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More than a year after Thomas Crooks opened fire on Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, one of the most influential figures in conservative media says Trump’s hand-picked Justice Department leaders are concealing important information about how the 20-year-old would-be assassin got within a rifle’s distance of a former president — and what motivated him to do so.
In an episode of his eponymous podcast released on Friday, Carlson took aim at current FBI Director Kash Patel, his predecessor Christopher Wray, and Patel deputy (and ex-Secret Service agent) Dan Bongino, each of whom he accuses of concealing key facts about Crooks and the security failures that led to him coming within “a quarter-inch” of making what would’ve been a fatal head-shot on Trump.
He also broadly impugned the Department of Justice, headed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, which has oversight over the FBI.
“Thomas Crooks came within a quarter inch of destroying this country, and yet, a year and a half later, we still know almost nothing about him or why he did it. That’s because, for some reason, the FBI, even the current FBI, doesn’t want us to know,” Carlson said.
The former Fox News host continued, telling viewers that the Justice Department and FBI “have hidden from the public what they know” about the would-be assassin and stating that his report would “reveal details of Crooks’ social media accounts” while asking why the FBI was keeping his views a secret.
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Podcaster Tucker Carlson alleges that the FBI is currently hiding key information about the 22-year-old who nearly assassinated Donald Trump last year (AFP via Getty Images)
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Would-be assassin Thomas Crooks’ bullet grazed Trump’s ear as he turned to read a chart on immigration at the Butler, Pa. rally, likely saving his life (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
He then launches into a surprisingly detailed account of how he and his staff came to possess and authenticate copies of much of Crooks’ social media history and online footprint, which he says leads to the conclusion that Crooks “was not some secretive lone wolf who never warned anyone that he was planning violence.”
Carlson described how Crooks had left “a detailed digital trail of violent threats, including calls for assassinations and political violence” against prominent Democrats and was a Trump supporter who’d “called for dictatorship” and for “putting Hispanics ‘back in their place’” before “radically” turning against Trump in 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
“It was an amazing transformation,” he said as he rattled off a series of quotes from Crooks’ online history that displayed an increasing affinity for violence and disdain for right-wing media figures such as himself.
“So here you have volatile, troubled, possibly mentally ill young man with a long record of espousing violence in public. The FBI clearly knew he existed,” Carlson continued before explaining that the FBI had entered into contracts for monitoring social media with “mass data collection.”
But he then pivoted to accusing the FBI of having “used a selective read of those comments to lie about what Thomas Crooks was thinking.”
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Carlson takes aim at current FBI Director Kash Patel and Patel deputy (and ex-Secret Service agent) Dan Bongino, each of whom he accuses of concealing key facts about Crooks and the security failures that led to him coming within “a quarter-inch” of killing Trump. (Getty Images)
He also said the bureau was “not only stonewalling but is actually preventing an honest look at what happened,” in part by refusing to release footage of the gun range where Crooks practiced before attempting to kill Trump and other evidence, including Crooks’ autopsy report, to Congress.
He then asked: “Why did the FBI suggest that he had no digital footprint in the first place, when the FBI had a great deal of evidence, hundreds and hundreds of comments, not from his digital activity, and what’s on the other dozen accounts that the FBI clearly had access to?
“If there’s nothing there, if they tell you this is just a lone nut who gave no indication he might do this, then what is stopping the FBI from at least giving the facts to Congress? Because if there’s nothing there, these should be very easy questions to answer,” he said.
The right-wing podcaster’s allegations against the FBI touched off strong pushback from the bureau’s Trump-aligned leadership, which created a so-called “Rapid Response” account on Thursday to go after Carlson.
It immediately re-shared a post by the media figure with a caption: “This FBI has never said Thomas Crooks had no online footprint. Ever.”
