OAN Staff Blake Wolf
9:07 AM – Sunday, November 23, 2025
The FBI concluded that Thomas Matthew Crooks carried out his assassination attempt against President Donald Trump last year alone and without a motive, bringing the investigation to a close.
In an interview with Fox News, FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino explained the findings in the case shortly after conservative commentator Tucker Carlson released a documentary on his own investigation, which suggested foreign influence.
“We have reviewed this case over and over — looked into every nugget,” Bongino stated. “We have spoken to the families, the president — there is no cover-up here. There is no motive for it, there is no reason for it.”
Crooks was shot and killed on July 23, 2024, by Secret Service agents after he snuck up onto the roof of a rally President Trump was speaking at undetected, grazing the president’s ear while killing 50-year-old Corey Comperatore, a volunteer firefighter and father of two.
“Dan and I have been on this since we got here eight months ago. We not only had to maintain the chain of command to President Trump, but we had to remind the world that President Trump was the victim – one of the four victims – on that day,” Patel stated. “There are victims’ rights rules that apply to him, and they don’t get erased because he is the president.”
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“We fully briefed the president, as a victim of this case, at the White House, providing him with all of the details of our investigation, and the president was satisfied with the results and where we left it,” he continued.
A separate FBI official directly involved in the Butler, Pennsylvania, investigation also spoke with Fox News, detailing the investigation into Crooks’s online accounts and potential foreign influence.
The official noted that the FBI looked into “35 accounts linked to Crooks, including social media, bank and other online accounts.”
“The FBI has been able to access all of the accounts,” the official stated. “There has been reporting to inappropriately and incorrectly state that there was encryption that the FBI was not able to get into – that is not true. We have been able to get into every single account.”
“The FBI was able to fully access those accounts within days of the attack,” the official continued. “Additionally, the FBI engaged with foreign partners who also provided all of the content of those email accounts.”
“When there was a lead about an overseas connection — the two instances where we became aware of the foreign accounts — the FBI reached out to foreign governments,” the official noted. “There is no foreign connection in this case. There is no individual that is outside U.S. borders or inside U.S. borders that had any role in directing him, inspiring him, or assisting him in any way — and that includes foreign governments.”
The announcement follows a disclosure by Carlson’s investigation on November 14th, which centered on Crooks’s online activity and interaction with a user known as “Willy_Tepes,” who was linked to the Nordic Resistance Movement, a group designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.
According to Carlson’s investigation, Crooks issued several public YouTube comments calling for political violence, which was encouraged by the “Willy_Tepes” user.
“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 etc. and try to assassinate them,” Crooks wrote in an August 5, 2020, YouTube comment.
In response to one of Crooks’s comments, the “Willy_Tepes” user wrote, “If a gun and a badge is all that is needed, then authority obviously comes from the barrel of a gun. We have more guns than they do ;).”
“There is no way we can avoid a war at this point, so you just better get used to the idea,” he added.
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