GOP lawmakers blindsided by new revelations about Trump Butler shooter: ‘Awfully strange’

Republican lawmakers were apparently blindsided this week by new documents aboutThomas Matthew Crooks,the 20-year-old who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump and was subsequently shot dead.

Crooks opened fire on Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., in July 2024.A bullet grazed the then-candidate’s ear, while a rally attendee was killed as he attempted to shield his family.

“During our piece that we were working on, none of the federal agencies were working with us at all.They were going to work on their own, and they told us, ‘We’re going to do ours, and then we’ll get back to you.’ So this is two years later.Nobody’s gotten back to us,” Rep.Mike Kelly, R-Pa. 

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“That’s under the former administration.So everything that’s under the executive branch at that time, under the Biden administration, we had no access to information at that time,” he said.

Kelly also said the House task force’s Dec.10, 2024, report was written largely with input from local authorities and little from the federal level.

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Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is rushed offstage by U.S.Secret Service agents after being grazed by a bullet during a rally on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa.(Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

“It’s awfully strange that all the questions we asked, ‘We’ll have to get back to you on that.’ And we have very limited time, as you know, to actually get to what we wanted to.So when we finished our report, it was basically based on everything that we could gather from local law enforcement, hardly anything from the feds at that time,” Kelly said.

� father, Matthew Crooks, had searched for ways to prevent his son from accessing firearms in May 2024, roughly two months before he clambered up a rooftop in his attempt to assassinate Trump.

A source familiar with the task force�

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“The Task Force report corroborates that Matthew Crooks handedThomas Crooksthe rifle used in the assassination attempt on July 13, 2024,” the source said.

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Kelly’ family.

Thomas Matthew Crooks was a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pa., who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump during a 2024 campaign rally before being shot and killed by Secret Service agents.

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The records were obtained bySenate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, as part of his ongoing inquiry into theButler assassination attempt.So far, the records turned over to the Senate show Thomas’ actions were a surprise to his family, and his motive is still a mystery.

Sen.Josh Hawley, R-Mo.�something that should have happened,” but there was still “so much that we don’t know about what happened.”

“I think we have got to, I’ve been saying forever now, we have got to have a full accounting of everything that happened on that day, all of the failures, law enforcement failures that occurred,” Hawley said.

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When asked about Crooks’ father trying to stop him from getting access to guns, Hawley said, “This gets back to if this guy was out there, if he was, if he was displaying erratic behavior, was that reported?”

Sen.Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., is seen during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Sept.16, 2025.(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

He recalled being on the ground days after the attempt.Hawley described how easily he could’ve gotten onto the rooftop from where Crooks fired off rounds toward the stage and charged that there was “no coordination” among the several local and federal law enforcement agencies present that day.

“I mean, this is just wild.And I still don’t think we’ve gotten a full accounting,” Hawley said.“Pretty much everything we know about this is from whistleblowers.You know, we need a full accounting of what really happened on that day.”

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“Listen, otherwise, we run the risk of things like this happening again.And we run the risk of it turning into a, you know, JFK situation where, all of these years later, we still don’t really know what happened,” he continued.“We owe it to the American people to figure out what exactly happened and what we need to fix.Clearly, there were massive failures.”

S.Senate.