The truth about the attacks on our leaders should be simple: facts, transparency, and accountability. Instead we are being offered official narratives that change when inconvenient evidence surfaces, and that rot breeds suspicion across the country.
On July 13, 2024, a young man named Thomas Crooks opened fire at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing the former president and killing a bystander before being stopped by a Secret Service sniper. The sequence of failures that allowed him to get into position and inflict casualties has been well documented and raises serious questions about how our security agencies protect high?profile Americans.
So when conservative journalists and commentators started digging and claiming the FBI had downplayed or obscured Crooks’ online activity, many Americans noticed — because a pattern of obfuscation fits too neatly with past scandals. Major outlets report that new footage and digital leads claimed by independent investigators look far more extensive than early public statements implied, and that discrepancy deserves answers.
The bureau’s own rapid?response team and Director Kash Patel have pushed back, insisting there was never a line that Crooks had “no online footprint” and laying out an investigation that involved hundreds of employees and thousands of investigative actions. That defense only raises the stakes: if the FBI did in fact amass troves of material, why has so little of it been made public and why has the timeline of what agents knew, and when, been so murky?
Congressional scrutiny has followed. Senator Ron Johnson has subpoenaed the FBI for records tied to the Butler shooting, demanding surveillance footage, forensic reports, and Crooks’ digital communications so Americans can finally see what the bureaucracy already possesses. That subpoena is not partisanship for its own sake — it is the only practical lever left to pry open an agency that has grown too comfortable with secrecy.
This is not an isolated incident. Two months later a different suspect was arrested after a foiled attack at Trump’s golf club in Florida, and FBI and Secret Service testimony in that related case has exposed additional lapses and alarming close calls. Americans deserve a single, consistent truth about each of these events so we can fix the systemic failures that put lives at risk.
Enough with the spin and talking points. Whether you believe the bureau is hiding things for incompetence, politics, or something worse, the remedy is the same: public disclosure where possible, independent oversight where necessary, and a thorough accounting of what went wrong — not more smoke and mirrors. If the institutions sworn to protect us cannot be transparent after events this grave, then our elected representatives must use every lawful tool to restore trust.
Every American who loves this country should demand no less than the full truth. Our safety, our elections, and the very idea that government serves the people hinge on agencies answering plainly and quickly when failures occur — and on leaders who will not rest until they do.
