The FBI has apparently long neglected to reveal key insights into the man who shot Trump and killed Corey Comperatore. Social media comments attributed to Thomas Matthew Crooks, the dead man who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump last year, suggest that he may have been yet another shooter captive to gender ideology and other forms of sexual deviance.
Crooks fired eight shots at Trump during a campaign rally on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. While he managed to strike only the ear of the man whom Democrats characterized as a “clear and present danger,” the failed assassin killed heroic former fire chief Corey Comperatore and severely injured David Dutch and James Copenhaver, who were seated behind the president. The FBI has long suggested that Crooks’ motives were unclear.
Days after former FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that “a lot of the usual repositories of information have not yielded anything notable in terms of motive or ideology,” then-FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate revealed that hundreds of comments had been found on one social media account believed to be associated with the dead shooter in the 2019 to 2020 timeframe. “There were over 700 comments posted from this account. Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes, espouse political violence, and are extreme in nature,” said Abbate.
After reviewing Crooks’ interactions across various platforms and pages including YouTube, Snapchat, Discord, GooglePlay, and Quora, the source concluded that the official narrative claiming that Crooks operated alone without a clear motive or ideology was false. The shooter “was not simply some unknowable lone actor,” said the source. “He left a digital trail of violent threats, extremist ideology and admiration for mass violence. He spoke openly of political assassination, posted under his real name, and was even flagged by other users who mentioned law enforcement in their replies. Despite this, his account remained active for more than five years — and was only removed the day after the shooting.”
In 2019, Crooks allegedly made a number of pro-Trump, anti-Democrat remarks online, suggesting, for instance, that the president was “the literal definition of Patriotism” and stating, “MURDER THE DEMOCRATS.” In early 2020, Crooks apparently changed his tune and began deriding Trump and his supporters, defending draconian COVID-19 lockdowns, and lambasting Republicans over voter-fraud concerns, while in some instances being cheered on by an apparent member of a Norwegian neo-Nazi group.
Crooks allegedly suggested in a Feb. 26, 2020, post that Trump supporters were too “brainwashed to realize how dumb you are” and accused Trump of being a “racist” in a separate post the same day. Within months of his political about-face, Crooks was reportedly advocating for “terrorism style attacks” and political assassinations. At some point, Crooks also reportedly began associating with furries online.
According to the Post, Crooks reportedly began referring to himself using “they/them” pronouns on DeviantArt, an “online social network for artists and art enthusiasts” that teems with “furry” imagery depicting sexualized and anthropomorphized animals. The histories of two DeviantArt accounts linked to Crooks’ primary email address indicate he possibly had a furry fetish, obsessing over cartoon characters with male anatomies and female heads. Trump’s failed assassin would hardly be the first radical in recent years who was immersed in trans and/or furry subcultures.
Joseph MacKinnon is a staff writer for Blaze News.
