(Ken Silva, Headline USA) President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the July 13, 2024, attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania was a “Democrat Plot.”
Trump didn’t provide any evidence to back his startling accusation, but he said on Truth Social that records about the Butler shooting were already destroyed by the time he took office last year.
“Everybody knows the Crooked Joe Biden FBI didn’t do what they should have with respect to the Lunatic who shot me in Butler, PA,” Trump said, referring to alleged would-be assassin Thomas Crooks.
“By the time I got into Office … most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted, or gone. New info was just found! Why wasn’t it seen long ago?” Trump added. “This was all a Democrat Plot, to get me out of the Election, that failed. Dirty Cop Christopher Wray should pay a price for the way he handled the assassination attempt.”
🚨JUST POSTED🚨
President Donald Trump weighs in on the new information on Thomas Crooks and the FBI's corruption.
An anonymous donor paid to have Thomas Crooks’ body cremated. pic.twitter.com/Qt8eacoFet
— Breanna Morello (@BreannaMorello) September 15, 2026
The “new info” Trump was referring to was likely a trove of records recently provided to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. According to media reports published Tuesday—the same day of Trump’s remarks—the records include information that an anonymous donor funded the cremation of Crooks’s body.
Also on Tuesday, Attorney Todd Blanche addressed the matter when asked about Trump’s accusations during a press scrum.
“It’s not really clear what the leadership of the FBI were doing in the weeks and months ahead of the attempted assassination to protect President Trump,” Blanche said.
“That’s the same organization that was simultaneously trying to put him in prison until he dies. So his frustration and concern about what the former director was doing is something that is not new.”
🚨 JUST IN: AG Todd Blanche says the Biden FBI's handling of the Trump assassination attempt was TOTALLY BOTCHED after President Trump sounds the alarm that even more info is coming out about Thomas Crooks
"You have a situation where it's not really clear what the leadership of… pic.twitter.com/srkJSdLjmX
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 15, 2026
Despite Trump’s apparent dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s handling of the Butler case, it appears as though the new FBI hasn’t reopened an investigation.
Indeed, former FBI Deputy Director Bongino took office on March 17, 2025. By March 28, 2025, Trump said he had been briefed by the FBI on the assassination attempts—and that he believed the official narrative. That means Bongino would have had to have briefed Trump on the assassination attempts within days of taking office—meaning that he wouldn’t have had any time to review the evidence.
In May 2025, Bongino and FBI Director Kashyap Patel said the case was closed.
Bongino told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo at the time that there was no “‘there there” when asked about a wider conspiracy.
Patel sang a similar tune, telling Bartiromo that the Butler case was closed. “I don’t know that there’s more to know, but you’re going to know everything we know,” Patel added to Fox News’s Bret Baier around the same time.
Upon hearing Patel’s announcement, this author filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the 1,000-plus interview reports the FBI created while investigating the Butler case. However, the FBI denied that request on the grounds that the Butler case was still open — an assertion that directly contradicted what Patel told Fox News.
After that, Bongino and Patel claimed that the case was still open, but inactive.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
