In his opening statement at Tuesday's joint hearing of the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, Deputy FBI Director Paul Abbate revealed some details about the online life of failed Trump assassin Thomas Crooks. Crooks was killed by an Secret Service counter-sniper after firing eight shots at former President Trump, killing one audience member and wounding Trump and two others. Unusual for a 20-year-old, Crooks had a nearly non-existent online presence, and this has delayed the development of his possible motive.
At the hearing, Deputy Director Abbate declared that the FBI was on the job.
To date, the FBI team has conducted more than 460 interviews; executed search warrants, including at the shooters residence; and seized electronic media, to include phones, laptops, hard drives, and thumb drives. Legal process has been issued to dozens of companies, and we have received more than 2,000 tips from the public.
The full resources of the FBI have been brought to bear in furtherance of the investigation: agents, analysts, and professional staff. I’ve visited the site of this horrific attack and seen firsthand the work of FBI Pittsburgh and our partners on the front line and want to thank all involved for their ongoing and tireless efforts to get the answers we need and deliver justice.
Specialized resources deployed include evidence response teams, victim specialists, Laboratory and Operational Technology Division resources to process physical evidence and digital devices, and a shooting reconstruction team. Additionally, our explosives experts have analyzed the three IEDs recovered—two in the shooter’s vehicle, one in his family’s residence—and the Behavioral Analysis Unit is helping to build a profile of the shooter, including mental state.
He then dropped this item, which seemed to be an attempt to label Crooks as a right-winger.
While the investigation has not determined motive, the investigative team continues to review information from legal returns, including online and social media accounts.
Something just very recently uncovered is a social media account, which is believed to be associated with the shooter in the 2019 to 2020 timeframe. There were over 700 comments posted from this account. Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes, espouse political violence, and are extreme in nature.
While the investigative team is still working to verify this account to determine if it did belong to the shooter, we believe it important to note, particularly given the general absence of information to date reflecting on the shooter’s potential motive.
This social media activity dates from when Crooks was 15 or 16 years old, so I'm not sure how much it helps determine a motive, but there is a bigger problem. Abbate's testimony doesn't seem to be true.
Shortly after the testimony, Andrew Torba, the CEO of Gab Social, posted a copy of the FBI's "Emergency Disclosure Letter."
BREAKING: The FBI is now claiming that the Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks had an unspecified "social media account" in 2019/2020 (when he was 14/15 years old) that posted "anti-immigrant and anti-semitic" content.
This is not consistent with Gab's understanding of the shooter's motives based on an Emergency Disclosure Request ("EDR") we received from the FBI last week for the Gab account "EpicMicrowave" which, based on the content of that EDR, the FBI appeared to think belonged to Thomas Crooks.
Many, particularly regime media reporters, have doubted Gab's claims that this request existed. Normally we don't confirm the existence or content of law enforcement communications. In this instance we had to make an exception due to the overwhelming public interest in disclosure and transparency.
As a courtesy to law enforcement, we are not going to post the entire request. This is the first page of that request. The story is this: the account for which data was requested was, UNEQUIVOCALLY, pro-Biden and in particular pro-Biden's immigration policy.
To the best of Gab's knowledge, as of 2021, Crooks was a pro-lockdown, pro-immigration, left-wing Joe Biden supporter.
Here, Marsha Blackburn pins him down on the existence of the Gab account and gets an admission that Gorba's description is correct.
Abbate makes an error on the date of the Gab activity, but he does provide some helpful information. The social media account Abbate referred to in his opening testimony predates the Gab posts and comments, so they emphasized something Crooks wrote when he was younger than 15 and ignored what he wrote when he was older.
None of this means that Abbate lied; it just means that he gave calculated, incomplete information to the country via his public testimony. He knew that "anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes, espouse political violence, and are extreme in nature" would be like catnip to the media and set the basis for a narrative that Donald Trump's rhetoric motivated the shooter to act with the implication that this was karma. This is not a man or a law enforcement agency that we can trust.
Note: the post has been edited to correct two errors. It was a Secret Service not FBI counter-sniper who killed Crooks, and the name of the Gab Social CEO contained a typo. My apologies. --streiff