Motive unknown.” One year after then-
presidential candidate Donald Trump was shot and nearly assassinated,
these two words may forever haunt attempts to understand what happened. It was just before 6 p.m. on
July 13 that 20-year-old loner Thomas Matthew Crooks, a promising honor student who worked as a nursing home aide, hefted himself onto the roof of the American Glass Research building overlooking the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Crooks quickly assembled a
Panther Arms A-15 assault-style rifle he had hidden in his back- pack. Crawling to the roof’s ridge, he peered into his Holosun AEMS red dot sight, centering it on the head of the former president. As Trump addressed the
crowd that sweltering July after- noon, Crooks squeezed the trig- ger eight times, sending Rem- ington .223 slugs hurtling toward his target at 3,200 feet per sec- ond. Miraculously, it seemed, Trump survived. In the days after the shoot-
ing, five-term Rep. Clay Higgins, a former police officer and staff sergeant with the Louisiana Na- tional Guard, knew he couldn’t just sit around Capitol Hill and await official reports on what had just happened. As a member of the
official House task force that would investigate Crooks’ assassination attempt, Higgins, a close ally of Trump, hopped on a plane to Butler to find out for himself.
50 NEWSMAX | JULY 2025 HIGGINS He interviewed local law en-
forcement and first responders and walked through the Butler Farm Show grounds to obtain a thorough, logistical picture of the scene. What Higgins learned ap-
pears to poke significant holes in the FBI’s official account of what happened on what is now widely known as “J13.” Yet Crooks’ mo- tivation is as obscure today as it was the day after the shooting. “Thomas Crooks
was a successful young man,” Higgins tells Newsmax. “He was on a good path in life, and he had a bright future. “And yet, within a
relatively short period of time, about a year,
THE SHOOTER One hour before Donald Trump took the stage, a police sniper from the Butler Emergency Services Unit texted a message and two photos of Thomas Crooks to his colleagues: “Kid learning [sic] around building we are in. I did see him with a rangefinder looking towards the stage. If you want to notify SS snipers to look out. I lost sight of him. Also a bike with a backpack sitting next to it in rear of building that was not seen earlier.” The sniper said later he meant to type “lurking” instead of “learning.”
he became a would-be assassin who had quite an extravagant plan, and very effectively carried out the attempted assassination of President Trump.” Of all the conundrums
spawned by July 13 — why the nearby roof wasn’t covered by security; why the Secret Service didn’t have a stronger counter- assault team or better surveil-
PREVIOUS SPREAD: TRUMP/ANNA MONEYMAKER/GETTY IMAGES / THIS PAGE: ©FBI
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100
