OAN Staff Blake Wolf
12:47 PM – Wednesday, November 19, 2025
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declared on Tuesday that the American public “deserves answers” about the motive behind the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt against President Donald Trump, directly referencing a recent investigation by conservative commentator Tucker Carlson that accused the FBI of withholding critical information.
Speaking on the New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast, Leavitt expressed that the GOP administration remains frustrated by the lack of transparency surrounding Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old Pennsylvania man who opened fire at a campaign rally in Butler, grazing Trump’s ear, killing one rallygoer, and seriously injuring two others — before being killed by Secret Service counter-snipers.
“These questions are definitely deserving of answers and I understand why the public wants those answers, and I believe the president does too,” Leavitt stated. “It’s a good question, and it’s one I’d like to see the answer to — and I think all Americans would.”
Carlson released a mini-documentary on November 14th following an investigation into the shooter’s digital footprint, questioning the FBI’s assessment that Crooks had “no online footprint” while disclosing that he actually had a “detailed digital trail of violent threats, including calls for assassination and political violence.”
A digital footprint is the record of all the information you leave behind when you use the internet. This includes anything you post, search, download, or even what websites you visit.
“The FBI told us Thomas Crooks tried to kill Donald Trump last summer but somehow had no online footprint. The FBI lied, and we can prove it because we have his posts. The question is why?” Carlson wrote in an X post a day before the documentary was released.
Carlson’s investigation largely centered around an email linked to Crooks, which left several threatening public YouTube comments embracing political violence.
In one comment, posted on August 5, 2020, Crooks wrote: “The only way to fight the gov [government] 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.”
Notably, Carlson also pointed out an interaction between Crooks and an online user using the moniker “Willy_Tepes,” being linked to the Nordic Resistance Movement. The Nordic Resistance Movement is a pan-Nordic neo-Nazi movement in the Nordic countries and a political party in Sweden — designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S.
This particular user repeatedly encouraged the online account linked to Crooks to carry out his violent fantasies.
On August 4, 2020, “Willy_Tepes” wrote to Crooks, saying: “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.
In another message, Tepes wrote: “We have nothing to lose and everything to win… and the alternative, a global police state, is unacceptable. Nothing in life is simple but that is no argument against doing it :).”
In light of the recent discoveries, the FBI has faced renewed scrutiny for suggesting that Crooks largely had no online footprint and did not leave behind any information that would suggest his motive for carrying out the assassination attempt.
Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray previously testified that Crooks was not a person of interest prior to the shooting, and a congressional report on the matter did not mention any of the information released by Carlson.
FBI Director Kash Patel also previously detailed the bureau’s “thorough” investigation into Crooks, declaring that “over 480 FBI employees were involved in the Thomas Crooks investigation. Employees conducted over 1,000 interviews, addressed over 2,000 public tips, analyzed data extracted from 13 seized digital devices, reviewed nearly 500,000 digital files, collected, processed, and synchronized hundreds of hours of video footage, analyzed financial activity from 10 different accounts, and examined data associated with 25 social media or online forum accounts.”
Patel noted that the investigation’s findings had concluded that Crooks “had limited online and in-person interactions, planned and conducted the attack alone, and did not leak or share his intent to engage in the attack with anyone.”
Nevertheless, despite Patel’s assurances, Leavitt emphasized that President Trump and several administration officials, including herself, still harbored lingering concerns about the issue.
“I don’t want to speak for him on that because it is such a personal thing, but I do know that he has inquired with the Secret Service and the FBI,” she stated. “And it was earlier in the administration where he asked them, ‘I want an updated briefing on what happened. Do we know any more than when I was briefed immediately following the days after Butler?’”
“[The president] has been briefed by how own people on the matter, and whether he’s satisfied, that’s only a question he can answer. I can’t answer it for him,” Leavitt added.
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