Tucker Carlson Accuses FBI of Lying About Butler Shooter Thomas Crooks, Demands Answers

On Thursday, Tucker Carlson posted a short message on X with a large claim attached: the FBI had lied about Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old who tried to kill Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024. He said he had proof. The bureau's newly launched "rapid response" account answered quickly, saying that this FBI has never said Crooks had no online footprint, and adding the word "ever."

Carlson followed on Friday morning with a 34-minute video on X. In it he argued that what the FBI has shared about Crooks, under both the Biden and Trump administrations, has been incomplete and misleading. "That day, Thomas Crooks came within a quarter-inch of destroying this country," he said, and a year and a half later, in his words, we still know almost nothing about the man or his motive. He said the reason is that the FBI, even the current one, does not want the public to know.

The facts of the shooting itself are not in dispute. Crooks, a registered Republican, fired at Trump from a nearby rooftop on July 13, 2024, and was killed by Secret Service agents. A rally attendee died, and a bullet grazed Trump's ear.

Much of the video rests on Crooks' own public posts and other online activity, which Carlson said the FBI has hidden from the public. According to Carlson, comments Crooks made before 2020 incited violence, used racist and antisemitic language, and praised Trump. During COVID, he said, the tone changed: Crooks grew more critical of Trump and of conservative media, which Carlson read as disillusionment with right-wing political leaders. That, he argued, contradicts the FBI's early public line that Crooks' political motives were "unclear."

Carlson also criticized the decision to cremate Crooks' body just ten days after the attempt. He noted that this fell on the same day the House Homeland Security and Oversight Committees began their investigations into the shooting. Cremation, he said, made it impossible for investigators outside the FBI to verify the coroner's and autopsy reports.

He then turned to Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, Trump's FBI appointees, and to their silence on the details of the case. He played clips of them declining to discuss specifics and pointing to a trial. Crooks died at the scene, so no trial exists. "Why is the FBI telling us that they'll release this information, quote, 'after the trial,' when there is no trial?" Carlson asked. Patel and Bongino have both defended how the FBI and Secret Service responded, and Patel has said they followed proper protocol.

The Daily Beast frames the video as unusual, a rare break by Carlson with the current administration's handling of a major national security incident. Carlson closed with a challenge: if the FBI's account is right and Crooks was a lone actor who gave no sign of what he would do, then nothing prevents the bureau from handing the facts to Congress. "If there's nothing there," he said, "these should be very easy questions to answer."

What to watch now is whether Congress takes up that request, particularly on the cremation and the withheld details, as the House committees' work continues.