Two years after Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, fresh details from heavily redacted FBI records continue to expose troubling gaps in what the public has been told about the near-murder of President Trump. Judicial Watch’s successful FOIA lawsuit has forced the release of documents showing that Crooks emailed a deputy with the Butler County Sheriff’s Office prior to the July 13, 2024, attack.
The revelation, buried in 48 pages of materials turned over by the FBI, describes an exchange between the would-be assassin and a female deputy. According to the interview summary, the deputy only discovered the emails after a New York Times reporter contacted her in the aftermath of the shooting. She reportedly did not recognize Crooks when his face flooded the news and confirmed no personal interaction beyond the two emails, which concerned a redacted subject.
This latest disclosure arrives amid persistent questions about how a 20-year-old with no apparent high-level connections managed to position himself on a rooftop with a clear line of sight to the then-presidential candidate. Law enforcement had eyes on Crooks well before shots rang out, yet systemic failures allowed him to fire eight rounds, killing Corey Comperatore and injuring others while grazing Trump’s ear.
The presence of any pre-event communication between Crooks and local authorities—however innocuous it may later prove—demands unredacted answers rather than bureaucratic stonewalling.
The documents also mention a “gray remote device” with an antenna recovered from Crooks’ pocket, adding another layer of intrigue to an investigation that has too often felt engineered to obscure rather than illuminate. A medic’s account from the scene further underscores the chaotic response, with body-handling protocols and canine alerts that highlight how close the entire security apparatus came to catastrophic breakdown.
One cannot help but note the irony. While federal agencies spent years fixating on phantom threats from parents at school boards and traditional Catholics, a determined gunman with encrypted devices and prior contact with local law enforcement nearly succeeded in altering the course of American history.
The same institutions that lecture endlessly about “threat assessment” somehow missed—or failed to act on—multiple red flags leading up to Butler.
Calls for full transparency have only grown louder. The American people deserve to know the content of those emails, the identity of every official involved in the security planning, and whether any connections existed that might explain Crooks’ movements and capabilities. Partial releases and heavy redactions serve no legitimate investigative purpose at this stage; they fuel legitimate suspicion of a cover-up designed to protect institutional reputations rather than pursue truth.
President Trump’s survival that day was nothing short of providential. In the face of evil intent and apparent institutional negligence, divine protection prevailed—yet we must not presume upon such mercy while allowing incompetence or corruption to fester unchecked.
The Butler assassination attempt exposed deep vulnerabilities in our nation’s leadership protection protocols. Two years later, with fresh evidence of pre-event contact between the shooter and local authorities, the public’s right to know remains unfulfilled. Full disclosure is not optional; it is essential to restoring confidence that those charged with safeguarding our republic can actually do so.
Anything less dishonors the memory of Corey Comperatore and the providential sparing of President Trump.
