CHICAGO — Trump rally gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks used encrypted messaging accounts on various platforms located in Belgium, New Zealand and Germany, according to a member of a congressional task force investigating his assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), one of 13 lawmakers tapped to serve on the House bipartisan task force, told reporters at a Wednesday press conference at the Trump Hotel Chicago that the “overseas accounts” piqued his suspicion immediately regarding the shooter’s motives.”
“Why does a 19-year-old kid who is a health care aid need encrypted platforms not even based in the United States, but based abroad – where most terrorist organizations know it is harder for our law enforcement to get into?” asked Waltz.
“That’s a question I’ve had since day one,” the Republican panel member said, before pivoting to bash the US Secret Service and FBI for declining to release the full findings of their investigation into the July 13 shooting at a Trump rally.
“They need to be releasing information as they come across it, because this wasn’t an isolated incident. The threats are continual,” Waltz claimed, citing the alleged “sophisticated plot” by an Pakistani national who paid off purported hitmen to assassinate Trump and other US officials.
The FBI is expected to brief the task force members later on Wednesday, which the Florida congressman and retired Green Beret said he hoped would shed light on the “ridiculously flawed” security footprint for the Trump campaign event in Pennsylvania.
Waltz also hoped the information would uncover who “still in charge of security operations” — including the Secret Service agent tasked with surveying the Butler rally site — deserved accountability.
Both agencies are conducting their own probes of the assassination attempt, along with the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General.
Crooks, 20, opened fire onto the main stage minutes after Trump, 78, mounted it to warm up the crowd, striking the former president in the right ear, killing rallygoer Corey Comperatore, 50, and seriously wounding two others, David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 54.
New photos from local law enforcement — who confronted but did not stop the shooter in time — show Crooks sitting on a wall and looking and at his phone moments before he climbed onto the roof of the AGR International building and took aim.
Butler officers on the ground at the rally had labeled him “suspicious” well before that.
