The FBI Just Released 600 Pages on the Butler Shooter. His Father Took the Rifle Out of a Locked Safe and Handed It to Him That Morning, Thinking He Was Going to the Range. He'd Been Ordering Gun Parts Under the Name 'Bob Dole.'

More than two years after Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed onto a warehouse roof in Butler, Pennsylvania, and fired eight rounds at Donald Trump, the FBI has released roughly 600 pages of interviews and reports from its investigation, and the picture that emerges is of a young man who prepared methodically, told no one, and left behind almost nothing that explains why. The documents were turned over to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, whose office shared them with the New York Post on Tuesday, September 15. NBC News said it could not independently obtain the files from Grassley's office.

The most striking detail concerns the gun. Matthew Crooks told agents that on the morning of July 13, 2024, he took the Panther Arms A-15 semi-automatic rifle out of his locked safe and handed it to his 20-year-old son, believing Thomas was headed to a shooting range, as he often was. The father said he changed the safe's combination frequently after catching his son looking over his shoulder while he entered the code. According to a separate Fox News account of the records, the elder Crooks had searched online in May 2024, roughly two months before the rally, for ways to keep his son away from firearms. Hours after the handoff, Thomas Crooks was dead on a rooftop, killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper, and a 50-year-old former fire chief named Corey Comperatore had been shot to death shielding his family. Two other rallygoers, Jim Copenhaver, 74, and David Dutch, 57, were critically wounded. A bullet had grazed Trump's right ear.

The files describe a shooter who had spent years getting better with a rifle. His father told the FBI that Thomas was a "terrible shot" when he first took up guns during the pandemic, but he practiced diligently and improved over five years. He shot roughly once a week at the Clairton Sportsmen's Club, and a member there recalled him practicing a 100-yard shot on July 12, the day before the rally. He had also enrolled in basic and intermediate handgun courses at the Keystone Shooting Center, where an employee described him as "an odd duck." Crooks bought firearms and gun parts online and, in a detail that has drawn particular attention, used the alias "Bob Dole" for at least some of those orders. He typically collected the packages before his father, who worked late, got home.

What the records do not contain is a motive. Crooks was a registered Republican who had donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project in 2021, and classmates remembered him being shocked when Trump won in 2016. He was critical of both parties. His father told agents that Thomas "never identified anyone as a friend throughout middle school and high school," and that while he socialized with classmates, he insisted they were not friends. He had been bullied occasionally at Bethel Park High School and would "shut down" in groups. He earned an associate degree at the Community College of Allegheny County, planned to study engineering at Robert Morris University, and had worked for five years as a dietary aide at a nursing home, where colleagues called him an "odd, young kid" who was sweet and down to earth. He worked his last shift on July 12 and had asked for the 13th off. He liked history, 3D printing and electronics, and built his own security cameras. "We don't know anything about the motivation why he wanted to kill Trump," Grassley said.

One more detail has fueled questions on Capitol Hill. A lawyer for the Crooks family told investigators that an anonymous donor paid for Thomas Crooks's cremation. The body was released to the family and cremated by July 23, ten days after the shooting. The records do not name the donor or explain the payment.

Republican lawmakers who investigated the shooting say they were never told any of this. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., who chaired the bipartisan House task force that issued its report on December 10, 2024, said federal agencies gave the panel almost nothing to work with. "During our piece that we were working on, none of the federal agencies were working with us at all," Kelly told Fox News, adding that it was "awfully strange" that every question was met with "we'll have to get back to you on that." Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said "pretty much everything we know about this is from whistleblowers" and called for "a full accounting of everything that happened on that day, all of the failures." The FBI has said Crooks acted alone. The newly released files do not contradict that finding, but they make clear how much the public was not told about the man who came within an inch of killing a former and future president.