(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The House Task Force investigating the Trump assassination attempts wrote to ATF Director Steven Dettelbach on Wednesday to renew its demand for the agency’s investigatory records.
According to the Task Force, the ATF has only provided five pages of documents since its original request on Oct. 3.
“This substantially abridged response letter is unresponsive to the Task Force’s requests and is woefully insufficient in view of the Task Force’s requests for physical documents and materials,” the Task Force letter said.
The Trump Shooting Task Force wrote to the ATF today, revealing that the ATF has only provided 4.5 pages of records to date.
The Task Force letter says an IED was found in the Crooks household (we knew there was bomb-making material, but I didn't know there was an actual bomb).… pic.twitter.com/pYpKjEgzix— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) November 6, 2024
“Both the Task Force and the American people expect answers about how 20-year-old Thomas Crooks planned and executed a nearly successful assassination, including significant evidence found at the home of Thomas Crooks—a suspected improvised explosive device (IED), materials to make IEDs as well as additional explosives discovered in Crooks’ vehicle.”
The Task Force’s renewed request for documents is specific: It seeks all communications, photos, reports, interview transcripts and other records about the ATF’s response to the July 13 shooting at Butler, Pennsylvania, as well as the alleged Sept. 15 assassination attempt at Trump’s Florida golf course.
“For the avoidance of doubt, such documents and materials shall also include those related to: (i) ATF’s discovery and investigation of the improvised explosive device found at the home of Matthew Crooks; and (ii) efforts to locate, the ultimate location of, and investigation of Thomas Matthew Crooks’s vehicle,” the letter said.
The Task Force also seeks interviews with the ATF agents who provided support in relation to the Sept. 15 event, the agents responded to Crooks’s home on July 13, and the agents who “provided critical incident response functions initiated at approximately 6:12pm in connection with the July 13 event at Butler County Fairgrounds.”
The Task Force’s request may finally yield answers for why an unidentified, plain-clothes ATF agent was at the Butler rally in his “personal capacity”—as the ATF told the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
Recently released interview transcripts show that a Secret Service agent encountered that ATF agent before the shooting, but didn’t question his presence or his credentials.
According to the interview transcripts, the Secret Service site agent said the ATF agent approached her before the shooting with concerns about a bike rack that was used as a crowd barrier.
“He was concerned that people, it might fall over, that people might, you know, be able to, to get, you know, get over it. And so then he kind of brought it to my attention. I was like, ‘Well, who are you?’ … He said, ‘ATF,’” the agent told lawmakers, according to her interview transcript.
“He just was acting like part of the plan … And then I just, I didn’t ask any further questions. I mean, at that point I was just like, okay. I don’t know,” she said.
“I still don’t know why ATF was there or who asked them to be there or what their role was,” she added.
According to the Senate’s report on the Trump shooting, the ATF said the agent was there in a “personal capacity.”
“ATF told the Committee that there was an ATF agent present in his personal capacity at the Butler rally on July 13 but that ATF as an agency had no official presence at the rally and did not provide any security assistance before shots were fired. The committee has yet to speak with the ATF agent who was at the rally,” the report said.
The Task Force’s initial Oct. 3 letter sought info “related to any ATF facial recognition searches of Crooks’ body”—but the new letter Wednesday doesn’t mention that topic.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
