(Ken Silva, Headline USA) It’s the one-month anniversary of the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, and it’s still not clear what happened at that deadly July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Most of the primary evidence about the event—body camera footage, audio recordings, text messages and operations plans—has come from local police and event attendees. On the federal level, whistleblower disclosures have contradicted congressional testimony from top FBI and Secret Service officials. Federal and local authorities have also contradicted each other.
Still, the available evidence can provide a guide for investigators to ask the right questions.
What We Think We Know: Not Much
- A Rough Sequence of Events
Based on text messages from the Butler and Beaver County Emergency Services Units, it looks like local law enforcement first spotted Trump shooter Thomas Crooks by 4:26 p.m.
More than 40 minutes later at 5:38 p.m., local counter snipers saw Crooks again, this time right beneath their second-story perch on the AGR building. It was at this point when they photographed Crooks and let the Secret Service know about him.
Officers then allegedly “lost track” of Crooks for about 20 minutes, according to reports on their radio communications. At 6:02 p.m., Beaver County sniper Greg Nicol again spotted Crooks on the side of the building facing away from the Trump rally.
How Nicol and the other local cops lost Crooks after that isn’t quite clear. But according to their radio comms, Nicol told his fellow officers that Crooks was headed to a Sheetz gas station about a quarter-mile outside the rally site.
Nicol, who shot himself in a “freak accident” last December, was wrong. Instead of going all the way around the AGR building to the Sheetz gas station, he instead made his way to an HVAC unit next to the AGR building—using that equipment to gain access to the roof of the building.
Washington Post has an explanation for how Nicol lost sight of Crooks. According to the Post, he thought Crooks was headed around the AGR building towards a nearby gas station. Instead, he went between 2 of the building sections and climbed on top, as this graphic shows https://t.co/eolnXoIzcL pic.twitter.com/2CidmO0GqP
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) August 5, 2024
It wasn’t until 6:08 p.m. that Crooks was finally spotted on the roof.
“Someone’s on the roof,” a local officer radioed at 6:08 p.m., according to The Post. “I have someone on the roof with white shorts.”
At 6:09 p.m., Sgt. Ed Lenz, the tactical commander for the Butler County mobile unit, reportedly relayed the information that Crooks was on the rooftop to a state police officer at the Secret Service command center.
Two minutes later, Crooks fired eight times—an initial volley of three shots, followed by another five. A ninth shot reportedly came from a local officer, with a final tenth coming from a Secret Service counter sniper an entire 10 seconds after the ninth shot—and 15 seconds after Crooks opened fire.
He admitted it! And reporters didn't ask him a single follow-up question! Why is no one talking about this? https://t.co/uUadnBRBoF pic.twitter.com/nU4ebfQEOP
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) August 2, 2024
What We Don’t Know: A Lot
- How many times was Crooks shot, when, and by whom?
Initial reports stated that law enforcement shot Crooks multiple times. However, Butler County coroner William F. Young III reportedly said last week that Crooks was only hit once.
Young’s statement begs many questions, including: Who actually shot Crooks, and when?
If the local cop was the one to hit Crooks, then the Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe and former Director Kim Cheatle perjured themselves. But if the Secret Service counter sniper indeed hit Crooks an entire 15 seconds after he opened fire, then why did Crooks stop firing after his initial eight shots in the first five seconds?
Meanwhile, officials are refusing to release Crooks’s autopsy records. The coroner, Young, released a one-page report on Aug. 2, but has suppressed the underpinning records—including exam photos, toxicology reports and scene images.
Butler County coroner released its report on Thomas Crooks on Friday pic.twitter.com/q2ZBOZYudo
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) August 5, 2024
Bizarrely, Crooks’s body was reportedly kept on the rooftop until 6 a.m. the day after the shooting. There, Young examined Crooks’s body before sending him to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner for the autopsy.
The Allegheny County Medical Examiner denied Headline USA’s records request for Crooks’s autopsy records, saying that the “case is under the jurisdiction of the Butler County Coroner and any reports or information must be approved by that agency.” Butler County’s coroner also denied a request, saying the records are exempt from disclosure.
- Were There Others Involved?
The question of who shot Crooks is closely related to the question of how many shooters there were in total.
Some online sleuths initially proffered the theory that Crooks was a patsy, and that the real would-be Trump assassin shot from the direction of the water tower. But those online sleuths have seemingly moved on from that theory, and are now pushing the idea that there was another shooter inside the building, underneath Crooks.
In the opinion of this writer, the evidence for a second shooter remains speculative.
Holy shit an eye witness is reporting 2 shooters pic.twitter.com/DtrJRdZrx7
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) July 13, 2024
But that doesn’t mean Crooks acted alone.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence of others’ involvement is Crooks’s online presence. Initially painting him as a loner who didn’t communicate with anyone, the FBI has since admitted that Crooks had at least two cell phones, three encrypted messaging apps and a Discord account—along with possible accounts on social media.
Those accounts might explain how Crooks was able to build explosive devices designed to be detonated remotely. Headline USA has documented numerous cases where bad actors share explosives manuals online—one of the more recent cases being an apparent U.S. intelligence contractors sharing them in a militia chat group.
Trump shooter Matthew Crooks reportedly had an account on the popular gamer chat app, Discord.
HERE'S WHY THAT MATTERS!
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) July 15, 2024
Other evidence suggesting others involved includes geolocation data showing phones travelling to and from Crooks’s home—and to places such as Washington DC, near an FBI office. Sign-in records from the gun range Crooks trained at further suggest that he may have had company on some of his trips.
Additionally, law enforcement hasn’t explained the multiple vehicles linked to Crooks.
According to investigators Crooks drove a Hyundai Sonata to the event. But officials haven’t explained how that squares with reports that a van linked to Crooks was also near the site. Nor have they explained how Crooks’s purported bicycle came on the scene.
• Who Was Responsible for the Rooftop?
All of the abovementioned controversies might have been rendered moot if law enforcement secured the rooftop used by Crooks.
But that catastrophic security failure has led to a bitter and public feud between local law enforcement and the Secret Service over who’s to blame.
The dispute over who left the rooftop open began days after the incident, when disgraced then-Secret Service Director said she didn’t have agents on the building because of its “sloped roof”—leading to widespread mockery.
Later in July, Sen. Josh Hawley revealed whistleblower allegations of an alternative theory: A local cop was supposed to be on the rooftop, but abandoned his or her post due to the hot weather. That whistleblower allegation didn’t sit well with the local law enforcement, who denied it to the local news.
“The assignments received by local Emergency Services Units were to be inside of the building at windows to begin with,” one unnamed local officer told the BeaverCountian.
“The purpose of being in the building was to have a vantage point to scan for suspicious persons in the crowd. When a suspicious person was identified, command was notified. That suspicious person ended up shooting Trump. No one was told they were supposed to be on the roof.”
Tensions between the locals and feds only worsened after the testimony of Secret Service Acting Director Rowe on July 30, when he asked why the local counter snipers didn’t see Crooks on the rooftop from their perches inside the building’s second floor.
Rowe’s accusatory question prompted Det. Pat Young, commander of the Beaver County SWAT team, and the Beaver County District Attorney, Nate Bible, to come to their officers’ defense. Last Friday, Young told CNN that the Secret Service hasn’t even met with his officers in the wake of the shooting. Young also said his snipers would have had to lean out of their windows to see Crooks on the rooftop.
Locals and feds playing the blame game: The local counter snipers have submitted the diagram on the left — indicating that they didn't have a clear vantage of the rooftop used by Trump shooter Thomas Crooks
The Secret Service, however, presented the picture on the right to… pic.twitter.com/S4Og7QfaFG— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) August 13, 2024
Moreover, on Thursday additional body camera footage and audio were released, in which a Butler Township police officer stating: “I f—ing told them they need to post the guys f—ing over here… I told them that… the Secret Service. I told them that f—ing Tuesday. I told them to post f—ing guys over here.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has asked Rowe to explain the conflicting allegations of who had responsibility for the rooftop.
“Do the photographs and diagrams referenced above conflict with Secret Service records regarding how local snipers were supposed to be positioned and how the AGR building was supposed to be covered? Please explain and provide all records,” Grassley asked Rowe in an Aug. 9 letter.
Grassley seeks information from Rowe about the rooftop security plans by this Friday.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan House task force also began its investigation this week.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
