(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The FBI released new evidence Wednesday from its investigation of the July 13 assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, including photos of alleged shooter Thomas Crooks’s rifle, as well as the explosives found in his vehicle.
According to the FBI, the rifle is an AR-15 made by DPMS Panther Arms. It did have a compact optimal site attached. The rifle is still operational, according to the FBI.
The photo also showed that the rifle had a chunk missing from its stock. That’s likely where the bullet of a local cop struck—hitting Crooks with shrapnel and causing him to stop firing after eight shots. A Secret Service sniper put the kill shot in Crooks’s head 10 seconds after that.
The FBI also released a photo of Crooks’s purported backpack, showing that it could fit the rifle when the AR-15 was broken down. The FBI said it has video of Crooks scaling the AGR building at 6:05 p.m., but the bureau didn’t release that footage. Crooks would begin firing from the AGR rooftop at 6:11 p.m.
I wonder if the FBI does this shit on purpose to make the schizos go crazy.
At first it looked to me like the rifle on the right is different because there's no chunk shown missing — but the stock is just collapsed so it's harder to see the missing chunk pic.twitter.com/TuFHZwtzq9— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) August 28, 2024
While the FBI didn’t release footage of Crooks climbing, it did publish a photo of the air conditioning unit the shooter allegedly scaled.
“The subject accessed the roof by climbing on the tan machine on the far right side of the photo,” the FBI said of the photo.
As for the explosives, the FBI’s photo purportedly shows them as they were initially discovered in Crooks’s car trunk.
“The receiver for remote detonation was in the ‘off’ position; devices had several problems in the way they were constructed,” states an FBI description of the photo.
Here's his trunk with ANFO bombs, btw. pic.twitter.com/8UkvFQfhga
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) August 28, 2024
In addition to releasing photos, the FBI held a press conference Wednesday for approved media only. Headline USA initially wrote an article based on reports from that press conference, but later in the day the FBI finally released a transcript of remarks made by Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI Pittsburgh Field Office.
The transcript included info not reported on by the FBI-approved media.
For instance, Rojek confirmed that the FBI accessed Crooks’s encrypted chat accounts. He also downplayed the fact they were encrypted—and to his point, so are apps such as WhatsApp, ProtonMail and Signal.
“We successfully accessed the information from these accounts and appropriately analyzed their content. However, we continue to identify and exploit the subject’s accounts,” Rojek added—suggesting that the FBI still hasn’t tracked down all of Crooks’s online activity.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
