Story perspectives

Trump Claims Crooks Evidence Raises Democratic-Plot Allegations

By Drooid · Sep 16, 2026, 12:37 AM UTC · How we work

Summary

Trump Accuses Democrats

U.S. President Donald Trump alleged the July 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt was a Democratic plot.
Trump posted that missing or altered information about shooter Thomas Crooks had been newly found.
Trump called former FBI Director Christopher Wray a “Dirty Cop” and demanded his punishment.
FBI documents to Sen. Chuck Grassley showed Crooks bought rifle parts under the pseudonym “Bob Dole.”

Summary

Crooks Orders Packages

Crooks used the alias “Bob Dole” to order suspicious packages and rifle parts online.
During the pandemic, Crooks practiced at a gun range, improving from a terrible shot to a capable marksman.
An anonymous donor covered Crooks’s cremation costs days after the shooting.
His father, a mental-health professional, testified Crooks had no friends in school and talked to himself without clear illness.

History

Historical Context

The April 19 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by anti-government extremist Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people and spurred the FBI’s massive OKBOMB investigation, which conducted 28,000 interviews and gathered 7,100 lb of evidence. In response, Congress passed the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, expanding domestic-terror monitoring that shapes today’s response to new mass-shooting incidents.

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Trump Accuses Democrats

U.S. President Donald Trump alleged the July 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt was a Democratic plot.
Trump posted that missing or altered information about shooter Thomas Crooks had been newly found.
Trump called former FBI Director Christopher Wray a “Dirty Cop” and demanded his punishment.
FBI documents to Sen. Chuck Grassley showed Crooks bought rifle parts under the pseudonym “Bob Dole.”

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