Trump rally shooter was registered Republican who made $15 donation to Democratic-aligned group
The gunman who authorities say attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump was a 20-year-old registered Republican who had previously made a small contribution to a Democratic-aligned group, according to public records.
Thomas Matthew Crooks lived in the Pittsburgh suburb of Bethel Park, about 35 miles south of the Trump rally where law enforcement officials say he fired at the former president.
He graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022, according to a local media report and a video of the school’s commencement.
Crooks was registered to vote as a Republican, according to a listing in Pennsylvania’s voter database that matched his name, age, and a Bethel Park address that law enforcement was searching Saturday night and is linked to Crooks in public records. This year’s presidential election would have been the first he was old enough to vote in.
Federal Election Commission records show that a donor listed as Thomas Crooks with the same address gave $15 to a Democratic-aligned political action committee called the Progressive Turnout Project in January 2021.
When reached by CNN late Saturday night, Crooks’ father, Matthew Crooks, said he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” but would “wait until I talk to law enforcement” before speaking about his son.
The shooting: Crooks fired on Trump while perched on a nearby building rooftop outside the rally’s security perimeter, before being killed by Secret Service agents, according to law enforcement officials.
He didn’t have any identification on his body, so agents had to “run his DNA and get biometric confirmation,” Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said at a press conference Saturday night before Crooks was named.
One attendee at the rally was killed and two others critically injured.
Source: CNN
