New York Post columnist Miranda Devine raised fresh questions Monday about the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old accused of attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump over a year ago in Butler, Pennsylvania.
According to Fox News, Devine told the outlet that “we were sort of led to believe that Thomas Crooks was really a ghost, that there was no motive that could be ascertained from his online accounts.”
“And yet a source has provided us with a lot of information from 17 different online accounts that Thomas Crooks had,” Devine said.
Crooks allegedly fired eight shots from a rooftop during Trump’s rally on July 13, 2024, killing 50-year-old firefighter Corey Comparatore and injuring Trump in the ear, along with two rally attendees.
Devine, in an op-ed published Monday, said the newly surfaced digital material paints a “quite different story” than the FBI’s congressional statements and demanded a “better explanation” from federal authorities.
According to Devine, Crooks’ online activity spanned platforms including Google Play and DeviantArt, the latter known for hosting communities focused on the “Furries” subculture, where users dress up as or imagine anthropomorphized animal characters.
“It’s very bizarre, but we also saw that with Charlie Kirk’s killer, alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, who was also involved in this bizarre furry culture,” Devine said. She noted that Crooks used they/them pronouns on some platforms.
Devine also highlighted Crooks’ apparent political shift. “His online comments from — he was very young, I mean 15, 16, 17 — show us about how he became increasingly violent and sort of radicalized against Democrats. He was pro-Trump,” she explained. “Something happened to make him become rabidly anti-Trump. His rhetoric took more and more of a violent turn.”
She pointed to a figure named William Teppers, allegedly a neo-Nazi who influenced Crooks’ radicalization. Devine said Crooks “just disappeared online” in August 2020, after this escalation.
Former FBI Deputy Director Paul Abatte previously told Congress that Crooks’s comments “appear to reflect anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence,” but did not trace a change in his political ideology.
“We see now from the exposure from our source of this online presence that there is a lot of other information that the FBI either chose not to look at or is somehow keeping it under wraps,” Devine said.
The revelations renew scrutiny on the federal investigation and the circumstances leading up to one of the most high-profile attacks on a sitting president in recent history.
