Would-be Donald Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks wrote an ominous warning on a gaming platform before shooting the former president.
DailyMail.com confirmed that US senators were told the 20-year-old gunslinger posted on Steam: ‘July 13th will be my debut, watch how it plays out.’
On July 13, he opened fire on the Republican candidate from a rooftop just 150 yards from the rally stage in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Would-be Donald Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks wrote an ominous warning on a gaming platform before shooting the former president
Senators were also told that investigators found searches for Trump and President Joe Biden around the time of the Democratic National Convention.
He also sought more information about the July 13 demonstration where the gruesome assassination attempt on the president took place.
The FBI also discovered he had two cell phones, the second of which was found at home with only 27 contacts.
Senators also learned that Crooks was spotted by the Secret Service 10 minutes before he walked on stage, or 20 minutes before he was shot.
Sources involved in the call told DailyMail.com that it took more than an hour from the time the shooter was seen until he fired the first shot. What is even more worrying is that Secret Service snipers spotted Crooks on the roof 20 minutes before he shot the former president.
At 5:52 pm the “suspected” shooter was spotted on the roof by snipers.
Trump took the stage at 6:02 p.m.
Then, at around 6:12 p.m., Crooks’ first shots were heard.
“It’s an incredible amount of time they let pass before they shoot,” the source said.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, confirmed this in a tweet Wednesday afternoon.
“They had identified the shooter as a ‘suspect’ 19 minutes before the shooting,” he posted.
Lee said senators were only allowed to ask four questions during the briefing, which he described as “an arbitrary interruption of the call.”
To add insult to injury, officials who were present at the briefing did not provide any information as to why their response took so long.
Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and John Barrasso, R-Wyo., confronted Cheatle on the third night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“This was an attempted murder. The people are owed answers. President Trump is owed answers,” Blackburn said in a video of the confrontation posted on X.
Barrasso said in a separate video that they were “face to face” with the director.
They demanded ‘specific answers about what happened to President Trump in Pennsylvania and how that shooter was able to fire a clear shot when the FBI and SS knew there was a suspicious person an hour before the shooting occurred.’
Image of shooting suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle did not know how Crooks got onto the roof, the source added.
Crooks’ possible motive for committing such an atrocity was also questioned on the call.
Officials did not confirm a motive for the attack, saying its rationale remains a mystery.
They said they have yet to find any ideological material that could shed light on why Crooks decided to shoot the former president.
But they did reveal that the criminals operated several accounts on encrypted platforms that they are still working to gain access to, the source said.
“They identified him as a suspicious character because he had a rangefinder and a backpack. And this occurred over an hour before the shooting occurred,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said on Fox News Wednesday afternoon.
‘So you’d think that throughout that hour you shouldn’t lose sight of the individual.’
“Someone should investigate this kind of thing. There is no evidence that this happened.”
The Wyoming Republican later released a statement calling the meeting “a 100 percent cover-your-ass briefing.”