Why did the FBI both fail to trace down main details about would-be Trump murderer Thomas Crooks — or fail to make it public?
Certainly, shouldn’t the Bureau have been conscious of Crooks’ alarming and visual social media profile lengthy earlier than he opened hearth on President Donald Trump in Butler, Pa., final 12 months?
The knowledge Miranda Devine shared in Monday’s Put up instantly contradicts public claims by then-FBI Director Chris Wray that Crooks was a thriller man with a skinny or nonexistent on-line presence.
The strategies Devine’s supply used — beginning with Crooks’ cellphone quantity to trace down his accounts on YouTube, Snapchat, Venmo, Zelle, GroupMe, Discord, Google Play, Quizlet, Chess.com and Quora — can’t be alien to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
How may the feds miss the YouTube account “Tomcrooks2178” (which confirmed to different customers as Tom Crooks), energetic from Jan. 14, 2019, to its suspension on July 14, 2024, the day after Butler?
Federal officers supposedly monitor social media for indicators of hazard; did posts just like the all-caps “MURDER THE DEMOCRATS” of Dec. 12, 2019, actually set off no alarms?
The truth is, he bought extra spooky after he turned to the left, writing in August 2020, “the one approach to battle the gov is with terrorism type assaults, sneak a bomb into a necessary constructing and set it off earlier than anybody sees you, observe down any vital individuals/politicians/navy leaders and so on and attempt to assassinate them.”
None of this speech is grounds for arrest — nevertheless it’s completely the sort of factor you count on to get somebody onto the feds’ radar, and actually stuff they need to observe after the writer has come a fraction of an inch from succeeding in an assassination.
Particularly when, per Devine’s supply, Crooks’ scarier posts had been “even flagged by different customers who talked about legislation enforcement of their replies.”
A recent investigation is now a should: Probe Crooks, his backtrail and doable co-conspirators, and of the FBI officers who a technique or one other dropped the ball — in addition to of present FBI leaders, who additionally fell down.
All of the earlier weirdness, from because the Secret Service’s declare it posted no brokers on the roof Crooks used as a result of it was too steep to Wray’s weird testimony to Congress that Trump might not have even been shot, has launched a thousand conspiracy theories.
The FBI’s decline, courting again to no less than Robert Mueller’s “reforms” after 9/11, is outdated information, however Staff Trump was purported to be turning issues round; the nation must know why that work is plainly going far too slowly.
