Tucker Carlson has accused the FBI of lying about the man who nearly assassinated Donald Trump, but the bureau is pushing back, insisting “there is no cover-up here.”
On July 13, 2024, during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks climbed onto a rooftop and opened fire on Donald Trump with an AR-15-style rifle. He discharged eight rounds into the crowd, grazing Trump’s ear, fatally striking firefighter Corey Comperatore, and injuring two other attendees.
Within seconds, a member of the U.S. Secret Service Counter Sniper Team returned fire and killed Crooks on the scene.
More than one year later, the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump remains one of the most shocking moments of the 2024 election cycle – and Tucker Carlson says the full story still hasn’t been told.
‘FBI lied’
In recent weeks, Carlson has leveled serious accusations at the FBI, claiming the agency has deliberately withheld what it knows about Crooks.
“The FBI told us Thomas Crooks tried to kill Donald Trump last summer but somehow had no online footprint. The FBI lied, and we can prove it because we have his posts. The question is why?” the right-winger shared on X, alleging a cover-up by FBI Director Kash Patel, his predecessor Christopher Wray and Deputy Director Dan Bongino.
Carlson accused the FBI of downplaying Crooks’ digital activity, suggesting the assassin left behind a “detailed digital trail of violent threats, including calls for assassination and political violence.”
‘FBI doesn’t want us to know’
In his Nov. 14 episode of his podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show, the Trump supporter said: “Crooks came within a quarter inch of destroying this country, and yet, a year and a half later, we still know almost nothing about him or why he did it.”
“That’s because, for some reason, the FBI, even the current FBI, doesn’t want us to know,” he said, accusing the bureau of hiding “from the public what they know.”
“So here you have volatile, troubled, possibly mentally ill young man with a long record of espousing violence in public,” the former Fox host charged. “The FBI clearly knew he existed.”
FBI denied claims
Immediately shutting down Carlson’s accusations on X, FBI Rapid Response fired back on social media, stating: “This FBI has never said Thomas Crooks had no online footprint. Ever.”
Patel also responded to the allegations, clarifying that “Crooks had limited online and in person interactions.”
“Over 480 FBI employees were involved in the Thomas Crooks investigation. Employees conducted over 1,000 interviews, addressed over 2,000 public tips, analyzed data extracted from 13 seized digital devices, reviewed nearly 500,000 digital files, collected, processed, and synchronized hundreds of hours of video footage, analyzed financial activity from 10 different accounts, and examined data associated with 25 social media or online forum accounts,” he wrote in a detailed tweet, where Carlson was not mentioned.
He then emphasized that “Crooks had limited online and in person interactions, planned and conducted the attack alone, and did not leak or share his intent to engage in the attack with anyone.”
Carlson, however, says he accessed Crooks’ Google Drive and found YouTube comments from 2019 and 2020 that, in his view, offer evidence that Crooks “was not some secretive lone wolf who never warned anyone that he was planning violence.”
‘No cover-up here’
In a Nov. 21 interview with Fox News Digital, Bongino said: “We have reviewed this case over and over – looked into every nugget. We have spoken to the families, the president – there is no cover-up here. There is no motive for it, there is no reason for it.”
Defending the FBI’s work, Patel explained that if someone had called in a lead, “immediately there would be action.”
“People are asking why we didn’t act on his posts on certain sites,” Patel told Fox, referring to Crook’s “online footprint.” “No one in law enforcement knew who he was. No one referred him to law enforcement, and we do not monitor every single American’s use of YouTube and Google and Twitter and Facebook…Because then people come back and say to us: ‘Why are you on our First Amendment rights?’”
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