Topline
Some police officials were aware 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks was lurking near a Donald Trump rally earlier this month for more than 90 minutes before he opened fire, text messages obtained by The New York Times suggest—the latest revelation about security problems ahead of the assassination attempt.
Two FBI investigators scan the roof of AGR International Inc, the building adjacent to the Butler … [+]
Key Facts
The Times on Sunday published a series of text messages sent amongst a local police countersniper team, including a warning from one man who was leaving his shift and texted his colleagues at 4:26 p.m. to warn them of a man who’d parked near them and would have seen the team sitting armed inside what was supposed to be a secure building.
More than an hour later, another countersniper took a photo of Crooks and told his colleagues Crooks was seen pointing a rangefinder in the direction of the rally, suggesting they tell the Secret Service about his location.
Half an hour after that, at 6:11 p.m., Crooks managed to fire shots from the roof of a warehouse connected to the same building the countersnipers who’d been warned about him were inside, without any local law enforcement agents or members of the Secret Service having located him despite his being armed and within 400 feet of the former president.
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Key Background
The Times article is the latest in a series of reports that have suggested failures by police on the day of the Pennsylvania Trump rally, which saw the former president grazed by a bullet in the ear and left one attendee dead. Since the shooting, the Secret Service has been under fire for lapses in security that allowed it to take place, while local law enforcement agencies have blamed a lack of manpower and “extremely poor planning.” Crooks opened fire from the roof of a warehouse roughly 150 yards from the stage where Trump spoke, but the warehouse was excluded from the rally’s inner security perimeter. In the weeks following the shooting, former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle—who resigned last week—said she wasn’t sure which local security or law enforcement agency was in charge of overseeing the warehouse. It has also been revealed that Crooks spent days planning his attack on Trump without alerting law enforcement officials, including using a drone to survey the site, taking deliveries of packages of rudimentary bomb materials at his home, searching for information on previous assassination attempts and registering to attend the Trump rally.
Tangent
Trump was hosting a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 when several gunshots were fired. Multiple people were shot, one fatally, and Trump’s right ear was grazed by a bullet, the FBI would later confirm. The bullets were fired from several hundred feet away and the FBI later identified Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania (about an hour from the rally) as the shooter who was shot and killed by Secret Service agents after the shooting began. Crooks used an AR-style rifle that was legally purchased by his father, and then sold to him months before the rally. Since the shooting, investigators have not been able to identify the motive of Crooks, who was a registered Republican (as were his parents) but was not old enough to have previously voted in a presidential election.
Further Reading
Mary Roeloffs is a Forbes reporter who covers breaking news with a frequent focus on the entertainment industry, streaming, sports news, publishing, pop culture and climate change. She joined Forbes in 2023 and lives in Dallas. She’s covered Netflix’s hottest documentaries, a surge of assaults reported on social media, the most popular books of the year and how climate change stands to impact the way we eat. Roeloffs was included on Editor & Publisher Magazine’s “ 25 Under 30” list in 2023 and worked covering local news in the greater Boston area from 2017 to 2023. She graduated with a double major in political science and journalism from Northeastern University. Follow Roeloffs for continued coverage of streaming wars, pop culture news and trending topics.
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