The President's Assassin- Cover-Up of Thomas Crooks

And then the worst president in the history of our country took over. And look what happened to our country! Probably 20 million people. And you know, that's a little bit old, that chart. That chart's a couple of months old. And if you want to really see something that's sad, take a look at what happened. On July 13th, 2024, a sea of red hats and waving flags filled the rally grounds in Butler, Pennsylvania. President Donald J. Trump stepped onto the stage. The crowd erupted in cheers. Then the unthinkable happened. Shots cracked through the air. One man was killed instantly. Others fell wounded. And the president staggered back with blood running down his face. In seconds, the nation was thrown into chaos. The shooter? A 20-year-old named Thomas Matthew Crooks. A quiet, brilliant, seemingly ordinary young man who carried an AR-15 onto a rooftop and tried to change history with the pull of a trigger. Within moments, he was dead, silenced by a Secret Service sniper. But how did he get so close in the first place? And how come, over a year later, with the FBI, the Secret Service, and Congress all investigating, we still know nothing? And why is this story being buried? Let's try and find out. Hello, I'm Mike Joberg, Marine Corps veteran and filmmaker, and we will try to answer these questions on today's episode of Forgotten History. Thomas Matthew Crooks was not the profile most people imagine when they hear the word assassin. He wasn't a hardened extremist, a known radical, or a career criminal. He was just 20 years old from the small suburb of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. On paper, he looked like a success story. A high honors graduate, winner of a math and science award, and a kid with a strong SAT score who enrolled in engineering classes at a community college. Teachers described him as bright. Classmates described Crooks as quiet, awkward, and often bullied. Some said he was the type of kid who kept to himself, didn't fight back, and was an easy target. Crooks was just a dietary aide at a nursing home working in Bethel Park. He still lived with his parents, Matthew and Mary, both licensed professional social workers. You'd expect empathy, warmth, and emotional guidance from a family built on that career. But inside the Crooks household, neighbors described something else entirely, a house marked by silence, coldness, and distance. Even relatives said it was emotionless, with a father who was strict and detached. Crooks had an older sister, Katie. When she left, Thomas quietly helped her move her belongings, a rare glimpse of normal sibling interaction. But afterward, the house only grew more reclusive. The most haunting detail came at a family funeral in 2019. Relatives recall Thomas and Katie standing like statues, showing no emotion as their grandfather was laid to rest. When it was over, the family pulled away from extended relatives altogether. One cousin remembered being told bluntly, you'll never see us again. This is the paradox at the heart of the Crooks story. His family were trained to help strangers through grief and trauma, yet their own home was defined by repression and silence. And inside that silence grew a brilliant, lonely young man who climbed a rooftop with a rifle and tried to assassinate the President of the United States. On July 13th, 2024, in Boulder, Pennsylvania, thousands of supporters gathered for a campaign rally with President Trump. But long before the President walked out, the threat had already been spotted. Crooks first launched the drone near the rally grounds. Local police noted it, but let it go. At 4.26 p.m., a Pennsylvania State Police countersniper stationed near the AGR warehouse saw Crooks lingering suspiciously. He reported it through the channels, but no one pressed the alarm. By 5.14 p.m., Crooks was photographed using a rangefinder near the security perimeter. The image was circulated among the Pennsylvania State Police, Officers began searching for him, but Crooks slipped away into a wooded area. At 5.52 p.m., Secret Service agents assigned to a rooftop security spotted him on top of the AGR warehouse. Local police tried to climb up to confront him, but Crooks pointed his rifle in their direction, forcing them back. Why wasn't Crooks taken out by snipers at this point? Well, according to congressional testimony, the Secret Service had to figure out if the person was seen as armed or hostile before taking action, and at times, Crooks disappeared behind the sloped roofline, obstructing the sniper's view. By 6.06 p.m., Crooks had maneuvered across the connected rooftops into a clear firing position overlooking the rally stage. Minutes later, at 6.11 p.m., he opened fire. He's a couple of months old, and if you want to really see something that's said, take a look at what happened. The first bullet grazed President Trump's ear. A second killed Firefighter Corey Compertore as he shielded his family. Two more men were critically wounded as chaos ripped through the crowd. Only then did a Secret Service counter-sniper fire back, killing Crooks instantly. The rooftop was silent, but the failure was deafening because Crooks had been flagged by nearly every agency on site, the local police, state police, federal agents, and yet still managed to pull the trigger on the President of the United States. In the hours after the shooting, FBI agents warmed the Crooks' family home in Bethel Park. What they found inside turned the mystery darker. Crooks' bedroom wasn't just a student's space. It was a workshop for destruction. Agents discovered explosives, bomb-making chemicals, and improvised devices. He had ordered volatile compounds online, stockpiled gear, and experimented in private. This wasn't random. It was planned. But the most compelling evidence came from his electronics. Investigators seized multiple cell phones, a laptop, USB drives, and hard drives. Within 40 minutes of the attack, the FBI had already decrypted his primary phone. What they uncovered were thousands of images and searches, everything from live screenshots of the rally grounds minutes before the shooting to endless queries about political figures, assassinations, mass shooters, and even mental health. They found encrypted messaging apps tied to servers overseas, apps that investigators were still trying to penetrate. But even with that digital trail, Crooks left no manifesto, no letter, no video, no single statement of motive. Then came the rumors. Whispers online claimed he had offshore bank accounts in Germany, Belgium, even New Zealand. Congressional members repeated it. Headlines amplified it. But when pressed, the FBI confirmed there was no evidence of foreign accounts at all. The story was smoke, not fire. Yet it clouded the truth even further. And through it all, his parents remained silent. Matthew and Mary Crooks spoke privately to the FBI, but they never gave public statements. They were never subpoenaed to testify before Congress. No explanation, no expression of grief, not a word. For a family built on the profession of helping people open up, the silence had been deafening. As the dust settled in Butler, the focus shifted from Crooks to the people who were supposed to stop him. And that's where the story turns from tragedy to scandal. From the very beginning, every agency involved had seen Crooks. Local police flagged him after drone activity. Pennsylvania State Police spotted him near the warehouse. Butler County officers photographed him with a rangefinder. The Secret Service's Pittsburgh field office passed those images around. Even Secret Service rooftop agents had eyes on him 20 minutes before he fired. Yet the system broke down. Protocol requires every elevated position overlooking the protectee to be secured hours before an event. That rooftop should never have been left open. Instead, the excuse offered later was that it was too steep to climb safely. So they left the president exposed. That explanation would quickly collapse later when members of Congress physically walked the roof themselves during site visits and reported no such danger, proving it could and should have been cleared. And when officers finally did approach, Crooks pointed his rifle at them, forcing them to retreat. He held the high ground. And five minutes later, rather than evacuating the president, Crooks was given the opportunity to fire on him. The aftermath was as predictable as it was infuriating. Agencies immediately began pointing fingers. Local police blamed the Secret Service. State police said they had warned everyone. The Secret Service insisted communication failures, not negligence, caused the breach. The FBI kept quiet, claiming the investigation was ongoing. The scandal grew so intense that just days later, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheeto resigned under fire. Members of Congress on both sides called her testimony evasive, even dishonest. She admitted the rooftop had been identified as a threat, admitted agents had seen Crooks up there, and admitted protocol was ignored. But she had no answers for why. This wasn't just a failure of one man with a rifle. It was a failure of every layer of protection that should have stood between him and the president. And the silence, the excuses, and the resignations only made the cover-up feel bigger. Over a year later, we're told to believe Crooks was just another lone gunman. A quiet nursing home aide who stockpiled bombs, carried multiple phones, hid behind encrypted apps, slipped past every layer of security, and nearly killed the president of the United States. His parents have disappeared into silence. The FBI cracked his phones, seized his devices, raided his home, and yet the official line is still, we don't know. So what are we missing? Was Crooks simply a broken man, or was he programmed? Some have asked if this was a modern-day MKUltra, the kind of mind-bending experiment America swore it had abandoned decades ago. And Crooks may have not been alone. Just two months later, another would-be assassin, Ryan Wesley Ruth, was caught hiding in the bushes at a Florida golf course, armed and waiting for the president to arrive. Two men, two attempts in the span of weeks. Coincidence? Or the signature of something darker? Two pawns moved on the board by the same hidden hand. Or was it political? Didn't Democrats in the swamp fear Donald Trump so much they would rather see him dead than risking him return to power? Because here's the truth. Every agency on the ground saw Crooks before he pulled that trigger. Every safeguard failed. And when it came for answers, all we got was silence, excuses, and the resignation of the Secret Service Director. Maybe Crooks was just one more loner who snapped. Or maybe he was something else. A pawn, a patsy, or a weapon placed exactly where he was meant to be. And that's the real cover-up. Not just what happened on July 13, 2024, but why, in the most surveilled country on Earth, we still know nothing. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you for watching Forgotten History. Please like, share, and subscribe. If you have any comments or show ideas, we'd love to hear from you. Thanks again.