Remember Thomas Crooks?
There’s a line in the movie “Jaws” that perfectly reflects this situation. In the film, the mayor explains to the sheriff how damaging it is for a beach town to be under a shark scare. The mayor says, “You say barracuda, everyone goes, huh, what? You yell shark, and you’ve got a panic on your hands.”
The same applies if you say Thomas Crooks. Everyone says, “Who, what?” Yet if you mention George Floyd, everyone knows who he is. Floyd was a career criminal who died after being apprehended by police, and the police officer who was convicted of killing him is expected to be released at some point in time because somebody finally got around to reading the autopsy report.
Crooks, on the other hand, attempted to assassinate President Trump, hitting him in the ear and killing Corey Comperatore, who was in the crowd sitting behind Trump. Two other innocent people were also severely wounded in the shooting.
When Floyd died, the Democrats and the radical left celebrated the thug as a martyr. Their rhetoric and the MSM combined to inflame other leftist idiots looking for a reason to loot, burn, and steal. The result was billions of dollars in damage.
However, it’s been over ten months since Crooks decided to try and kill Trump, and we know virtually nothing about what actually took place on July 13th, 2024. Many questions about what took place that afternoon in July have never been answered. At the scene itself, it has never been accurately explained how this twenty-year-old could gain access to a roof with a perfect angle to fire at Trump. He was armed with a model A-15 Caliber: 5.56x45mm/.223 Remington Semiautomatic rifle. He also used a range finder to measure the exact distance between his sniper’s perch and the intended target.
A clear motive was never established, despite some evidence and rumors of foreign involvement and offshore accounts. Was this a young man who was naive enough to be manipulated yet intelligent enough to carry out the plan?
There has never been a genuine sense of urgency to investigate what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, on that day. At the time, I wrote a column calling the events “Deliberate Incompetence.” Even now, it seems that this attitude persists. Those involved and the mainstream media were eager to sweep the entire episode under the rug, and even when new information or questions arise, the response is crickets.
Last week, CBS News reported that Crooks may have intended to construct an even larger bomb than what was found in his vehicle. However, this aspect of the story seems to be mentioned almost as an afterthought by CBS.
“Thomas Matthew Crooks had a lot on his mind in January 2024.”
“The 20-year-old who, six months later, would open fire at President Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally — striking his ear and killing an audience member — was busy polishing his applications to transfer from community college to a four-year engineering program.”
“Crooks was gathering transcripts and asking friends to review his personal statement.”
“He was also designing a bomb.”
Really? Someone needs to tell CBS that we really don’t care about his future college plans, especially since he obviously didn’t either.
The bomb that CBS threw in as filler to the story about Crooks’ college plans and his SAT scores had the possibility of doing extreme damage. They reported that the would-be assassin ordered:
“More than two gallons of nitromethane from an online specialty fuel retailer using an encrypted email account.”
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“Twelve days later, Crooks’ purchase hadn’t shipped, and he wanted to know why.”
He emailed the seller, Hyperfuels, to inquire about the arrival date on January 31, 2024.
“Hello, my name is Thomas. I placed an order on your website on January 19. I have not received any updates on the order shipping out yet, and I was wondering if you still have it and when I can expect it to come.”
“Crooks used his community college email account to inquire about shipping, one of the few operational missteps that has allowed for a rare look into the dark side of this ambitious young student,” CBS reported.
The Western Journal picked up the ball and researched what could be accomplished with that amount of nitromethane. They discovered that if he were to use it to make a backpack-sized bomb, it would have a lethal radius of up to approximately 30 feet.
If he were to create a larger device using nitromethane as a starter and ammonium nitrate, which is a common ingredient in fertilizer—and also in vehicle-borne bombs, like the one that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995—it would be highly dangerous.
Approximately 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate would need to be added to the nitromethane to create a bomb with a blast radius sufficient to destroy a small building. This depends on Crooks’ knowledge of explosives and his ability to assemble such a device. However, he was seemingly not an unintelligent young man.
Wally Zimolong, a lawyer in Pennsylvania, is seeking clarification. He is the litigator who pursued Crooks’ record on behalf of America First Legal, a nonprofit founded by Stephen Miller, who is now the Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House.
“I think it raises a lot of important questions. Were they investigating anyone else? Are they still investigating?” A year later, we still don’t know enough.”
Zimolong was being nice. This is more inquiry than investigation. Those involved in this farce seem almost upset that Crooks was unsuccessful. They are not even trying to make it look thorough and professional.
Who was this kid, and who was backing him? This type of deliberate foot-dragging was to be expected under Biden. Now that “pudding head” is gone, we need answers to what happened before whoever is still in the shadows tries it again.
