Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 7 New Details About Donald Trump's Would-Be Assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. He was just, he was just quiet. I've never noticed anything off. I mean, he was just a normal kid to me, walking around the neighborhood. I mean, he was just a bit odd. That's all. Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old man who tried to shoot and kill former President Trump was described as a loner. Now a new report says he actually flew a drone over the rally where he tried to assassinate the former president. They see something that said, take a look at what happened.

Starting point is 00:00:40 I look at seven new details about the man who tried to go down in history as an assassin. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. It's been more than a week since a 20-year-old man climbed on top of a building in Butler, Pennsylvania with an AR-15 and a range finder and fired several shots at former President Trump. Sadly, firefighter Corey Comparatore was killed as he shielded his wife and daughter from the gunfire. Two other men were wounded and remain in the hospital. Former President Trump was grazed in the ear and survived. Snipers shot and killed crooks who was seen on the roof of the building well before he fired those shots. There are reports it was as long as 19 minutes before. He's got a gun.

Starting point is 00:01:26 Shoot him. He's on the roof. Get off him. Get off him. Stay down. Stay under here. Immediately, the question was asked, who is this man who tried to kill a former president,

Starting point is 00:01:42 a candidate for the highest office in the land, and why? And how was he allowed on the roof of the building? How was that roof left unguarded? President Trump discussed that unguarded roof in an interview with Fox News' Jesse Waters. Mistakes were made. They were monitoring this guy for an hour beforehand. No one told you not to take the stage? No, nobody mentioned it. Nobody said there was a problem. And I would have waited for 15. They could have said, let's wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes, something. Nobody said, I think that was a mistake. How did somebody get on that roof? And why wasn't he reported? Because people saw that he was on the roof. I mean, you had Trumpers screaming, the woman in the red shirt, she was screaming,

Starting point is 00:02:29 there's a man on the roof. And then other people said, there's a man on the roof who's got a gun. And that was quite a bit before I walked onto the stage. So you would have thought somebody would have done something about it. I also spoke to a former sniper who's been on a detail for then Vice President Biden about that roof being left open. Jimmy, since you've been on this detail before, do you feel that there should have been snipers on that roof where Crooks was? Yeah, the fact that that building wasn't secured to a point where someone could crawl on top of it, that makes no sense to me. The facility of where I did it, we were also at an airport

Starting point is 00:03:09 and every building had either a deputy or a secret service. When I was there, and this was for Vice President Biden at the time, they were mainly with him. Everything else was secured by local law enforcement. But we had every building had a deputy standing there, ready to secure the area, ready to respond. The fact that this guy was able to climb a roof, that is a total failure in my eyes. There are just so many questions that remain more than a week later. Briefings from the FBI

Starting point is 00:03:49 would later reveal that there was no apparent motive being ascribed to Crooks. He was registered as a Republican but had donated to a progressive cause. He didn't appear to have an allegiance to either political party. And it would later come to light that he had photos of former President Trump on his phone, but he also had photos of Joe Biden, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis, and even Attorney General Merrick Garland. It's also been reported that Crooks searched for the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention. Crooks had registered for the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention. Crooks had registered for the Trump rally, and in a stunning development reported by the Wall Street Journal, Crooks actually flew a drone over the rally site hours before Mr. Trump took the stage at the Butler Farm showgrounds. The website reported that Crooks flew the drone more than once

Starting point is 00:04:42 as he researched the event. That is stunning. Typically the airspace above an event involving a high-ranking dignitary would be kept clear of anything like that. And if anyone should have had a drone in the air, it should have been local law enforcement or the Secret Service. The security failure was the subject of a House Oversight hearing on Capitol Hill where Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheadle faced a tough grilling over her agency's

Starting point is 00:05:08 handling or mishandling of security at the event. The assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump on July 13th is the most significant operational failure of the Secret Service in decades and I am keeping him and his family in my thoughts. Was this a colossal failure? It was a failure. Yes or no? Was it a colossal failure is the question. Yes or no? I have admitted this is a terrible. This is a yes or no series of questions. Was this a colossal failure? Yes or no? Yes. You say leaking your opening statement to Punchbowl News, Politico's playbook, and Washington Post several hours before you sent it to this committee as being political.

Starting point is 00:05:54 Yes or no? I have no idea how my statement got out. Well, that's bull. The New York Times reported that Crooks had actually asked his bosses at the nursing home where he worked to have Saturday, July 13th off because he told them he had something important to do. After Crooks had scoped out the location of the rally, he returned to the site with his father's gun and homemade bombs that could be set off using a remote control. Crooks' parents had contacted police in the hours before the shooting. A briefing by the FBI to lawmakers revealed that Crooks had searched for major depressive disorder online but possibly had never been diagnosed. The Daily Beast reported that before Crooks fired the shots, his last online search was for pornography.

Starting point is 00:06:40 Experts say that's not unusual among people who carry out mass shootings. I'll have more on that later on. Those who knew Crooks from school or his neighborhood say he kept to himself. He sat by himself, didn't talk to anyone, like didn't even try to make conversation. So it was just kind of odd. He was an odd kid, but I didn't like have any issues with them or anything. There have been a lot of reports that Crooks was bullied, but a Fox News digital story said those claims are not true.

Starting point is 00:07:09 Quoting a former student at Bethel Park High School who told the site, quote, he didn't talk a lot, but when he was talked to, he would make good conversation. He was easy to talk to. He would make good conversation. He was very chill, very humble. Fox quoted the former girlfriend as saying Crooks had friends in class and on the bus. The people who knew him didn't have negative experiences with him. It's also been reported that he was studying mechanical engineering

Starting point is 00:07:36 and had just completed an associate's degree and was heading to college in the fall. The world is not always a safe place. And when accidents happen, you might need an attorney that's going to fight for you and stand up for your rights. That's why I want to talk to you about Morgan & Morgan, a sponsor of Crime Fix. Morgan & Morgan has more than 1,000 attorneys you may want in your corner because they are America's largest injury firm. And for a reason, they win a lot. Morgan & Morgan has secured several multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements recently for victims who were in life-altering car crashes, all of which were considerably higher than the highest insurance

Starting point is 00:08:15 offer. Starting a claim takes just eight clicks or less and it can all be done from your smartphone. And there are no upfront fees. You only pay Morgan & Morgan if you win. So if you're injured, you can easily start a claim in eight clicks or less at ForThePeople.com slash CrimeFix. With me to discuss Thomas Crooks is somebody who's been following this case very closely. He's retired FBI agent, Bobby Chacon. He's also an attorney, Bobby.

Starting point is 00:08:42 I find this report in the wall street journal incredibly interesting the fact that thomas crooks was actually able to get a drone up in the air according to the wall street journal to survey this area it's shocking to me because i always thought the secret service goes in and they kind of shut these areas down they do an assessment and they make sure that nobody is doing anything like that. So what are your thoughts on that report? Well, I think mine is the same. I was a bit shocked that he was able to get a drone. Not that he was able to get a drone, but most 20-year-old young men can operate drones. It's part of the culture now. But the fact that Secret Service

Starting point is 00:09:22 didn't have that space locked down hours, if not days in advance of a presidential, a former president and now presidential candidate appearance there. And so I think that, you know, they have to start looking into, you know, very carefully into how they handle these things in the future. But yeah, it was shocking that the amount of access he had and the drone, the fact that he was able to kind of gain more intelligence than they had apparently on this overall site. Because I don't know if they ever had flown a drone over there. Certainly they didn't have one the day of the event. And I'm not sure they had one in the days leading up to it when they were putting their plan together.

Starting point is 00:09:59 Drones are pretty simple, as you mentioned. Any 20-year-old, I think a lot of 10-year-olds these days can operate a drone and get one up in the air. And I actually talked to a law enforcement officer that I know pretty well who told me, we send a drone up in the air for a $100 drug deal for surveillance. So how on earth the Secret Service didn't have drones in the air and how this kid was able to get a drone up in the air is unbelievable yeah i mean because you could have used it both to do the planning like i said in those now famous aerial shots we've seen of the site and you can pick out that roof as one of the most vulnerable points just from the air just you know if you're on the ground it might look a little different but certainly from the air when you look at it on those aerial shots with a drone would have given

Starting point is 00:10:42 them um you can see that roof as the closest, most dangerous point that an adversary might exploit. And then, of course, during the operation, that's leading up to it. And during the operation, if you had a drone up, you know, you would have been able to see him immediately get on that roof knowing he's not one of your team and call for Trump to get off that stage immediately. Instead, they were relying on people. We've seen now those famous videos, the woman's yelling, he's got a gun, he's on the roof. And all these bystanders are trying to notify cops. Well, there's a lag time.

Starting point is 00:11:16 There's a delay in the response there because of that. And so, you know, to avoid that, if you had a drone up just constantly an eye in the sky watching, the minute that he breached that roof and was crawling up just constantly an eye in the sky watching. The minute that he breached that roof and was crawling up there, they would have called it out. Trump would have been rushed off the stage and the team could have been sent to respond to that threat. Instead, that did not happen. And we know the consequences. There's another report out from the Daily Beast, and I found this interesting, too. And it said that a law enforcement source told the Daily Beast that Thomas Crooks his last internet search before this shooting

Starting point is 00:11:49 was for pornography. And apparently the experts will tell you that that's not incredibly unusual, even among school shooters and mass shooters, pornography is apparently a common factor or thread, the viewing of pornography among these people. Do you have any experience with that? Have you seen this in the past?

Starting point is 00:12:10 And is there a strange kind of maybe a sexual frustration component with these people who carry out these mass shootings? Yes, I mean, I spoke to, and I have some very good friends who are FBI profilers, former FBI profilers. They're retired now. And I spoke to them about this very topic. And, you know, one of their takes was, you know, there's this incel community that's out there. And then there's kind of varying degrees of people that fall into that incel category, that involuntarily celibate category. These are guys that are, you know, for whatever reason, the niches they were in in middle school and high school prevented them from developing normal relationships with girls or whatever their sexual orientation is.

Starting point is 00:12:51 And so they are involuntarily celibate. And, you know, that there's a certain frustration that grows out of that. And the Internet has given them a place to kind of commiserate on that. And they, you know, they can't establish that normal romantic or physical relationships with their chosen, you know, gender that they're attracted to. And so they watch pornography and that's their outlet for that. And so there were early reports that he might be in an incel or one of these incel type people. And so I'm sure that part of the FBI investigation, talking to his family, talking to his friends, did he ever have a girlfriend? Did he have a boyfriend? Did he ever have any relationship, you know, physical or otherwise

Starting point is 00:13:34 with another person? And so I'm sure they're looking into that. But yeah, that is not an uncommon category of people that engage in these kinds of activities. An involuntary celibate obviously means they don't want to be. It's just that they aren't able to, for whatever reason, have a sexual relationship with somebody, whether it's of the different sex, same sex, what have you. This guy's been described as a loner. That's not something uncommon that we hear among people who carry out these types of things they he was described as somebody in high school he's only 20 years old uh when he carries this shooting out but he is somebody who was described as in high school as being a loner

Starting point is 00:14:16 he was bullied things like that I mean this seems like textbook stereotypical type things for the way that this guy was described yeah absolutely, absolutely. And what that does, how that impacts an individual like this is that when all of us who are not loners, say, when we have a social circle or a network of friends or family that we normally talk to on a regular basis, it tends to moderate us a little bit. If we're going down an emotional or an intellectual highway that is not good for us, or that is not based in reason, there's somebody there to kind of moderate that. There's somebody to kind of get us back on the road and talk to you, kind of makes you think differently. But if you're a loner and you go down one of these dark places, one of these roads,

Starting point is 00:15:00 and there's nobody there in your social circle, your family circle, because you're a loner, to moderate you and to moderate those views and to kind of, you know, maybe get you to think about things in a different way, then you continue down that dark path and without that network, without that social support, these loner types then tend to, you know, viciously go down and down and down and down that rabbit hole. And there's no one there to kind of moderate those views or to get them to think about things a little differently. Do you think we'll ever know what motivated this guy? I mean, he had pictures of famous people. It wasn't just Trump.

Starting point is 00:15:38 He had photos of Biden reportedly on his phone, Princess Kate, Fonny Willis all kinds of different people yeah and he also did searches for Biden and DNC and things like that so you know I don't know this to be true yet they haven't made it public I think that it could be one of those things where he was gonna kill whoever was famous closest to him in those days when he chose to take out this attack because he wanted to be famous. One of these kill someone famous to become famous type things, you know, like maybe like Mark David Chapman who killed John Lennon and things like that. So yeah, it could be that. Unfortunately, because he's deceased, his true motivations, 100% we'll never know. But we are going to be able to

Starting point is 00:16:19 hand all the information off, which I'm sure they're doing now, to our profilers and who will kind of come up with a most likely motive. We'll never know for sure, but I think they will be able to come up with a most likely motive. And the reason that's important is because you want to maybe keep an eye on similarly situated or similarly thinking individuals so that, you know, maybe people he may have commiserated with on the internet, so that they may be talked to, they may be kind of veered off of that path that no one veered him off of. So I think we'll have a most likely motive based on a whole totality of circumstances situation. But I don't know if we'll ever truly know without a doubt, 100%, because, like I said, he's deceased. He took that with him. And it doesn't seem like he had anybody that he was regularly talking to about these things.

Starting point is 00:17:13 Thank you, Bobby. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Annette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 7 New Details About Donald Trump's Would-Be Assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.

Your Ad Here

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 7 New Details About Donald Trump's Would-Be Assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.