Thomas Crooks, who tried to kill Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, dry-fired a handgun in his bedroom, chilling videos purportedly show.
Crooks had shot the Republican Presidential nominee while he was addressing a crowd, and hit Trump's ear. The clips, which are undated, were reportedly uploaded by Crooks online, but later ‘scraped’ after the assassination attempt on Trump, as per snippets political commentator Candace Owens obtained, and published on her podcast.
What is shown in the video
The purported video begins by showing a handgun on a quilt on a neatly made bed. Then, the camera flips to show Crooks in athletic wear. The bedroom can also be seen, but there isn't much there, apart from a Marvel poster on the wall behind the 20-year-old.
Picking up the handgun, Crooks goes into a tactical pose and presumably dry-fires at an imaginary target not within the frame of the camera.
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{{/usCountry}}Picking up the handgun, Crooks goes into a tactical pose and presumably dry-fires at an imaginary target not within the frame of the camera.
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{{/usCountry}}There is reportedly another video, where Crooks comes across as even more menacing, practicing the same gunplay. He reportedly holds the handgun in front of what appears to be a sheet of target paper, marked with blue circles, and takes the tactical stance. Then Crooks reportedly stands still, as per New York Post.
Crooks' digital footprint had also revealed that he had an obsession with mass shootings, assassinations, explosives, and guns. The FBI analyzed the would-be assassin's laptop and found a Google search for “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?,” on July 6, 2024 – a week before the Butler firing at the Trump rally. Feds further said that Crooks' last search, before he was fatally shot in the head, was pornography on his encrypted Samsung phone.
Previous reports of Crooks' search history were in line with what Owens published in her report. She claimed his searches included ‘Deadliest Mass Shooting in World’ and ‘How to make a Molotov cocktail.’ The purported online history also included violent comments, including one made in 2019, on a YouTube video, where Crooks reportedly said that heads of ‘Trump hating Democrats’ should be chopped off.