Americans deserve straight answers, not press conferences full of euphemisms and half-truths, and that is precisely what Megyn Kelly pressed on in a recent segment with Glenn Greenwald when she asked why the FBI has been so tight-lipped about Thomas Crooks. Conservatives have watched for months as key details about the July 13, 2024, attack and the shooter’s background have been drip-released by partisan outlets rather than produced transparently by federal investigators.
The raw facts of that day are not in dispute: a 20-year-old named Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight rounds toward President Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, striking the former president near the ear while killing at least one innocent attendee before being killed himself by a Secret Service counter-sniper. That attack left Americans shaken and raised immediate questions about how a young man could get into position to try to end a life on live television.
Now new reporting has peeled back parts of Crooks’s digital life that the public was told did not exist, showing alleged accounts, alias activity, and even a reported turn toward gender experimentation and niche online subcultures like the furry community. Journalists digging through archived profiles say Crooks used they/them pronouns on some art platforms and engaged in ugly, violent online rhetoric that contradicts the FBI’s early assurances that there was no clear motive or ideology. Those revelations demand an explanation: did agents miss this, or were they pressured to downplay it?
If the bureau truly told Congress it found “nothing” in Crooks’s online history and then quietly omitted a trove of unattractive material, that is not incompetence alone — it smells like a cover-up or at minimum politicization of national-security reporting. The American people were told a narrative of a lone, motive-less attacker while private investigators and journalists have since turned over far more troubling breadcrumbs that should have been part of the official record. Those discrepancies are not academic; they go to whether the FBI is protecting the public or protecting a narrative.
Conservatives are right to point out patterns when they appear. When men radicalized online converge on the same antisocial subcultures and identity obsessions, it is honest journalism — not leftist scapegoating — to ask whether cultural rot and failed social interventions play a role in grooming violent actors. We are not excusing violence, but we are demanding that investigators follow the facts wherever they lead instead of soft-pedaling embarrassing truths to suit public-relations priorities.
The political class and the FBI owe the American people a full accounting: release the redacted device-forensics, explain why accounts and aliases were not referenced earlier, and tell us plainly whether any leads were ignored or suppressed. We have seen the Secret Service take some disciplinary steps for operational failures at that rally, and discipline without full transparency is only half a remedy; Congress should subpoena records and compel sworn testimony until the story is complete.
This is about more than a single shooter or a single tragedy; it is about the preservation of our rule of law and the trust of citizens who pay the salaries of these institutions. Patriots on every side should want truth and accountability, not protective spin or partisan silence — demand the records, demand the answers, and never let Washington treat your safety like a talking point.
