(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The widow of the man killed during the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania says she thinks that the attack was an inside job.
“I don’t believe there was another shooter there, but I believe he was working with somebody. I believe it was an inside job. Inside the government somewhere,” said the widow, Helen Comperatore, speaking to News Nation for the two-year anniversary of the event.
Helen Comperatore, widow of Corey Comperatore who was killed in the Butler, PA assassination attempt on President Trump, shared these words in her interview yesterday:
Helen: “I believe it was an inside job.”
Interviewer: “What will help give you closure?”
Helen: “When the… pic.twitter.com/xcSnreIKzK
— Citizen Commission (@CitizenComm) July 15, 2026
When asked for evidence of an inside job, Comperatore—whose husband, Corey Comperatore, died in the attack—said she’s been told things privately that raise her suspicions.
“I’ve been told things. But I’ve had something that happened with me that just—afterwards and you’re starting to put the pieces together—it just made total sense,” she said.
Comperatore pleaded with Trump to address the unanswered questions from that day. She met with the Secret Service and former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino last year, but apparently wasn’t convinced that the alleged gunman, Thomas Crooks, acted alone. In a separate interview, she told The Epoch Times that the Secret Service had her sign a nondisclosure agreement that limits what she can say publicly.
“Don’t forget us and remember what we went through that day. We’re still here and we need answers,” she said in a message to Trump.
Comperatore has made similar comments before. In May, she told the New York Times that she believed former President Joe Biden was involved.
“That’s why I didn’t take Biden’s call: I thought he set something up,” Comperatore said, referencing the fact that she declined to speak to Biden after Butler.
“I do not believe that this kid just got out of bed that day and decided to come over there and kill the president,” she said at another point during the interview. “I believe that he was involved with someone greater than him, that worked with him and probably offered him money to do this, and I would like to know what that entailed.”
Before that, last year Bongino told her Crooks acted alone. According to Comperatore, Bongino said the bureau was about to release more information on the event. Bongino didn’t keep his promise—the FBI has released a few dozen pages of documents in response to a lawsuit from the transparency group Judicial Watch, but that’s about it.
The widow of the firefighter murdered at Butler said in June that she met with Dan Bongino, who told her the FBI was going to update the public on the case in a "couple weeks."
Deputy Dan also told her that the shooter acted alone and the bureau handled all the evidence properly. pic.twitter.com/VqyRiQxKjQ— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) August 31, 2025
Headline USA has published more information about the assassination attempt than any other outlet in the world—including Crooks’s autopsy and toxicology reports, his some of his online metadata, and his college emails, along with police radio communications and much more—and has uncovered no evidence that Biden was directly involved in the assassination attempt. This author has also published a book on the subject—the most complete picture of the evidence to date.
However, numerous questions from that event linger. Along with the fact that the Secret Service left the rooftop used by alleged gunman, Crooks, wide open, there’s the fact that the Butler rally was the first time Secret Service snipers protected someone who wasn’t in office. Those same snipers waited 15 seconds before responding to the would-be assassin’s gunfire (it was a local cop who shot him in the first six seconds).
There’s also the fact that the Secret Service allowed Trump to take the stage despite knowing that there was a suspicious person with a rangefinder on the loose, as well as the fact that the Secret Service didn’t say anything over the radios about someone being on the rooftop—despite being informed of this by local police.
Then, there’s the would-be assassin himself. The FBI initially said that Crooks did not interact with others online, but conservative media personality Tucker Carlson proved otherwise late last year, when he released correspondence between Crooks and a neo-Nazi. The two were talking in a YouTube comments section about committing violence against the government, which Carlson and others argue should have put Crooks on the government’s radar. It’s also unclear how Crooks learned to make anfo bombs.
FBI Director Kashyap Patel has said there’s not much more to know about what happened at Butler, but the bureau has declined Headline USA’s interview request.
While Comperatore and others still have suspicions that others were involved, she has denounce those who think that Trump “staged” the event.
“Like any of that’s staged. I mean, how? Why would you think that the president would stage taking a bullet? I mean, that’s insane,” she told the Times earlier this year. “I’m not an actress, I never was. I’m a small town country girl.”
“That scream you hear the entire time,” she added, “that was my daughter.”
To Comperatore’s point, the bullets, blood, bodies and shrapnel were all very much real. As for questions about Trump’s ear, plastic surgeons have explained that yes, it could have healed without a scar if it were just grazed. Meanwhile, Butler truthers have yet to articulate a cogent explanation for how Trump could have staged his own assassination attempt with the complicity of the Biden Justice Department, Secret Service and FBI, as well as with state and local authorities.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
