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Early this morning, Tucker Carlson set the Internet (and the world) on fire by releasing a new 30 minute video that essentially exposes a huge coverup and multiple lies from the FBI regarding the Thomas Crooks assassination attempt in Butler, PA.
I’ll repost that full report down below in case you missed it.
But now I want to show you just how badly things are going for the FBI since the release of that video….
And I really wish I didn’t have to do this because I am rooting for Kash Patel and Dan Bongino. These are good guys. Good guys who are surrounded by a den of vipers, so I’m not even blaming them but I am blaming something very rotten from within the FBI.
It all started 20 hours ago when the FBI created a brand new X profile called the “FBI Rapid Response”.
Here was their first post:
Under Director Patel, Deputy Director Bongino and Co-Deputy Bailey, your FBI is in a new era – one where we communicate more than any FBI ever before and more directly with the American people about the important work we’re doing. But that’s only a piece of what we are doing.…
— FBI Rapid Response (@FBI_Response) November 13, 2025
Screenshot here if needed:
“Welcome to FBI Rapid Response”
Yeah, sorry but sounds more like “Welcome To George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth” if you ask me.
But then the train immediately went off the rails when they posted this, trying to discredit Tucker Carlson’s video — and they immediately got Fact-Checked with a Community Note showing that statement from the FBI is a huge lie:
This FBI has never said Thomas Crooks had no online footprint. Ever. https://t.co/nJ6S4CWIp0
— FBI Rapid Response (@FBI_Response) November 13, 2025
Screenshot here in case that post gets deleted:
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Let’s just say it did not go well for them:
The FBI created an account today, to respond to Tucker Carlson.
This is embarrassing. https://t.co/UlvRJRVrzI
— Peter B (@realpeteyb123) November 14, 2025
Owen Shroyer then chimed in posting the EXACT VIDEO of what the FBI says never happened:
Let’s check the tape: pic.twitter.com/ZUmuSm95Ty
— Owen Shroyer (@OwenShroyer1776) November 14, 2025
So much George Orwell all at once, it’s really a bit overwhelming!
This is literally the script of Animal Farm where the Pigs tell all the other animals that what they remember happening never actually happened. Except it did.
And later in this video is Dan Bongino saying point blank there was no online presence for Crooks — “we’ve seen nothing!” — the only problem is we now know that’s clearly a massive lie:
Dan Bongino: I never said Thomas Crooks has no digital footprint.
Also Dan Bongino: pic.twitter.com/hJWkJjyqPs
— TheAngryAlaskan (@RealAngryAlaska) November 14, 2025
Hey Dan Bongino, quick question: when can we get this guy back? Where did this guy go Dan?
Putting out a MISSING PERSON REPORT for this guy because he hasn’t been seen in about 9 months:
Dan Bongino.
“Was Thomas Crooks working with any FBI agents or assets?” pic.twitter.com/Wm4NEjUFBx
— 🔥⭐️Edwin⭐️🔥 (@Nuked4Every1) February 26, 2025
Here was my full report in case you missed it:
HUGE BOMBSHELL: Tucker Carlson Exposes Multiple FBI Lies In Thomas Crooks Butler Coverup!
Tucker Carlson just published a massive Bombshell video exposing multiple lies by the FBI regarding the Thomas Crooks investigation.
And if you’ve been around here for a while, you know I have a rule about rarely using the word “Bombshell” so that it does not get overused.
We save that word for special occasions — like this.
In a newly released 30-minute video out this morning, Tucker released voluminous evidence his team has uncovered about Thomas Cooks which directly contradicts what the FBI has told us.
Here’s a quick summary:
Lied about Thomas Crooks’ online presence: The FBI claimed Crooks was a “virtual ghost online with no presence at all” when the transcript alleges he was very active and had a “detailed digital trail” across more than a dozen accounts (YouTube, multiple emails, Snapchat, Venmo, PayPal, Zelle, Discord, Google Play, Quizlet, Chess.com, and Quora).
Lied about Crooks’ motive/political leaning:
The FBI’s only substantive claim about his motive was that he was a “right-winger.”
The transcript alleges his comments show he started as a radical Trump supporter but his views “transformed, changed completely, during COVID” to a new left-wing version, making the FBI’s claim dishonest.
The FBI used a “selective read of those comments to lie about what Thomas Crooks was thinking.”
Lied about the YouTube account connection: The FBI claimed a YouTube account espousing violence and anti-Semitic/anti-immigration themes was “believed to be associated with the shooter” or “possibly connected to Crooks” when the transcript asserts the FBI knew full well “it was Thomas Crooks’ account” and there was never any question.
Lied by omission/obstruction regarding the trial: FBI officials suggested they could not release information because of “two open, ongoing prosecutions” or that they would release information “as soon as the trial is over,” despite the transcript noting that Thomas Crooks is dead and there is “no trial against Thomas Crooks.”
Suggesting there’s “nothing there”: High-level officials insisted there is nothing more to find, using phrases like “There isn’t ‘there’ there,” which the transcript calls “baffling” given the amount of hidden evidence.
Suggesting Crooks gave no indication of violence: The transcript asserts that the FBI is suggesting Crooks was a “lone nut who gave no indication he might do this,” despite his digital trail being full of violent threats and calls for political violence years before the shooting.
There’s so much more in this video and honestly I am a bit scared for Tucker’s safety after he published this.
Please pray for Tucker’s safety and protection and he releases this information to the public.
This is the real deal folks, not just some random YouTube video. This is high stakes.
Watch here:
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
These are videos the FBI has worked hard to make sure you haven’t seen. They’re from the Google Drive account of Thomas Crooks, the man who on July 13th, 2024, showed up at the Butler County, Pennsylvania fairgrounds and tried to assassinate the frontrunner, Donald Trump. And look what happened to our country. Probably 20 million people.
And you know that’s a little bit old. That chart, that chart’s a couple of months old. And if you want to really see something, that’s it. Take a look at what happened. That day, Thomas Crooks came within a quarter inch of destroying this country. And yet, a year and a half later, we still know almost nothing about him or why he did it. That’s because for some reason, the FBI, even the current FBI, doesn’t want us to know.
Since the start of their investigation, the FBI has claimed that Thomas Crooks acted alone and that he was a virtual ghost online with no presence at all. Their only substantive claim about Crooks’ motive was that he was a right-winger. We learned that from FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate, who said this to Congress just one month after the attempted assassination: “Something just very recently uncovered that I want to share is a social media account which is believed to be associated with the shooter. In about the 2019-2020 timeframe, there were over 700 comments posted from this account.”
Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes, to espouse political violence, and are described as extreme in nature. The social media account Abbate was describing was Crooks’ YouTube comments. When the FBI made that claim, we had to take his word for it. We had no way to check, but now we do. In September, we obtained hundreds of comments from Thomas Crooks’ YouTube account.
Since then, we’ve gone to great lengths to verify that they’re real. We can now confidently say they are. These are genuine, written by Thomas Crooks. But although Crooks’ comments are interesting and give tremendous insight into why he did it, they’re not the only story. The other story, in fact, the far more significant story, involves the government, the DOJ and the FBI, which have hidden from the public what they know about Thomas Crooks.
The purpose of this report is to reveal details of Crooks’ social media accounts and to confront a series of key questions. Why is the FBI keeping Crooks’ views a secret? Why are they ignoring congressional subpoenas to divulge information? Why are they pretending that there’s nothing to see here? And more than anything, what are they hiding?
Before we present our findings, it’s critical to establish how we obtained the comments and how we know they’re real. In late September, we received a tip from a source. He told us he’d gained access to some of Thomas Crooks’ accounts. He’d found these accounts by utilizing tools commonly used by private investigators. The key lead was Thomas Crooks’ phone number. That was published in documents obtained by America First Legal.
That phone number led our source to Thomas Crooks’ primary email account [email protected]. That, in turn, he linked with more than a dozen other accounts. That list includes two foreign encrypted email accounts: [email protected] a German website and [email protected] a Belgium website, Crooks had a Snapchat, Tom_Crooks19; a Venmo account, Thomas-Crooks-12; a PayPal account under the alias Rod Swanson; a Zelle registered as Thomas Crooks; as well as accounts on Discord; a Google Play account called Colossal Microwave; a Quizlet titled Thomas_Crooks; a Chess.com with the same name; and two disabled Quora accounts under the handles Thomas-Crooks 8 and Thomas Crooks 3.
It turns out that Thomas Crooks was hardly an online ghost. He was active. And yet, federal investigators lied and told us there was no trace of him online. Some of Crooks’ accounts, like his Snapchat, appear to have been fully deactivated and completely taken out of use. Some of them may have been unused or cleared by federal officials during the investigation. We don’t know because the FBI wouldn’t tell us.
However, our source was able to retrieve all data from Thomas Crooks’ deactivated YouTube account, tomcrooks2178, visible to other users as Tom Crooks. This account includes his search history, his watch history, and 737 public comments. Another critical account, his Google Drive, is linked to an archive of Crooks’ YouTube account.
That’s where our source obtained the videos of Crooks dry-firing a handgun in his bedroom, with paper targets on the wall behind him. But aside from the video evidence, the email addresses, and the phone number tying Crooks to the account, or the fact that most of these accounts use his actual name, there are other key details that support the authenticity of what we found. For example, this video’s metadata shows it was filmed at Thomas Crooks’ parents’ home.
And some of Crooks’ YouTube comments are still available on internet archive sites. Crooks’ YouTube channel was suspended on July 14, 2024. That’s the day after the shooting. Its offense, quote, “violating YouTube’s policy on violent criminal organizations.”
And though Crooks’ comments are no longer available on YouTube, in many cases, the commenters who responded to Crooks are still there, and they match what we see on the internet archive sites. When you click on their tags of Crooks’ accounts, YouTube takes you to a page that says, “This channel was removed because it violated our community guidelines.” In other words, there is ample evidence to support the authenticity of these posts.
Our source figured it out. So did we. But when we reached out directly to the FBI to ask why the bureau hadn’t shared any details from the account with the public, the FBI responded by questioning whether we could verify the authenticity of the account. We were confused by this, considering the authenticity is self-evident. And of course, the FBI would have known that since the day of the shooting. What exactly is the FBI hiding?
Here’s what we do know. The digital comments we obtained were posted between 2019 and 2020, when Thomas Crooks was between 15 and 17 years old. They show two things. First, that Thomas Crooks was not some secretive lone wolfwho never warned anyone that he was planning violence. Just the opposite. Years before he showed up in Butler, Crooks was leaving a detailed digital trail of violent threats, including calls for assassinations and political violence.
Second, they show a man who started out as a radical Trump supporter whose views on the president transformed, changed completely, during COVID. The FBI lied about that fact and pretended that Crooks was a right-winger. At 11:35 p.m. on July 19, 2019, in response to an MSNBC video, Crooks wrote, quote, “Ilhan Omar and others are invaders and should honestly be killed and their dead bodies sent back.”
At 1:17 a.m. on July 20, 2019, Crooks commented on a CNN video. He said Donald Trump was “the literal definition of patriotism.” Seven hours later, he commented on an MSNBC video. He wrote, “I hope a quick, painful death to all the deplorable immigrants and anti-Trump congresswomen who don’t deserve anything this country has given them.”
That evening, on a separate MSNBC video, he wrote, quote, “Every one of the Trump-hating Democrats deserve to have their heads chopped off and put on stakes for the world to see what happens when you fuck with America.” These sorts of comments continued for months and became increasingly violent. The following day, Crooks responded to a CBS Evening News video about the squad, saying this, quote, “This is going to be blatantly racist, but I hope Trump has these people murdered.”
Crooks openly called for dictatorship and putting Hispanics back in their place. He warned that if Democrats win in 2020, “they won’t be in there for long because unlike the Dems, we have guns and lots of them.” In one comment, Crooks noted that, quote, “50 million Americans with AR-15s will make quick work of any blockades the government can put in to protect the White House.”
He left multiple references to Mao Zedong’s famous line, “The only real political power comes from the barrel of a gun.” On September 30, 2019, Crooks responded to comments about a potential civil war, saying this: “Most rioters don’t bring assault rifles and body armor like we would, and we wouldn’t be going to the streets. We’d be going to Washington.”
At this point, one user named HyperPandas responded, saying, “Law enforcement will thank you for grouping up and being so visible. It’ll make your arrest so much simpler.” Crooks responded, saying, “Cops can’t arrest me if they’re all dead.” Before adding, “Even an untrained man with an AR-15 is dangerous. You think Adam Lanza or any school shooter trained? Nope.”
If you navigate to that YouTube page today, you can still see identical contextual comments and people referring to Thomas Crooks, including one user who wrote this: “You were on YouTube threatening to shoot government officials. I sure hope the FBI is monitoring social media for violent nutcases.” That exchange is still available on internet archive websites, but the FBI didn’t see that before the shooting. That’s hard to believe.
On various occasions, Crooks openly said things like, “Mueller should be hanged along with the rest of the Democrats involved in that witch hunt,” and, “I always believed being patriotic was lining up a bunch of socialist Jews like the ones who booed Trump and blasting their useless brains out with an AR.” And yet, in early 2020, Crooks seemed to change radically.
On January 23rd of that year, he referred to quote “Trump’s stupidity.” He began to mock the concept of the deep state. He suggested it was a code word used by Trump supporters for, quote, “anyone who disagrees with the right wing.” Suddenly, he sounded like an MSNBC commentator. In February of 2020, he called out Trump’s supporters as, quote, “too brainwashed to realize how dumb you are. I mean, literally, you guys sound like a cult at times.”
That same day, he called Trump and his supporters, quote, “racist.” It was an amazing transformation. That April, during the peak phase of the coronavirus lockdowns, Crooks wrote, quote, “It seems that you people don’t understand that sometimes public safety comes before your personal rights. Are you not willing to quarantine one member of your family to save the rest? If so, you are not a patriot and you aren’t protecting anything.”
Around this time, the new left-wing version of Thomas Crooks became very critical of conservative media. He said at one point, quote, “Going to a Chinese New Year’s party in America isn’t putting you at risk for coronavirus, ’cause believe it or not, viruses don’t spread through race like Tucker Carlson probably told you.” That May, as state officials across the country overhauled election systems to promote mail-in voting, Crooks attacked Republican concerns about voter fraud as quote “ignorant.”
Four months later, in August 2020, his tone had shifted even further to the left. He said, quote, “I believe the outcome will be irrelevant.” In response to the same video, Thomas Crooks issued what sounds a lot like a digital manifesto. quote, “In my opinion, the only way to fight the government is with terrorism-style attacks. Sneak a bomb into an essential building and set it off before anyone sees you. Track down any important people or politicians, military leaders, et cetera, and try to assassinate them. Any sort of head-to-head fight is suicide, and even ambush or surprise attacks likely aren’t going to end well.”
These remarks were especially notable because they came at the final phase of Crooks’ YouTube commenting. At that point, a new character emerged into the conversation, a user named Willie Tepes, who started pressuring Crooks to commit violence. For example, quote, “If a gun and a badge is all that is needed, then authority obviously comes from the barrel of a gun. We have more guns than they do. There is no way we can avoid a war at this point. So you better just get used to the idea. We have nothing to lose and everything to win. And the alternative, a global police state, is unacceptable. Nothing in life is simple, but that is no argument against doing it.”
So who is this Willie Tepes? Unfortunately, we don’t know. The FBI hasn’t made any mention of him in public, although they certainly know he exists. Just days after the shooting, somebody screenshotted Tepes’ YouTube account page, despite the fact he had very few followers. To the extent that he can be traced online now, you can find his username being used on a foreign Antifa website.
Those sites link him to the Nordic Resistance Movement, which has been designated a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department. That’s all we know. We do know, however, that Crooks’ online footprint abruptly ends after his encounter with this mysterious figure, Willie Tepes. Regardless, whoever Willie Tepes is or was, and what his motives may have been, who he may have been working for, there is no doubt that Crooks was ripe for recruitment by someone.
From early 2019 to mid-2020, as his political views were evolving, Crooks searched for “Trump” more than 700 timesonline. He also searched for Jack Ruby, the man who assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald. He then submitted queries for “craziest chemical reactions,” “cars running over protesters,” “best places for mass shooting,” “mass shooting El Paso.”
“Trump Civil War,” “Orlando shooting reaction,” “firing an AR-15 as fast as possible,” “fertilizer bomb,” “how to make napalm,” “how to make Molotov cocktail,” “mass shooting Canada,” “Oklahoma bombing,” and “sniper in Dallas shooting.” He also searched for “American Nazi Party,” “German national anthem 1933-1945,” “Hitler’s speeches with subtitles,” “neo-Nazis,” and, quote, “why Gays need to go.”
Speaker 1: So here you have a volatile, troubled, possibly mentally ill young man with a long record of espousing violence in public. The FBI clearly knew he existed. And then you have at the very end of his years commenting in public, espousing violence, an exchange with a mysterious figure affiliated with a group that we know is being monitored by the U.S. State Department.
It turns out that around the same time that Thomas Crooks was making these searches and posting overt threats of violence against public figures on YouTube, the FBI was issuing contracts to private sector tech surveillance firms to harness the power of mass data collection tools that would monitor social media for people just like Thomas Crooks. It’s hard to imagine that Thomas Crooks, who was making these posts publicly and in his own name, had not been identified and looked at closely by federal law enforcement. In fact, it’s impossible to imagine.
What do we know? Well, we know that the FBI had access to these YouTube comments. And rather than giving us valuable information about them, giving us a sense of why Thomas Crooks did what he did, they used a selective read of those comments to lie about what Thomas Crooks was thinking. Two and a half weeks after the attack, on July 30, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN that federal investigators are looking into a YouTube account possibly connected to Crooks in which the user espoused political violence as well as anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes.
Well, of course, it wasn’t possibly connected to Thomas Crooks. And as the FBI knew full well, it was Thomas Crooks’ account. There was never any question about that. And yet, the same day, the FBI’s then-Deputy Director made the same dishonest claim before Congress. The week previous, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray publicly questioned whether Trump was even shot. “With respect to President Donald Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, that hit his ear.”
In February 2025, the New York Post reported that, quote, “The FBI has obstructed efforts to solve the mystery of why Thomas Matthew Crooks, who left no manifesto, did what he did.” And this fact, said the Post, “left local law enforcement as well as Crooks’ former friends, classmates, and teachers frustrated.” The level of lying and obstruction is shocking. Less than a month after the shooting, Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana, a former police officer, traveled to Butler to conduct his own investigation into what happened.
When he arrived, he discovered a disturbing fact. The FBI released Crooks’ body for cremation 10 days after July 13th. This wasn’t known to the public until Higgins arrived in Butler on August 5th, when the coroner told the congressman, quote, “He would never have released Crooks’ body to the family for cremation or burial without specific permission from the FBI.” The timing of Crooks’ cremation is notable. The day Crooks’ body was burned was also the day the House Homeland Security and Oversight Committees had begun their investigations into the shooting.
The fact the body was cremated made it impossible for investigators outside the FBI to verify the coroner and autopsy report. You can’t do a new tox screen because the body doesn’t exist. According to Higgins, quote, “This action by the FBI can only be described by any reasonable man as an obstruction to any following investigative effort.” Another notable detail is that photos from the day after the shooting show an FBI agent hosing down the site where Crooks died.
High-level intelligence officials and congressional sources told us this is very strange and that the FBI usually hires out crime scene cleanup to third-party contractors. But in this case, they did it themselves, leaving no blood and no tissue for anyone else to analyze. In the photo, the agent’s shirt says he’s from the Technical Hazards Response Unit, a unit that collects traditional forensic evidence contaminated with hazardous materials.
After the shooting, the FBI sent Crooks’ phone to the bureau’s laboratory at Quantico, Virginia. Agents there were able to open it in less than 40 minutes using technology from an Israeli tech firm called Cellebrite. According to the Post, FBI officials who served under President Joe Biden accessed Crooks’ phone, computer, and his encrypted messaging apps in Belgium, New Zealand, and Germany.
Yet none of the online activity the FBI has discovered was referred to in any way in the final congressional report that was released in December of 2024. By the way, why do we still know nothing about that guy in Butler? What’s going on? That was a good question. A question that most people thought would be answered by the new administration.
Within weeks of retaking office, Donald Trump told the New York Post’s Miranda Devine that he had, quote, “ordered the Secret Service on Friday to provide him every bit of information about his two would-be assassins.” “You’ve had two assassination attempts. One obviously where you got hit by that bullet in Butler. There’s a lot of frustration that we still don’t know about that shooter in Butler and we don’t know about his communications. We get stonewalled all the time asking questions about it. Is there frustration on your part? Will we get transparency? Will we know the bottom-line story?”
Donald Trump: It’s very interesting because we have great people. I think Pam is incredible. I think Kash is incredible. And they’re doing a great job. They’re being recognized as doing a great job.
Speaker 1: But you’re the president. Can’t you find out?
Donald Trump: No, no, I know, I know, I know. I’m relying on my people to tell me what it is.
Speaker 1: But his people insist there’s nothing there, and they don’t seem interested in finding out more.
Speaker 2: How come we don’t have more information on the assassination attempts on President Trump?
Speaker 3: There’s two reasons: two open, ongoing prosecutions.
Speaker 4: But we have personally invested our time in making sure that we have looked at all the… any possible international connections to terrorism and adversaries alike. And we’ve both been down to Quantico, we’ve both done the laboratory testing, we’ve both seen the explosives and analysis. We’ve both seen the firearm and physically held it. We are all in on these investigations.
Speaker 2: Are we going to be surprised at what you learned?
Speaker 4: You know what, Maria, Kash is not kidding. We have been personally briefed extensively on every single detail, nugget, tendril of this case. One is actively in court right now. So out of respect for the case, it’s probably more appropriate that I stay quiet on that. However I’m not going to tell people what they want to hear. I’m going to tell you the truth. And whether you like it or not is up to you.
If there was a big explosive ‘there’ there, right? Given my history as a Secret Service agent and my personal friendship, as the Director does with the President, give me one logical, sensible reason we would not have. If you can think of one. There isn’t ‘there’ there. In some of these cases, the ‘there’ you’re looking for is not there.
Speaker 1: What a baffling thing to say. Thomas Crooks is dead. Of course, there was no trial against Thomas Crooks. And by the way, they weren’t misspeaking. This wasn’t an accident. We know that because the Director of the FBI said the same thing once again, under oath, in front of Congress in September.
Speaker 5: When your predecessor sat right there in that seat a couple years ago, last year in a committee hearing, I asked him a very detailed question about Matthew Thomas Crooks, the shooter responsible for the assassination attempt on President Trump’s life. I didn’t get an answer from Chris Wray that day. And I submitted written questions to the FBI and into the record of this committee. And I want to resubmit those questions today because I think we are still awaiting answers to those questions. So, Mr. Chairman, I’d like to submit them for the record, please. I’d like to ask you, sir, and the FBI under your leadership, would you please respond to these questions? Can you commit to doing that?
Speaker 6: As soon as the trial is over.
Speaker 1: But if it’s true that there’s nothing here, then the FBI has a very strange way of showing it. In July of 2024, a bipartisan group of senators led by Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin sent a letter, quote, “requesting records related to the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt.” Fully a year later, the FBI still had not responded. What is this about?
This summer, Senator Johnson issued a new subpoena noting that, quote, “nearly a year after the assassination attempt and the initiation of the subcommittee’s investigation, the FBI has repeatedly failed to produce the subcommittee records and information critical to its investigation.” In the subpoena, they demanded pictures and images related to the assassination, video footage, forensic reports, records related to FBI interviews, and notably, “all records referring or relating to any of Thomas Crooks’ electronic devices, digital or financial accounts, or online search history.”
Speaker 7: What are you telling us? I am totally unsatisfied. I am totally unsatisfied. You had a person with a modern rifle, modern scoped rifle at 130 yards who shot at the former commander-in-chief of the United States and a guy who was going to be, by all accounts at that point, the future commander-in-chief. And then they tried to kill my father eight weeks later, you know, at his golf course in Palm Beach County, a golf course that I run every single day.
I am totally unsatisfied that we have one picture of that shooter. The guy looks like he was 14 years old in the picture! We know nothing about him. We know nothing about him. Right. And I am totally unsatisfied with the result. And I think a lot of America is unsatisfied with the result. And I think we better get to the bottom of exactly what happened.
Speaker 8: Are you telling me there’s a… are you telling me there’s a conspiracy here that you believe, that Eric Trump believes, resulted in the assassination attempt?
Speaker 7: Yes, I think they tried to kill my father because they did not want his voice on that stage.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, the reality is that the FBI as of today is not only stonewalling but is actively preventing an honest look at what happened in Butler. Within days of the shooting, FBI agents collected all the relevant surveillance footage. That includes footage from local businesses, the state police, and critically, the gun range where Thomas Crooks trained. Did he train alone? We don’t know. Because to this day, the FBI refuses to release the footage.
They confirmed it exists. They confirmed the existence of one gaming account and then publicly said a few days later the account wasn’t real. Was that incompetence or are they lying? Within a day of the shooting, the social media companies that hosted Crooks’ comments took his accounts offline. In some cases, the records of those comments in the Internet Archive were also erased. Did the FBI order that too?
What we do know is that on the day of the attacks, Thomas Crooks got extremely lucky. Miraculously lucky. After he arrived at the Butler County Fairgrounds on the morning of the shooting, Thomas Crooks conducted surveillance by flying his drone over the rally site. He flew that drone for 11 minutes. It just so happened the Secret Service’s anti-drone system was down at exactly the same moment. What are the odds?
Later that afternoon, police officers saw Crooks loitering with a backpack and a rangefinder. They identified him as a suspicious person, which he clearly was, but quickly lost track of him. And so Crooks climbed to the top of the American Glass Research building. That happened to be the only building in the area that did not have a video surveillance system. It was also, remarkably, inexplicably, outside the Secret Service’s security perimeter, despite the fact it was very close to the stage.
Two local police officers assigned to the building saw Crooks, but they didn’t report him. A third officer who was supposed to be there left early. At 6:11 p.m., Crooks opened fire from the rooftop. Take a look at what happened. Within the vacuum left by the FBI and its total unwillingness to explain what had happened, the media were able to leverage the shooting to serve its own political ends.
On ABC, we learned that this happened because white men own guns. “It was, you know, a 20-year-old lone-wolf white whack job with easy access to a gun, and we have to have a conversation about that.” And within days of the shooting, U.S. intelligence officials started leaking about a supposed plot by the Iranian government to kill Trump. There was never any evidence, but if you were planning a regime change war against Iran, you might claim otherwise.
Speaker 9: Let me read to you this breaking news that we are reporting from three U.S. officials who have been briefed on the matter. The U.S. obtained intelligence in recent weeks about an Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: The stonewalling, the lying, the persistent unwillingness to explain anything, all of it makes you wonder, what are they hiding? If the leadership of the FBI and the DOJ had any desire whatsoever to prove to the public that there is in fact nothing there, they could do that. But first, they would have to answer these questions.
Was Thomas Crooks known to federal law enforcement before the shooting? Was he known to local law enforcement before the shooting? And if not, why not? Who is Williy Tepes, and was he known to federal law enforcement? Is Willie Tepes linked to any violent organizations? Is he linked to any governments? And if so, then around the time of the shooting, did the FBI have assets inside those organizations?
If Crooks wasn’t known to anyone in authority before the shooting, how was he able to post hundreds of violent extremist comments under his real name between 2019 and 2020? Without being detected by law enforcement or intel agencies at a time we know they were monitoring social media? Were those comments, including specific assassination threats against specific public officials, ever reported to YouTube? Other users complained about them. Did YouTube know?
Why is the FBI telling us that they’ll release this information, quote, after the trial, when there is no trial? Why did an FBI agent from the Technical Hazards Response Unit hose down the crime scene the day after the attack? That seems very strange. What happened on the roof of the American Glass Research building for the 10 seconds after Crooks’ last shot until he was killed by the Secret Service?
Does the FBI have surveillance footage of Thomas Crooks shooting that day? Was the FBI present at the medical examiner’s autopsy? Are there still blood samples? Can they be examined by outside authorities? When Congress demanded the autopsy, did the FBI restrict what the examiner could tell the Congress? When the FBI cleared the coroner to release Crooks’ body for cremation, did they keep tissue samples, brain tissue samples, spinal cord samples, or spinal fluid samples?
Law enforcement sources told us that in a typical investigation, in a crime of this nature, it would be normal to preserve all of that, those samples. If the FBI didn’t, why not? And who made that decision to destroy what could be critical evidence in an attempted murder case? FBI agents went to the same gun range that Thomas Crooks was using. Who were those agents?
And did any of them at any time have any contact with Thomas Crooks? Who did he train with exactly? And why can’t we know? Was Thomas Crooks taking drugs that might have turned up on the toxicology report but that weren’t listed somehow? On what date specifically did FBI agents stop investigating Thomas Crooks’ online presence? Why did the former Deputy Director of the FBI, Paul Abbate, suggest to Congress that Crooks was a right-winger when he clearly wasn’t?
Was the FBI aware of Crooks’ public comments before the shooting, many of which are openly violent, that included specific assassination threats involving public officials? Who was Thomas Crooks in communication with in the days before the attack? What does his burner phone show? And in fact, why did he have a burner phone and encrypted foreign email accounts?
Who are the government officials trying to link Iran to the shooting? Why did the FBI suggest that he had no digital footprint in the first place when the FBI had a great deal of evidence, hundreds and hundreds of comments from his digital activity? And what’s on the other dozen accounts that the FBI clearly had access to?
How long had Thomas Crooks been planning to commit an assassination if there’s nothing there? If they tell you this is just a lone nut who gave no indication he might do this, then what is stopping the FBI from at least giving the facts to Congress? Because if there’s nothing there, these should be very easy questions to answer.
Ok so after watching that I immediately was reminded of that horrible joint Fox News interview that Kash Patel and Dan Bongino did where their body language was off the charts bad.
Remember this?
Dan Bongino says there is no “big, explosive there there” with regard to the Trump assassination attempts. So either FBI officials Bongino and Kash Patel are part of a Deep State coverup, or there really is no hidden sinister truth to reveal about the Trump assassination attempts pic.twitter.com/LE0fVuUvL0
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 18, 2025
If you look up “Body Language that says you’re lying” in the Dictionary, they just show you a copy of this video, that’s how bad it was.
I’ve never seen these two guys look worse — and they are NOT good poker players, let’s just say that.
My take?
Well, I gave you my take on the whole thing 6 months ago and it looks more true now than ever before:
MY TAKE: Dan Bongino and Kash Patel Are Compromised…and This Is The Deal They Made
Noah here, and I wish I didn’t have to write this post, but I do. I hope I’m wrong, but my gut is absolutely SCREAMING on this one. Allow me to explain…
Some of you are not going to like this, but I have to say what my eyes and ears see and hear, and that is that something is very, very wrong about Dan Bongino and Kash Patel.
No, it’s not because I expected them to walk into the FBI and arrest everyone Day 1.
It’s not because they are slow rolling (or “no” rolling?) the Epstein files, although that doesn’t help.
It’s just basic common sense and body language.
These two did not do themselves any favors going on Maria Bartiromo’s show on Sunday.
They appeared nervous, shifty, defensive and almost gave off vibes of a hostage video.
In short, their body language was awful!
Eyes shifting all over the place, awkward pauses, statements that sounded extremely forced, bad body posture.
You don’t need to be a body language expert to see something is very, very wrong here.
Watch this clip as Dan Bongino tries (and fails) to convince people that there’s nothing abnormal at all with the Trump Assassinations, nothing to see here!
To quote Dan, “there’s no there there”.
Watch:
Dan Bongino says there is no “big, explosive there there” with regard to the Trump assassination attempts. So either FBI officials Bongino and Kash Patel are part of a Deep State coverup, or there really is no hidden sinister truth to reveal about the Trump assassination attempts pic.twitter.com/LE0fVuUvL0
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 18, 2025
Everything these two guys are saying DIRECTLY contradicts everything they both said repeatedly over the last 4 years.
Something is very wrong.
Are they compromised?
Blackmailed?
Families threatened?
I’m telling you, that is 100% the vibe I’m getting.
And yes, I fully understand that certain things need to remain confidential as the legal process plays out, but you really expect us to believe that “you’ve been fully briefed” and now you 100% believe there was no funny business of any kind and no Secret Service failure at all related to the Butler, PA assassination attempt?
Really Dan?
Back up for a second and pause to understand how absolutely LUDICROUS that sounds….
You were briefed?
Oh really, by who?
By the entrenched Deep State in the FBI?
And you took that at face value?
You were briefed by the entrenched Deep State FBI career employees loyal to James Comey, briefed with material that has almost certainly been doctored and corrupted, and you just bought it hook, line and sinker?
I’m sorry, but something is very wrong here.
That’s why the only conclusion I can reach right now, especially based on their terrible body language, is that these are two honest guys, two smart guys, who have in some way been compromised and/or their families threatened, and they just went on Fox News to try and sell a bill of goods that neither one of them believes in.
It didn’t work.
For his part, Dan has made several posts on X that demonstrate he is keenly aware of the public sentiment and essentially the fact that the community is turning on him and Kash.
Here is his latest:
I haven’t done any media interviews to this point because I want to keep the attention on the work. I don’t work for myself anymore, I work for you.
But it is important to relay to you what we’re doing, and the media can be a tool for that. That’s why we chose a long-form…— Dan Bongino (@FBIDDBongino) May 18, 2025
I haven’t done any media interviews to this point because I want to keep the attention on the work. I don’t work for myself anymore, I work for you.
But it is important to relay to you what we’re doing, and the media can be a tool for that. That’s why we chose a long-form interview with Maria Bartiromo for our first interview. I hope you saw it. If you missed it, here are some of the questions that were asked and answered:
-Yes, we are moving FBI headquarters out of the Hoover Building. The process has already begun. Stay tuned for updates on the details and timelines.
-I was asked about some of the details surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein case. I have reviewed the case. Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. There’s no evidence in the case file indicating otherwise. I’m not asking you to believe me, or not. I’m telling you what exists, and what doesn’t. If new evidence surfaces I’m happy to reevaluate.
-I was challenged on “accountability.” It’s a fair question. I aggressively responded because the Director and I have been working tirelessly to uncover the bad actors. We cannot get into HR specifics, and this creates an information vacuum. Unfortunately bad actors looking to tell you “a story,” not THE story, want you to believe we haven’t taken harsh and decisive action against rogue employees. That’s absolutely false. And the bad actors know it.
-We were asked about FBI priorities. The Director and I told Maria that the President, the Attorney General, the Director, and I are absolutely committed to getting your FBI back to its roots. We will make your communities safer. Illegal immigration ops, child sex crimes investigations, 764 cases, and violent criminal fugitive apprehensions are all on our expanding radar. And while America is enjoying the summer we are already planning a massive operation to clean up your streets. The counter-terror and counter-intell missions are critical and will continue at our customary high-tempo too. This is what you pay us for.
God bless America, and all those who defend Her.
If I read between the lines, here’s what I’m seeing….
Dan and Kash are 100% compromised.
I believe this is the deal that was reached (or perhaps more accurately said: imposed on them):
They’ve been told certain things are off-limits, like the Epstein List will never come out. They’ve also been given a job to white-wash the Epstein suicide and also to white-wash the Butler, PA fiasco.
In exchange for those things that are off-limits, they will be allowed to do other things like shutting down the Hoover building and making a bunch of low-level arrests of drug dealers and sex predators. They’ll try to champion those things as mission accomplished, but none of the big stuff we all wanted will ever happen.
That’s my take.
RELATED REPORT:
Kash Patel and Dan Bongino Trust The FBI File On Jeffrey Epstein? You Kidding Me?
Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are turning a lot of heads for many things they said on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.
Something is definitely very off.
First, let’s watch the clip where Kash Patel says Epstein clearly killed himself and Dan Bongino chimes in at the end with “He killed himself, I’ve seen the file.”
Watch here:
For YEARS Kash Patel & Dan Bongino have called people “crazy to believe Epstein killed himself” and now that they’ve been in the club for about 40 seconds they release a joint statement like it’s open and shut, nothing weird at all about it at all, he 100% did end his own life.. pic.twitter.com/nr085xxpxT
— TheQuartering (@TheQuartering) May 18, 2025
Backup here if needed:
NEW: Kash Patel and Dan Bongino double down on Jeffrey Epstein claim, “He killed himself.”
It’s the most infamous death of the century.
And when Kash Patel told Maria Bartiromo he believed Epstein committed suicide, she pushed back.
“You said Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide.… pic.twitter.com/oDRxJM7fA8
— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) May 18, 2025
Let’s just say almost NO ONE is believing them.
I sure don’t.
I like(d) Kash, and I like(d) Dan, and I trust(ed) Kash and I trust(ed) Dan, but now I’m not so sure.
This is one of the best comments I saw in response:
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I think that is spot on.
I also have to completely agree with this guy who points out that the “FBI file” seems like a really weird place to look for evidence about the truth:
Hey Dan, nobody likes a guy who walks in off the internet to tell you how to do your job but…Epstein’s FBI file seems like a really weird place to look for evidence of what may have happened. I mean, if he didn’t kill himself, that file is bound to be a crime scene all its own. https://t.co/iDH7vHE1AK pic.twitter.com/2veYl7GCUV
— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) May 18, 2025
Come on Dan, you’re better than that!
Are you kidding me?
Let’s just assume for a second that Epstein did NOT in fact kill himself, and he was killed by our Government….do you really think the Government file would contain the truth?
Dan, that doesn’t even pass any basic logic of any kind!
If the Government killed him, they surely would have doctored the file too, but you “saw the file” and now you’re convinced?
I’m just going to say this as plainly as I can: Dan and Kash are either compromised or dumb beyond imagination, because there’s no other way to square this information.
Glenn Beck agrees, saying he knows and trusts Dan and Kash, but he smells a rat here.
Watch here:
Glenn Beck doesn’t believe Kash Patel or Dan Bongino — nor do I. pic.twitter.com/jLoVLNywgn
— Noah Christopher (@DailyNoahNews) May 19, 2025
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Kash Patel and Bongino come out and they said a couple of things.
Uh, they said that Epstein’s death was suicide. Bongino came out and said,
“I fully—I mean, I’ve seen it. You know it when you see it. It was suicide.”Immediately I thought to myself, “I don’t think so.”
However, I know Dan Bongino. I’ve known him for years.
I think he’s a credible guy. I think he loves his country.
I know Kash Patel—not as well as I know Dan Bongino,
but I know Kash Patel. I think he’s an honorable guy.I think he loves his country.
I know that they both work for Donald Trump.
I know Donald Trump. I know that he loves his country.
So wait—if I don’t believe them, if I’m saying,
“I don’t believe that,” just like I say,
“I don’t believe the prostate thing is new to the family,”
I have no evidence of that.I have zero evidence of that. It’s just what Stu said.
I’ve been lied to over and over and over,
especially from those people, about his health.
So I—I—I just—I don’t believe any of it.But that is—the key word is “believe.”
Believe. Not know—believe.
I wanna show you—there are seven stages of an empire.
We are in the last stage,
and there’s only two things that have to happen in that last stage.When I give it to you here in a minute,
uh, I think it’ll blow your mind.
We have no trust at all in anything.
If I don’t believe Patel and Bongino,
then do I believe Donald Trump?Do I believe that there’s some conspiracy inside of MAGA?
You see, where does this end?
This is where critical thinking comes in.
Critical thinking is something that is no longer taught.You have to ask yourself these questions.
Instead of saying, “I don’t believe it,” ask questions.
And here’s the question I asked myself:
“To believe Epstein killed himself, what is it I would need to see
that could be produced?”One: full, unredacted forensic and autopsy reports.
I’d like to see it. I’d like to hear other coroners talk about it.
I’d like to see other people—not just handpicked by the media—
but I’d—I’d like to see the evidence myself.
I’d like to hear from coroners all over.I’d like to see the surveillance footage,
or sworn testimony from neutral parties confirming no foul play on that.
I wanna know the history of that camera.
I wanna know when it went out, exactly—and I know we do—
but I want the whole thing, including the video leading up to it going out.I want a timeline that explains the broken cameras,
the sleeping guards, and why the most high-profile prisoner in America
was removed from suicide watch just days before.
Why did that happen?You see, it is the string of coincidence
and the constant lies from both sides of the administration—
both Republican and Democrat.
We don’t believe the Department of Justice anymore.We don’t believe our FBI.
We don’t believe, apparently now, our own administration.
That doesn’t lead anywhere good.
That’s—let me just say the one name: Robespierre.That’s what leads to out-of-control revolution.
So instead of saying, “I don’t believe it,”—which I don’t.
I don’t believe it.
But what would be much more helpful is—I want to see those things.
I want to hear from Dan Bongino and say to him,
“Dan, specifically what did you see?
Because I know you. You didn’t believe this either.
So what is it? And show it to me.What did you specifically see that changed your mind?
Because I wanna be there with you. I really do.
So show it to me.”Now with the FBI agents—
the other story where they’re trying to, you know, erase everybody’s name that was involved—
I want concrete threats of violence against specific agents.
I don’t want just general fear.Don’t tell me that there are 5,000 agents
and they may not be able to prosecute them because of statute of limitations,
and so they all just walk away and we’re going to destroy their names.
That’s what’s being asked: destroy that list.Why? General fear.
I’m sorry, general fear is no longer good enough.
Evidence that the list is incomplete or misused—show that to me,
and you can make a case.Show me a legal or constitutional rationale
for why law enforcement that was involved in January 6th
should remain anonymous.
Show that to me—a legal or constitutional rationale.