Newly released interviews with the father of Thomas Crooks portray the 20-year-old would-be Donald Trump assassin as an intensely quiet and isolated young man.
Crooks opened fire from a nearby rooftop with an AR-15-style rifle during Trump’s July 13, 2024 rally, firing eight shots. Trump was struck in the right ear, while rallygoer Corey Comperatore was killed and two other people were wounded.
The FBI’s conversations with Crooks’ father, Matthew, were provided to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley as the Iowa Republican continues his investigation into the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting.
Matthew Crooks said he had not seen any indication that his son was in distress or headed toward violence in the period before the shooting.
Still, he described Thomas as exceptionally withdrawn: someone who seldom laughed, could be difficult to read and never developed what his father considered a close father-son relationship.
According to Matthew, his son’s reserve was apparent almost immediately. He recalled that Thomas did not scream when he was born and remained quiet as he grew up. Matthew and his wife, Mary, believed he might have had ADHD.
Matthew said Thomas’ muted emotional responses sometimes caused friction at home. In one incident, after an argument, Thomas poured an entire container of fish food into his sister’s aquarium. His father said he pushed the boy until he cried, frustrated by what he saw as his lack of emotion.
The father said Thomas became somewhat more expressive during elementary school, though often through disruptive behavior that he attributed to boredom, according to documents obtained by The New York Post.
Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump in 2024, was characterized by his father as a quiet and solitary figure in recently released FBI interviews.
Crooks fired eight rounds from an AR-15-style rifle positioned on a nearby roof during Trump’s July 13, 2024 rally, injuring Trump’s right ear, killing supporter Corey Comperatore and wounding two additional attendees.
He once wrecked a school desk and briefly befriended what his father saw as a ‘bad’ group of other children.
Things grew worse in high school, as Thomas got quieter and quieter, started talking to himself and struggled to talk to his teachers, Matthew claimed.
While he ‘never showed interest in girls,’ Thomas ‘repeatedly denied’ accusations that he was gay, Matthew told the FBI.
Thomas put ‘a lot of pressure on himself’ as college applications came around, with Matthew saying his son eventually got an impressive 1500 on his SATs despite not studying.
However, Crooks said that his son never really had any convictions for future plans beyond ideas.
‘At one point, Thomas wanted to join the military to work in nuclear submarines, but this was more of just an idea as Thomas thought it would be cool,’ one FBI agent notes from speaking to the father.
Matthew expressed regret that his work schedule kept him from being able to be around his son more often, saying that talking him through extracurricular activities could have helped the boy.
An interest in firearms appeared to spark something in the boy, Matthew claimed, though he said his son wanted nothing to do with hunting and ‘hated’ fishing.
The FBI interviews with Crooks’ father, Matthew (pictured), were given to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley as part of the Iowa Republican’s investigation into the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting
The father said that despite his son’s behavior, he ‘never showed any signs indicating something was wrong’ in the time leading up to the shooting
The pair’s conversations would usually involve guns, with Matthew calling it ‘odd’ that his son asked him if he needed a background check to buy his father’s Glock or if he could have his grandfather’s guns.
Matthew told FBI agents that his son began his new hobby by joining a gun club when the pandemic began, saying ‘he could not hit’ paper targets.
After about four to five years of practicing, he became a solid shooter, noting that he began trying to hit targets from further and further distances, explaining that ‘he wanted to see how far he could shoot with rudimentary sights.’
He began buying big quantities of ‘parts, tools and items to increase the capacity of his rifle’ off Amazon, using the name of former Senator and presidential candidate ‘Bob Dole’ as a pseudonym.
Thomas had become paranoid about his checking account being hacked after his father had experienced a hack, though Matthew explained that he could still be hacked under a fake name.
The son eventually taught his father how to use software to hide your identity to, as Thomas explained it, make them ‘less likely to be compromised by outside actors.’
Thomas started to build things using a 3D printer, even once creating a Glock 19 that he immediately got rid of after firing a single round, worried that the frame would explode.
A second person interviewed by investigators – whose name was redacted from the documents – spoke about Crooks’ political interests.
Matthew admits that his son was remarkably quiet, rarely laughed and was hard to understand and said they ‘never really had a father/son bond.’
The pair’s conversations would usually involve guns, with Matthew calling it ‘odd’ that his son asked him if he needed a background check to buy his father’s Glock or if he could have his grandfather’s guns. Pictured: Crooks’ weapons taken from the scene of the shooting
They called Thomas a ‘big history buff’ who had a ‘nonchalant’ interest in political discussions and ‘spoke often about Trump and [Joe] Biden back when Trump initially got elected,’ even repeatedly bringing up Marco Rubio.
Matthew said of his son: ‘Thomas called himself a Republican. Thomas did not like the welfare state and was against the ‘woke’ ideology but never really espoused the Republican ideology.’
He noted, however, that his son didn’t seem to gravitate to either party – crediting Thomas’ status as a registered Republican to his own – and that they would often make fun of politicians from both parties.
Thomas ‘did not believe the 2020 presidential election was rigged’ and ‘expressed shock’ over the events of January 6, 2021, Matthew claimed, but that overall he was more critical of Trump than his son.
He was surprised to learn his son had made a small donation to a Democrat group called Progressive Turnout Project in 2021.
Thomas’ interests were similar to many young men. He idolized the superhero Iron Man, loved movies like Saving Private Ryan, Full Metal Jacket and John Wick, while enjoying rap and country music, Matthew said.
Ultimately, he reiterated that no one in their family thought there were any red flags about Thomas prior to the shooting.
Much of the investigation into the mysterious shooter has baffled the media and onlookers.
Thomas’ interests were similar to many young men. He idolized the superhero Iron Man, loved movies like Saving Private Ryan, Full Metal Jacket and John Wick, while enjoying rap and country music, Matthew said
Investigators found 22 unfired rounds and extra magazines in Crooks’ vehicle, along with a ballistic vest.
An undetonated explosive device was also discovered in the car. The device had a receiver for remote detonation but was in the off position, preventing activation.
The would-be assassin was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.
The President, in an extraordinary moment, raised his clenched fist as he was mobbed by bodyguards, shouting to his supporters: ‘Fight, fight, fight.’
Many do not believe the official version of the incident, especially since the FBI originally said Crooks had almost no digital footprint – and certainly did not disclose that Crooks exhibited violent, radical tendencies online.
The FBI then had to walk that back in November 2025 when Tucker Carlson released a documentary Who is Thomas Crooks? on November 14 with extensive and authenticated proof of Crooks’ radical online presence – and revealed the existence of the mysterious ‘Willy Tepes’ for the first time.
Carlson said in the video that a source was able to retrieve Crooks’ social media accounts from his Google Drive account after many, if not all, of them had been wiped off YouTube.
Right after Carlson’s video went up, FBI Director Kash Patel released a statement describing what he said was an extensive investigation into ‘nearly 500,000 digital files’ from ’13 seized digital devices’ as part of the Crooks case.
The FBI also created what it called the ‘FBI Rapid Response’ on X in response to Carlson’s video.
In one of its first posts, it wrote: ‘This FBI has never said Thomas Crooks had no online footprint ever.’
But a community note added to the post pointed out that during a Senate hearing shortly after the assassination attempt, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate did vaguely disclose a social media account believed to be associated with Crooks but went on to describe a ‘general absence of other information to date from social media.’
The FBI’s handling of the case has been confusing from the start.
On November 17, 2025, three days after Carlson’s video aired, Patel, then FBI deputy director, Dan Bongino, and a senior FBI official sat down with Fox News to reiterate that Crooks acted alone – and issued an official FBI statement that appeared to be from their website but has only ever been available on the Fox News website.
The FBI admitted that a Willy Tepes had mentioned Crooks in four YouTube comments but said that Crooks himself had never directly communicated with Tepes.
That statement was disproven by the discovery of a YouTube video comment on August 5, 2020, showing Crooks responding to Tepes in a lengthy post that included this statement:
‘IMO the only way to fight the gov is with terrorism style attacks, sneak a bomb into an essential building (and) set it off before anyone sees you, track down any important people/politicians/military leaders and try to assassinate them.’
Since the shooting in Butler there have been at least three attempts on the President’s life
Helen and Corey Comperatore in a photo from Instagram. Corey was fatally shot by Thomas Crooks as Crooks attempted to assassinate Donald Trump
An online investigative organization called Citizens Commission released a video called ‘Who is Willy Tepes?’
It tracked Tepes’s full digital footprint, infiltrated the extremist Telegram channels he was active in, and recovered thousands of his messages — many of which explicitly encouraged political violence, including assassinations.
Citizens Commission used an online tracking tool, TGDB, to parse most of Tepes’ roughly 5,000 Telegram messages in 83 different channels on the app – the first one dating back to May 16, 2021.
‘What I don’t understand is how this guy is still able to keep posting violent stuff if the investigation into Crooks was thorough,’ said a spokesman for the group.
‘How was this Tepes character missed? Or if they knew about him why did they omit it in speaking about the investigation?
‘From everything we can tell, it appears Crooks talked about assassination attempts with a foreign terrorist in a YouTube comment section.’
Comperatore’s widow, Helen, made it clear that she does not believe the official account of Crooks’ story either.
‘If you think that kid just got out of bed and went and shot the President and shot my husband, you’re batshit crazy,’ she told the Daily Mail in May.
Comperatore said she believes that two people ‘high up’ at the federal level who were there during the Biden Administration and are still in their positions are responsible in some way for the assassination attempt.
‘I will find out what happened to him and I will continue focusing on this until the day I die.’
