Newly reviewed federal records have surfaced fresh details about Thomas Crooks, the man who attempted to assassinate President Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, two years ago. According to reporting by Fox News and the New York Post, the documents were turned over to the Senate and raise questions about why such information had not come to light earlier.
Among the more unusual disclosures: Crooks, while ordering large numbers of Amazon packages that included “parts, tools, and items to increase the capacity of his rifle,” adopted the pseudonym “Bob Dole.” The New York Post, which also reviewed the records, reported that Crooks began using the alias after his father’s Citizens Bank checking account was hacked and multiple fraudulent BetMGM charges appeared on it. What prompted him to choose the name of the former Kansas senator and Republican presidential nominee remains unclear.
According to the records, Crooks ignored his father Matthew Crooks’s warning that simply using a pseudonym would not necessarily protect a buyer from being hacked, since the charge would still be made to a bank account under his own name. Thomas dismissed that logic and continued making online purchases under assumed names, apparently convinced he was shielding his accounts from compromise.
Family Finances and Security Habits Scrutinized
The documents also shed light on the Crooks family’s circumstances in the aftermath of the shooting. Fox News reported that Matthew Crooks took an early retirement shortly after the attack, while Thomas’s mother, Mary Crooks, went on leave from work to, in the reported phrasing, “process the situation.” The family did not appear to have significant financial means — they reportedly could not afford a funeral for their son — a detail that the reporting suggests leaves questions unanswered.
According to the records, Thomas Crooks also coached his father on using identity-obscuring software, including CyberGhost VPN and the Bravenet Browser, arguing that such tools made them “less likely to be compromised by outside actors.” Matthew further recalled his son using multiple privacy-focused encrypted email providers, among them GMX and Mailfence.
Beyond the digital footprint, the documents describe a young man who kept to himself. According to his father’s interview statements, Thomas was a loner with no friends, never showed interest in girls, and frequently talked to himself. He also developed an obsession with guns during his teenage years. None of these behaviors, the records indicate, prompted family members to raise alarms.
Motive Still Unresolved
While the newly disclosed records add texture to the portrait of Crooks, they do not answer the central question of why he tried to kill Trump. That motive remains publicly unknown, and until it is revealed, the reporting notes, questions and allegations of a cover-up are likely to persist.
The disclosure arrives two years after the Butler shooting, which became the subject of intense congressional scrutiny and multiple investigations into how a gunman was able to gain a clear line of sight to the former president. The Senate’s receipt of these records marks another chapter in that ongoing examination, though it is not yet clear whether additional documents will follow or whether lawmakers intend to pursue further hearings based on the material.
For now, the picture that emerges from the records is one of a solitary young man who took elaborate steps to obscure his purchases, a family that has largely receded from public view, and a federal investigative record that continues to yield new fragments long after the event itself.
Source: www.thegatewaypundit.com — https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/09/more-federal-records-reveal-major-new-details-about/