Fox News has obtained federal records with new information on attempted Donald Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks. Perhaps the most interesting fact is that an anonymous donor paid for the cremation of his body afterward. The cremation has fueled speculation considerably since the shooting that injured Trump and killed an audience member at a Pennsylvania rally in 2024.
While Trump and two other injured individuals survived the shooting at the Butler, Pa., campaign rally, Corey Comperatore died, so Crooks was a murderer, even if he didn’t succeed in killing the politician he was principally aiming to hit.
🚨 BREAKING: Attempted Trump assassin Thomas Crooks had packages of gun parts delivered to him under the pseudonym 'Bob Dole,' and an anonymous donor paid for his body to be cremated, according to federal records obtained by Fox News Digital https://t.co/v1moKrwstG
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 15, 2026
Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) was the GOP nominee for president against Bill Clinton in 1996. FBI Director Kash Patel has stated that Crooks hated both political parties and simply saw Trump as one prominent representative of the American system of government which he loathed.
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Patel has insisted that his agency didn’t find any evidence that Crooks was connected to anyone else in the assassination attempt, but given the fact that the FBI did recover a remote device from Crooks’ body, and that most of the people working for the FBI are holdovers from other very corrupt administrations, speculation continued anyway.
The information on the anonymously paid cremation coincides with newly released information on Crooks that authorities received from his father. He was apparently always a quiet and socially dysfunctional child. But aside from that, there is no indication he would commit any crimes, and of course, no parent thinks his child is quiet and lonely because he will eventually turn into a murderer.
New FBI documents are revealing what Thomas Crooks' own father told investigators about the son he struggled to read long before the Butler assassination attempt. Crooks' father described him as quiet, emotionally difficult to read and sometimes destructive when he got bored. As Crooks grew older, his interest in firearms deepened, and at one point he asked his father whether he would need a background check to buy his Glock, a question his father considered "odd." But his family told investigators they never saw warning signs that suggested he was capable of what came next. On July 13, 2024, Crooks opened fire at then-candidate Trump's rally in Butler, hitting Trump in the ear, killing Corey Comperatore, and seriously wounding two other rallygoers before a Secret Service counter-sniper killed him. The FBI has previously said Crooks carefully planned the attack, but investigators have struggled to establish a definitive motive. | @foxandfriends @ToddPiro
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 15, 2026
The mainstream media has tried to make Crooks out to be a right-winger because he criticized members of both political parties, but it is notable that he only went after the most prominent Republican politician.
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