ upbringing revealed in bombshell FBI docs
- New York Post — Crooks used ‘Bob Dole’ pseudonym for online purchases
- CBS News — The secret double life of Thomas Crooks, Trump’s would-be assassin
- FBI Vault — Thomas Crooks records
- House Task Force — Final report on the attempted assassination in Butler
