CHICAGO — Trump rally shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks used encrypted messaging accounts on a variety of platforms in Belgium, New Zealand and Germany, according to members of a select congressional committee investigating the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
Rep. Michael Walz (R-Fla.), one of 13 lawmakers selected for the House bipartisan task force, told reporters at a press conference at the Trump Hotel in Chicago on Wednesday that “offshore accounts”
“Why would a 19-year-old, a health care aide, need an encrypted platform that’s based overseas, not in the United States, where most terrorist organizations know it’s difficult for our law enforcement to penetrate,” Waltz asked.
“That’s a question I’ve had from day one,” the Republican committee member said, before changing the subject and criticizing the Secret Service and FBI for not disclosing the full extent of their investigation into the July 13 shooting at a Trump rally.
“They need to release information as they get it because this is not an isolated incident. The threats are ongoing,” Waltz argued, citing an alleged “sophisticated plot” by Pakistanis who paid purported hit men to assassinate President Trump and other U.S. officials.
The FBI is scheduled to brief task force members later Wednesday, and the Florida congressman and former Green Beret said he expects it to shed light on the “horribly flawed” security at a Trump campaign event in Pennsylvania.
Walz also said he hopes the information will shed light on who is “still in charge of security operations,” including the Secret Service agents tasked with investigating the Butler rally venue, and bring about accountability.
Both agencies are conducting their own investigations into the assassination attempt, along with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.
Crooks, 20, fired a shot at the stage minutes after President Trump, 78, took to the main stage to galvanize the crowd, hitting the former president in the right ear and killing rally-goers Corey Comperatore, 50, and severely wounding two others, David Duch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 54.
New photos taken by local police, who confronted the gunman but were too late, show Crooks sitting on a wall looking into his mobile phone, before climbing to the roof of the AGR International building and taking aim.
Butler police officers at the rally had been calling him a “suspicious person” long before that.
