Donald Trump Pennsylvania rally shooting

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      Social media account possibly linked to Trump shooter under FBI scrutiny

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      Though they have not pinpointed a motive behind Donald Trump’s failed assassination attempt, investigators are examining a social media account with antisemitic and anti-immigrant posts that they suspect might be connected to the former US president’s would-be killer, according to the FBI deputy director, Paul Abbate.Abbate on Tuesday appeared alongside the acting US Secret Service director, Ronald Rowe Jr, before a US Senate panel and said: “In about the 2019, 2020 timeframe, there were over 700 comments posted from this account. Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature.”While Abbate made clear that the account in question is believed to be associated with 20-year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks, he did not specifying which social media platform it was on.“While the investigative team is still working to verify this account to determine if it did in fact belong to the shooter, we believe it important to share and note it today, particularly given the general absence of other information to date from social media and other sources of information that reflect on the shooter’s potential motive and mindset,” he continued.Trump, who has agreed to participate in a victim interview with the FBI regarding his assassination attempt, has routinely espoused antisemitic and anti-immigration rhetoric.The Anti-Defamation League chief, Jonathan Greenblatt, and the White House both condemned him in 2021 and this year for, respectively, suggesting that Jewish people control Congress and the media and claiming that pro-Democratic Jews “hate Israel” as well as “hate their religion”.Trump additionally has drawn criticism for his anti-immigration comments, including his accusation that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.Meanwhile, Rowe testified on Tuesday that he had visited and “laid in a prone position” on the roof of the warehouse complex in Butler county, Pennsylvania, from where Crooks fired at Trump during a political rally.“What I saw made me ashamed,” Rowe Jr said. “As a career law enforcement officer, and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.“To prevent similar lapses from occurring in the future, I directed our personnel to ensure every event-site security plan is thoroughly vetted by multiple experienced supervisors before it is implemented.”He also said that he directed the expansion of drones at protective sites to help detect threats on roofs and other elevated areas.During his testimony, Rowe further revealed that the Secret Service had started providing protection to six additional high-profile figures, including Trump’s November presidential election running mate, JD Vance, and his family, as well as the independent White House candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr.“I have heard your calls for accountability, and I take them very seriously,” said Rowe, who stepped into his role after Kimberley Cheatle resigned as Secret Service director 10 days after the assassination attempt. “Given the magnitude of this failure, the Secret Service’s office of professional responsibility is reviewing the actions and decision making of Secret Service personnel in the lead-up to, and on the day of, the attack.“If this investigation reveals that Secret Service employees violated agency protocols, those employees will be held accountable to our disciplinary process.”Abbate and Rowe’s testimonies follow a recent New York Times report that found that a Pennsylvania officer had spotted Crooks 90 minutes before he opened fire – 30 minutes earlier than officials had previously said.Meanwhile, in an interview with ABC on Sunday, the lead sharpshooter on a local police department’s special tactical team assigned to protect the president said that he and his colleagues were supposed to get an in-person briefing with Secret Service agents before the rally. But sharpshooter Jason Woods said “that never happened”.The ensuing shooting not only injured one of Trump’s ears – it also killed one rally-goer while wounding two others. More

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      Pennsylvania officer spotted Trump shooter 90 minutes before open fire – report

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      Donald Trump has agreed to participate in a victim interview with the FBI regarding his attempted assassination earlier this month, the bureau told reporters on Monday.This comes as authorities continue their investigations into the 13 July shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, where 20-year-old Thomas Matthews Crooks fired eight shots from an assault rifle which hit and injured the former president, killed a rally attendee and injured several others. Crooks was killed by government snipers moments after the shooting began.On Sunday, new details around the shooting emerged from text messages between local security units, obtained by the Republican senator Chuck Grassley and published and verified by the New York Times, including that local law enforcement had spotted the shooter 30 minutes earlier than what officials had previously said.The published text messages show that a local countersniper first noticed a man, who was later identified as Crooks, loitering in the area where the countersnipers were set up more than 90 minutes before the shooting occurred.The Times reported that at 4.26pm, the countersniper alerted his colleagues of Crooks, and that he had parked near their vehicles and was sitting on a picnic table near the warehouse, where several countersnipers were, outside the fenced area of the grounds where Trump would be appearing later.The countersniper told his colleagues that Crooks knew they were there and saw him leaving with his rifle.One of the countersnipers took pictures of Crooks and the photos were shared in a group chat and another text went out among the local officers at 5.38pm, saying they should inform the Secret Service, per the New York Times.“Kid learning around building we are in. AGR I believe it is. I did see him with a range finder looking towards stage. FYI. If you wanna notify SS snipers to look out. I lost sight of him,” read one of the texts, accompanied by photos of Crooks.One of the two remaining countersnipers reportedly ran out of the building attempting to keep eyes on Crooks until other law enforcement arrived, per Butler County officials, but Crooks ran off, taking a backpack with him.At 6pm, one officer in the group texts guessed that Crooks was moving toward the back of the warehouse complex and away from the event, the Times reported. But instead, Crooks climbed on to a building in the complex closest to the stage.At 6.11pm, Crooks began firing, grazing Trump’s ear, killing a rally-goer and injuring several others. Moments later, Crooks was shot and killed on the roof of a warehouse that was connected to the one the countersnipers were stationed in.The newly released messages also suggest that the shooter was often one step ahead of security forces and law enforcement.The New York Times reported Crooks had scoped out the rally site a day before the Secret Service did on 8 July. The report also states the Secret Service excluded the entire warehouse complex from its inner security perimeter. This meant that on the day of the rally, Crooks was able to get to the building without passing through a security screening.After the Secret Service walk through on 8 July, the Times reported that the agency had asked local agencies to provide more help, and that text messages showed that Beaver county struggled to find enough volunteers to cover the 12-hour shift.Questions continue to be asked about the apparent failures in communication between different law enforcement agencies and how someone was able to get to close to assassinating Trump.Local police officers on a special tactical team, who were assigned to help protect Trump on 13 July, have also said they had no contact with Secret Service agents before the gunman opened fire.“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived and that never happened,” Jason Woods, lead sharpshooter on the Swat team in Beaver county, Pennsylvania, told ABC News over the weekend.The Secret Service has not commented directly on the remarks by Woods. But an agency spokesperson, Anthony Guglielmi, has said the Secret Service “is committed to better understanding what happened before, during and after the assassination attempt of former president Trump to ensure that never happens again”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSeparately, members of Trump’s Secret Service detail and his top advisers have questioned why they were not told that local police assigned to guard the outer perimeter of the fairgrounds had spotted a suspicious person who turned out to be the would-be assassin.Last week, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, testified to the House judiciary committee that the shooter appeared to have used a drone at the rally location about two hours before the attack, to scope out an area about 200 yards (182m) from the stage where Trump was scheduled to speak.The drone was found in the gunman’s car, along with two explosive devices. According to the New York Times report, the Secret Service did not seek permission to use a drone for the rally.Wray also testified that the AR-style rifle used in the attack may have had a collapsible stock, making it easier to conceal, and that in the days leading up to the shooting, Crooks had searched online for information about the 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy.Despite the new information about the shooter’s focus on the Kennedy assassination, Wray said that the FBI had yet to find any clear indication of Crooks’ motivations or ideology.“It does appear he was interested in public figures more broadly,” he said.According to the New York Times, Crooks had started searching online for information on well-known figures, including Wray, US attorney general Merrick B Garland, Joe Biden and Trump, and he had also looked up “major depressive disorder”.In the immediate days after the shooting, Trump initially called for unity, writing on Truth Social that “in this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win.”Delegates at the Republican National Convention also made much of how Trump’s campaign would pivot to a more message less divisiveness. But although Trump’s keynote speech at the convention began with him saying all Americans are ‘bound together by a single fate’, he soon reverted to attacking Democrats over the numerous criminal convictions he is facing and falsely accused the party of cheating in the 2020 election.More recently, on Saturday, Trump told supporters in a speech in Minnesota that the shooting may have made him “worse”.“I want to be nice,” Trump said. “They all say, ‘I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him.’”“No, I haven’t changed”, he continued. “Maybe I’ve gotten worse, actually. Because I get angry at the incompetence that I witness every single day”. More

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      Swat team says it had no contact with Secret Service before Trump rally shooting

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      Local police officers on a special tactical team who were assigned to help protect Donald Trump on the day the former president was wounded during a 13 July assassination attempt in Butler county, Pennsylvania, have said they had no contact with Secret Service agents before the gunman opened fire.“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened,” Jason Woods, lead sharpshooter on the Swat team in nearby Beaver county, Pennsylvania, told ABC News.Woods said that initial failure in planning and communications was likely the start of errors that would lead to the 20-year-old gunman killing one spectator, injuring two others and – according to the FBI – striking the tip of one of Trump’s ears.“I think that was probably a pivotal point, where I started thinking things were wrong because it never happened,” Woods told the outlet. “We had no communication.”Separately, members of Trump’s Secret Service detail and his top advisers have questioned why they were not told that local police assigned to guard the outer perimeter of the fairgrounds on 13 July had spotted a suspicious person who turned out to be the would-be assassin.According to the Washington Post, Trump’s top advisers were in a large white tent behind the stage where the former president was speaking at the time of the shooting. They thought the sounds of shots were fireworks and later could not understand why they had not been alerted of the suspicious person before Trump took the stage.“Nobody mentioned it. Nobody said there was a problem,” Trump told Fox News recently. “They could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes,’ something. Nobody said – I think that was a mistake.”According to Woods, the first communication between the Beaver Swat team and the Secret Service was “not until after the shooting”.By then, Woods added, “it was too late”.Local counter-snipers had seen Thomas Matthew Crooks loitering near the buildings that would later become his perch 20 to 25 minutes before he opened fire. They had sent a photograph to a command center staffed by state troopers and Secret Service agents, according to testimony by the head of the Pennsylvania state police.Apparent failures in communication between different law enforcement agencies are now the subject of three separate investigations. After Secret Service director Kimberley Cheatle resigned from her post on 23 July, the FBI confirmed that Trump had been struck by a bullet – whether whole or fragmented.The FBI director Christopher Wray has also said that would-be assassin Crooks, who does not appear to have any overriding ideological motive for the attempt on Trump’s life, had searched online for the distance that Lee Harvey Oswald was from John F Kennedy when shot the president to death in November 1963.As agencies continue passing blame on for the shooting, Trump has said he plans to return to Butler for “FOR A BIG AND BEAUTIFUL RALLY” despite advice from the presidential protection service that he avoid holding outdoor rallies.Trump has also dismissed criticism that hiring at the Secret Service, and the quality of the protection it provides, was negatively affected by diversity programs – something that had become a talking point among some Republicans.At a rally in Minnesota on Saturday, he defended a “brave” female Secret Service agent who “shielded” him during the attempted assassination. He praised the agent and said she “wanted to take a bullet”.“She was shielding me with everything she could and she got criticized by the fake news because she wasn’t tall enough,” he said. “She was so brave, she was shielding me with everything, she wanted to take a bullet.”The Secret Service had not commented directly on the comments by Woods. But agency spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi has said the Secret Service “is committed to better understanding what happened before, during, and after the assassination attempt of former President Trump to ensure that never happens again”. More

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      FBI director questions whether Trump was hit by bullet or shrapnel in shooting

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      Christopher Wray, the FBI director, has raised questions about whether Donald Trump was actually shot by a bullet during the assassination attempt against the former president earlier this month or whether he was instead struck by shrapnel.During a hearing on Wednesday in Washington, before the House judiciary committee, Wray told lawmakers that it was not clear what precisely caused the injury to Trump’s ear during the shooting at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, earlier this month.The burst of gunfire from a shooter on a roof with a sightline to the stage and crowd killed one rally-goer and left others wounded.“There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray testified. “As I sit here right now, I don’t know whether that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, could have also landed somewhere else.”Shortly after the shooting, Trump said in a statement on Truth Social that he had been shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of his right ear.“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” the former president wrote. “Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening.”After the shooting, Trump released a memo about his recovery from Ronny Jackson, the former White House doctor and current Republican representative, but the former president has not allowed the medical professionals who treated him to talk publicly about his condition.On Thursday, Jackson responded to Wray’s testimony in a post on X, calling Wray’s comments to lawmakers “absolutely irresponsible” and “politically motivated” against Trump.“What little credibility he may have left is GONE after recklessly suggesting Trump might not have been hit from a bullet,” Jackson said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It was a bullet,” he added. “I’ve seen the wound!”Wray also testified to lawmakers on Wednesday that the shooter who had attempted to assassinate Trump, and was then shot dead himself by government snipers, had searched online for information about the 1963 assassination of former president John F Kennedy. More

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      House to form taskforce to investigate Trump assassination attempt

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      The House voted on Wednesday to form a taskforce to investigate the security failures surrounding the assassination attempt against Donald Trump earlier this month.The vote underscores the bipartisan outrage over the shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump came within inches of losing his life. One rally-goer was killed and two others severely injured. Lawmakers have responded quickly with hearings and widespread calls for accountability.The legislation passed by a vote of 416-0.The taskforce will be composed of 13 members and is expected to include seven Republicans and six Democrats. It will be tasked with determining what went wrong on the day of the attempted assassination and will make recommendations to prevent future security lapses. It will issue a final report before 13 December and has the authority to issue subpoenas.The bill is sponsored by Republican congressman Mike Kelly, whose home town of Butler was the site of the shooting. Kelly was at the rally with his wife and other family members.“I can tell you that my community is grieving,” Kelly said. “They are shocked by what happened in our backyard. The people of Butler and the people of the United States deserve answers.”He said he was concerned when the site of the rally was picked because he thought it would be “a difficult place to have a rally of that size.” He called the taskforce a chance to build trust with Americans that lawmakers can work together to tackle a crisis.House committees have already held three hearings focusing on the shooting. The Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned Tuesday, one day after she appeared before a congressional committee and was berated for hours by Democrats and Republicans for the security failures.She called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades, but she angered lawmakers by failing to answer specific questions about the investigation.Democrats also voiced support for the taskforce, saying what happened in Butler was a despicable attack that never should have happened.“We need to know what happened. We need to get to the truth. We need to prevent this from ever, ever happening again,” said Congressman Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat. More

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      Secret Service chief berated in House hearing after Trump rally shooting

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      Lawmakers grilled the director of the US Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, during a contentious House hearing on Monday, where members of both parties called for her resignation in the wake of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump earlier this month.In her opening statement, Cheatle acknowledged the Secret Service had “failed” on 13 July, when a 20-year-old gunman was able to take a clear shot at the former president from a rooftop near Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.Trump survived but sustained an injury to his ear, and one rally attendee, former fire chief Corey Comperatore, was killed in the attack. Two others were injured.“As the director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security lapse of our agency,” Cheatle told the House oversight committee. “We are fully cooperating with ongoing investigations. We must learn what happened, and I will move heaven and earth to ensure that an incident like July 13th does not happen again.”In a particularly damning moment, Cheatle acknowledged that Secret Service agents were informed of a suspicious individual at the Trump rally “somewhere between two and five times” before the gunman opened fire.The Republican chair of the committee, James Comer, mourned the assassination attempt as “a horrifying moment in American history” and demanded that Cheatle offer her resignation.“While we give overwhelming thanks to the individual Secret Service agents who did their jobs under immense pressure, this tragedy was preventable,” Comer said. “It is my firm belief, Director Cheatle, that you should resign.”Lawmakers repeatedly pressed Cheatle on how such a galling security lapse could have occurred, but the director dodged many of their questions, reminding members that the investigation of the shooting was still in its earliest stages. When Cheatle again told Comer that she could not specify how many Secret Service agents were assigned to Trump on the day of the shooting, the congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene interjected: “Why are you here?”Cheatle did deny allegations that the Secret Service rejected the Trump campaign’s demands for additional security on 13 July, telling lawmakers: “The assets that were requested for that day were given.”But Cheatle became more vague when the Republican congressman Jim Jordan pressed her on whether the Secret Service had denied past requests for additional security at Trump campaign events.“It looks like you won’t answer some pretty basic questions,” Jordan said. “And you cut corners when it came to protecting one of the most important individuals, one of the most well-known individuals on the planet.”Some Republicans representatives grew openly combative as they questioned Cheatle, with Nancy Mace telling the director: “You’re full of shit today.”Democratic members joined in on the criticism, and at least two of them, Jamie Raskin and Ro Khanna, echoed Republicans’ calls for Cheatle’s resignation. Khanna compared the situation to the fallout after an assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan in 1981.The then Secret Service director, Stuart Knight. stepped down in the months after the Reagan shooting.“Do you really believe that the majority of this country has confidence in you right now?” Khanna asked.Cheatle replied: “I believe that the country deserves answers, and I am committed to finding those answers and providing those answers.”Asked when more answers might be available, Cheatle said the agency hoped to conclude its internal investigation in 60 days, a timeline that sparked censure from committee members.“The notion of a report coming out in 60 days when the threat environment is so high in the United States, irrespective of party, is not acceptable,” said the progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “This is not theater. This is not about jockeying. This is about the safety of some of the most highly targeted and valued targets – internationally and domestically – in the United States of America.”Raskin, the Democratic ranking member of the oversight committee, agreed with calls for accountability at the Secret Service while adding that lawmakers must reckon with the broader problem of gun violence in the US. He noted that the Trump campaign rally attack was not even the deadliest shooting on 13 July, as four people were killed later that day after a gunman opened fire at an Alabama night club.“What happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, was a double failure: the failure by the Secret Service to properly protect Donald Trump and the failure of Congress to properly protect our people from criminal gun violence,” Raskin said. “We must, therefore, also ask hard questions about whether our laws are making it too easy for potential assassins and criminals to obtain firearms generally and AR-15 assault weapons specifically.”With Republicans in control of the House, it seems unlikely that a gun safety bill will pass Congress anytime soon. And after Cheatle’s performance on Monday, it seems even less likely that she will be able to hold on to her job for much longer. More

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      Which Home Alone child star should everyone blame if Trump is re-elected? | Stewart Lee

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      The assassination attempt on Donald Trump last weekend is a tragedy; a tragedy for democracy, a tragedy for America and, above all, a tragedy for the whole world, because it means Donald Trump will be re-elected. And it is a tragedy for Donald Trump, who, whatever one thinks of his politics or his personality, is still a living creature, and as such, like Eamonn Holmes, is capable of suffering.Last week, I had a standup special, Basic Lee, on Sky Comedy, which even came as a surprise to me. I wish someone had shot me last weekend. The resulting publicity might have driven some traffic towards my work. Here’s hoping I’m at least wounded by a gunman while it’s still available to view on the Now streaming service. (Did you see what I did there?)When the free world’s last line of defence against a Trump MacTatorship ™ ® is Joe Biden, we are already doomed. I’m quitting quitting drinking. Stubborn Biden is too selfish to become the focus of a popularity elevating tragedy, preferring instead to let the world burn while he clings to his candidacy, a limpet in linen trousers, sitting there smiling, like something futile made of felt you’d win at a travelling fair.The now inevitable re-election of demagogue Donald, and the implementation of the puritanical Project 2025 agenda by Oliver Dowden’s Heritage Foundation friends, makes a Handmaid’s Tale-style Christian fascist America a certainty, ending not only the shared enlightenment values of the postwar western world, but also the Fifty Shades of Grey women’s erotica franchise. And Trump’s fandom for fossil fuels will hasten the inevitable extinction of all life on Earth, the only positive being that he may yet see his Scottish golf courses reclaimed by rising seas.American liberals and intellectuals with means and money, like Kacey Musgraves and the singer from Tool, must already be considering escape options as the nation begins its descent into the hell of an evangelical religious dictatorship. Trump’s presidency will, however, strengthen ties between Trump and the Clacton constituency of his right-hand man Nigel Farage, which is poised to be bulldozed and made into a private golf course-cum-leisure facility-cum-seaside stolen document storage unit.I’m joking, of course. But the attempted assassination of Trump and its butterfly flap consequences are no joke. Last Saturday, a piece of Trump’s ear was shot away by a gunman. Trump, with a presence of mind Biden might have benefited from when trying to remember the name of the president of Ukraine, struggled to his feet and, in a spirit of peace and reconciliation, shouted: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”, energising supporters who three years ago forced entry to the Capitol aiming to lynch Mike Pence, the Hartlepool monkey of American politics.But what if it had been Trump himself who had been shot away, and only Trump’s ear fragment had been saved by security? Could Trump’s meat ear rim itself have been persuaded to run for the presidency? Could Trump’s ear flesh fragment have beaten Biden in a democratic election? Almost certainly. And would an America governed by a small severed slice of Trump’s ear have offered the world a more secure future than an America governed by Trump, or an America governed by Biden? Again, the answer, sadly, is a resounding yes.The American Christian right believes that Trump, despite his obvious moral corruption, is a massive tool of a God bent on shaping America into their own twisted theocracy. Evangelical Christian America believes their selectively myopic deity actually intervened to save Trump from the gunman, while leaving a heroic volunteer firefighter to take the bullet. Blessed are the firefighters. But how much more useful to this morally equivocating God is a simple severed ear, unencumbered by accusations that it tried to overturn an election, or paid an adult film star hush money, or stole classified documents, or sexually assaulted a woman in a department store. The ear would be innocent and pure and good, like Jesus, or the unborn child.And if an ear had, as Trump did, repeatedly socialised with the unsavoury sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his young friends, it is unlikely it would have been able to do anything inappropriate, due to its being an ear. And should the ear be found to have lost the public trust, it could, due to its inability to defend itself or argue its case, be easily dispensed with by the Republicans without too much fuss. Ear today, gone tomorrow.Imagining different ways the Trump shooting might have played out raises deep ethical questions. Philosophers call this concept “killing baby Hitler”. Would it be ethical for someone to travel back from the future and kill Hitler in his cot in order to prevent the second world war? And would it be ethical to travel back in time and carry out an attack on Trump that ensured future government by Trump’s ear alone? Of course not. And the idea of replacing Trump himself with Trump’s own ear is, at this stage, neither ear nor there.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRather than risking the future on the policymaking of Trump’s unpredictable ear, the precise political leanings of which remain ill-defined at best, would it be better to go further back in time and stop the rise of Trump sooner? Perhaps, when he encountered Trump in Home Alone 2, Macaulay Culkin could have comforted the troubled billionaire with the same innocent friendship he gave to the sad dancer Michael Jackson, on the proviso that Trump abandon political ambition. But Macaulay Culkin didn’t do that. And now we all suffer for his selfishness. Macaulay Culkin has blood on his astonished infant face. Stewart Lee’s Basic Lee is on the streaming service Now. He is previewing 40 minutes of new material in Stewart Lee Introduces Legends of Indie at the Lexington, London, in August with Connie Planque (12), Swansea Sound (13) and David Lance Callahan (14)

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