Trump rally shooter Thomas Crooks visited a Pennsylvania shooting range several dozen times ahead of the July 13 assassination attempt, according to records obtained by Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) office.
He made his final visit to the gun range on July 12, or a day before the rally in Butler. In 2024, he carried out target practice between three and six times per month, his office said, adding that he practiced on the rifle range more than the pistol range.
“He focused almost exclusively on the rifle range throughout 2024,” his office told The Epoch Times in a statement. “In total, Crooks spent approximately 80 percent of his time at the gun club on rifle practice.”
Meanwhile, in one instance, on May 23, the range was also being used by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers for training, according to Grassley’s office. However, the records show that Crooks was not there at the time.
The Clairton Sportsmen’s Club told news outlets that Crooks visited the gun club on July 12. The Epoch Times contacted the business for comment Friday.
Reports had indicated that Crooks attempted to join the Bethel Park High School’s rifle team when he was a freshman at the school. But the school said in a statement last month that he was never a member of the rifle team and had no record of him trying out.
In that same statement, the high school disputed claims that Crooks was bullied while he was a student there after some former students spoke to media outlets in the wake of the incident. Several former classmates claimed that he was bullied on a daily basis and described him as an outcast.
Nearly a month after the shooting, the FBI and other law enforcement officials have not publicly revealed a motive for the shooting, which also left one rally attendee dead and two others injured.
Officials have said that his father, Matthew Crooks, bought the AR-style rifle in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, in 2013 from Gander Mountain, an outdoors chain. On the day of the shooting, the younger Crooks purchased 50 rounds of 5.56 mm ammo for the rifle from a nearby gun shop before driving to the rally in Butler, authorities said.
Ronald Rowe, the acting director of the U.S. Secret Service, said in a news conference last week that he believes there should have been better security for the site.
“We should have had better protection for the protectee. We should have had better coverage on that roofline,” said Rowe, who took over the agency after former director Kimberly Cheatle resigned last month.
Days before that, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate told a Senate hearing that an investigation is ongoing into a motive as well as identifying any possible co-conspirators and creating a timeline of the shooter’s actions leading up to the assassination attempt.
Abbate also said that the FBI believes that it identified one of his social media accounts. However, they haven’t fully vetted its ownership, he said. The law enforcement agency also has not yet been able to gain full access to the apps on Crooks’s phone, noting that some content is on encrypted messaging platforms that was still inaccessible, he said.
