Rep. Mike Waltz said he’s not satisfied with the repeated assertions by the FBI and Secret Service that Donald Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks acted alone.
Waltz told The Post Wednesday that he does not believe the agencies have been able to dig up enough information on the 20-year-old gunman to determine for certain that he did not have help planning and carrying out the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month.
“We’ve heard both the Secret Service and the FBI kind of phrase it in different ways — that everything they’ve seen he acted alone and that they have yet to find any co-conspirator,” Waltz (R-Fla.) told The Post in an exclusive interview following an FBI briefing Wednesday.
“I find that hard to believe, and I want to see where’s the proof… How did he learn to build those IEDs? How did he learn to install remote detonators? How did he conduct those searches and not get popped? I still have a lot of questions,” said Waltz, who sits on a House task force charged with investigating the July 13 attempt on Trump’s life.
Waltz’s stark question comes on the heels of the FBI edging closer to understanding the mystery of Crooks’ enigmatic cyber-footprint, which includes suspected accounts on foreign-based communication platforms.
The agency told members of Congress Wednesday that investigators have gained access to two of the three encrypted foreign online accounts that they believe Crooks may have operated.
The officials described the accounts as being on encrypted messaging and social media services.
Everything we know about the Trump assassination attempt
- 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks was identified as the shooter who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
- Crooks was shot dead by Secret Service agents.
- The gunman grazed Trump’s ear, killed a 50-year-old retired fire chief, and injured two other rally-goers.
- Investigators detailed Crooks’ search history to lawmakers, revealing that he looked for the dates of Trump’s appearances and the Democratic National Convention.
- Crooks’ search history also revealed a broad interest in high-profile people and celebrities, regardless of their political affiliation, FBI officials reportedly said.
- Trump exclusively recounted surviving the “surreal” assassination attempt with The Post at the rally, remarking, “I’m supposed to be dead.”
- High-profile politicians, including President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, addressed the nation about the shooting, calling it “a heinous, horrible and cowardly act.”
However, the number of messages and their content was not divulged to the 13-member House panel.
Deepening the mystery of the assassination attempt, the FBI said it’s possible that an older family member may have written some of the approximately 700 social media messages, including antisemitic posts that the FBI disclosed to Congress last month, a source familiar with the FBI briefing told The Post.
Where exactly those 700 messages were posted hasn’t been disclosed.
“Some of the comments were years old,” the source said. “They didn’t think the language matched what would be expected from a 15- or 16-year-old. So there was some discussion of whether it could have also been his dad or a shared [account].”
The glacial pace of the investigation has frustrated members of Congress who say it’s essential to rapidly understand whether Crooks had accomplices — though the FBI did say they believe the shooting in Pennsylvania had no connection to an alleged Iranian plot on Trump’s life.
“They really foot-stomped and went out of their way to make this point… that they see no evidence that or found any connection between the recent unsealed indictment on the Iranian plot and the assassination attempt,” said Waltz.
The bureau is also no closer to getting a firm idea of Crooks’ motive in the shooting, which struck the former president in the ear, killed rally-goer Corey Comperatore, 50, and seriously wounded two others, David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 54.
“This isn’t an isolated incident that we could just take years to really take our time and unpack,” Waltz said. “There are ongoing threats as we speak. So yeah, I’m frustrated at how slow and how little we’ve learned.”
The FBI declined to comment when reached by The Post.
