The Federal Bureau of Investigation has identified 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania as the “subject involved” in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, it said in a statement on Sunday.

The political leanings of Crooks, who was shot dead by the Secret Service after the attempted assassination, were not immediately clear. Records show Crooks was registered as a Republican voter in Pennsylvania, but federal campaign finance reports also show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on 20 January 2021, the day President Joe Biden was sworn in to office. Officials have not publicly disclosed a possible motive.

  • fluxion@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    That “vivid firsthand account” is a dude making a pretty strong insinuation that the police and secret service were ignoring their attempts to point out the shooter and only acted after the shots were fired. This is gonna be a shit show.

    • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Odds are, assuming it’s at all true, the cops all assumed the guy with the rifle was Secret Service since there’s now way Secret Service could miss such and obvious position to secure.

      • fluxion@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        To be fair, it’s a Trump rally not a tiktok convention. Like it or not these people genuinely love Trump and it’s no surprise they’d be focusing on signaling police before anyone gets shot.

        That doesn’t mean he isn’t playing things up but there’s no evidence of that so far.

        • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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          4 months ago

          Lots of phones were recording Trump’s bloody right side get hustled off stage, you can see a dozen of them from the footage of him getting shot.

  • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    History tells us some political assassinations, Rabin, Ghandi to name two were committed by their more extreme unhinged followers.

    • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      And considering that most of the other presumptive candidates for the GOP are even more unhinged than Trump, it’s hard to not see this as someone attempting to seat, say, Nikki Haley.

      • NuXCOM_90Percent
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        4 months ago

        I think the only politician we can truly rule out is ted cruz since absolutely nobody likes him enough to do anything for him.

        But yeah. republicans have increasingly been calling for the lynching and execution of their political opponents and took glee in the brutal assault of Nancy Pelosi’s husband. It is not at all a stretch that one flavor of republican would realize a different republican is their political opponent. Especially since it has been made abundantly clear that nobody in the party can run against trump but also that trump can’t garner support for any downballot candidates.

  • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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    4 months ago

    Police have his home street blocked off, I feel bad that his parents have to suffer the fallout of all this.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    4 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The Federal Bureau of Investigation has identified 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania as the “subject involved” in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, it said in a statement on Sunday.

    In a social media post, Trump said he was “fine” after he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.” The former president was quickly whisked from the stage by Secret Service agents, his ear covered in blood.

    The US Secret Service has said its agents shot the suspected attacker after he fired toward Trump – who was speaking on stage at the time – “from an elevated position outside of the rally venue” in Butler county.

    Video from NBC News captured more than a dozen shots ringing out at the rally, with later ones apparently coming from agents protecting the president, who had been speaking on stage at the time.

    Local district attorney Richard Goldringer appeared on CNN and said one aspect of the attack that investigators were “going to have to figure out” was how the shooter managed to get close enough to aim a gun at Trump and fire repeatedly.

    The most vivid early account of the shooting came from a Trump supporter who said he was outside the rally site but within hearing distance of the former president’s campaign speech when he saw a man carrying a rifle climb on to the roof of a nearby building.


    The original article contains 733 words, the summary contains 242 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • dragontamer@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Local district attorney Richard Goldringer appeared on CNN and said one aspect of the attack that investigators were “going to have to figure out” was how the shooter managed to get close enough to aim a gun at Trump and fire repeatedly.

      Its like AR-15 rifles that have long accurate, repeatable shots, have made it easier to fire at people today than ever before.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        We’ve had AR-15s since the 60s, yet you seem to think it’s a new thing? What’s new is the mass shootings, and they’re far more rare than most think.

        Anyhow, I have a few rifles, other than my AR, that would easily make that shot. Know why you hear about ARs all the time? Because the media hypes it.

        Quick! Remember the horrific shooting in Maine? What gun did he use? I had a hard time looking it up at first because the media wasn’t talking about it. Weird, huh? It was an AR-10, and few know what that is, doesn’t make a hot headline. (It’s basically an AR-15, as are many, many other rifles.)

        OTOH, I can’t think of any reason why our billionaire owned media would want us disarmed. Doesn’t make sense does it?