Rep. Mike Walz said he is not satisfied with the FBI and Secret Service’s repeated assertions that attempted assassin of President Donald Trump, Thomas Matthew Crooks, acted alone.
Walz told The Washington Post on Wednesday that he doesn’t believe authorities have unearthed enough information to determine for certain that no one worked with others in planning and carrying out last month’s mass shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I’ve heard both the Secret Service and the FBI say different things that everything they’ve seen indicates he acted alone and that they haven’t found any co-conspirators yet,” Rep. Waltz (R-Fla.) told The Washington Post in an exclusive interview following an FBI briefing on Wednesday.
“It’s incredible. I want to know where the evidence is… How did they learn to make an IED? How did they learn to place a remote detonator? How did they conduct a search and not detonate it? There are still so many questions,” said Waltz, who serves on the House Select Committee investigating the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump.
Waltz’s tough questions come just as the FBI is unraveling the mystery of Crooks’ shadowy cyber operations, which include suspicious accounts on communications platforms based overseas.
The agency told lawmakers on Wednesday that investigators had gained access to two of three encrypted overseas online accounts believed to be operated by criminals.
Officials explained that the accounts were on encrypted messaging and social media services.
What we know about the attempted assassination of President Trump
- 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks has been identified as the shooter who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
- Crooks was shot and killed by a Secret Service agent.
- The gunman grazed President Trump’s ear, killed a 50-year-old former fire chief and wounded two other people at the rally.
- Investigators detailed Crooks’ search history to lawmakers, revealing that he sought out dates for speeches by President Trump and the Democratic National Convention.
- FBI officials said the criminal’s search history also revealed a broad interest in famous people and celebrities, regardless of political affiliation.
- “I was supposed to be dead,” Trump told The Washington Post exclusively at the rally, describing how he survived the “surreal” assassination attempt.
- Prominent politicians, including President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, addressed the nation about the shooting, calling it a “heinous, horrific and despicable act.”
However, the number and content of the messages were not disclosed to the 13-member House of Representatives committee.
As the mystery surrounding the assassination attempt deepens, the FBI has said some of the roughly 700 social media messages containing anti-Semitic posts it disclosed to Congress last month may have been written by older family members, a source familiar with the FBI briefings told The Washington Post.
It has not been revealed where exactly those 700 messages were posted.
“Some of the comments were years old,” the source said. “They didn’t think the language was consistent with what would be expected of a 15- or 16-year-old boy, so there was some discussion that they could have been made by his father or a mutual friend.” [account].”
The slow pace of the investigation has frustrated lawmakers who say it’s important to quickly determine whether Crooks had accomplices, though the FBI has said it doesn’t believe the Pennsylvania shooting is related to any suspected Iranian plot to assassinate Trump.
“They made this point very forcefully and went out of their way to say they could find no evidence, no connection, between the recently unsealed Iran plot indictment and the assassination attempt,” Waltz said.
The FBI also does not yet have clear clues about Crooks’ motive in the shooting, which shot the former president in the ear, killed rally-goers Corey Comperatore, 50, and severely injured two others, David Duch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 54.
“This is not an isolated incident that is going to take years to unravel,” Waltz said. “It’s an ongoing threat right now, so I’m frustrated by how slowly and how little we’re learning.”
The FBI declined to comment when contacted by The Washington Post.
