Thomas Crooks: Gunman at Trump rally was often a step ahead of the Secret Service

Nearly 100 minutes before former President Donald Trump took the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, a local countersniper who was part of the broader security detail let his colleagues know his shift was ending.

“Guys I am out. Be safe,” he texted to a group of colleagues at 4.19 pm on July 13. He exited the second floor of a warehouse that overlooked the campaign rally site, leaving two other countersnipers behind.

Outside, the officer noticed a young man with long stringy hair sitting on a picnic table near the warehouse. So, at 4.26 pm, he texted his colleagues about the man, who was outside the fenced area of the Butler Fair Show grounds where Trump was to appear. He said that the person would have seen him come out with his rifle and “knows you guys are up there”.

The countersniper who sent the texts confirmed to The New York Times that the individual he saw was later identified as the gunman.

By 5.10 pm, the young man was no longer on the picnic table. He was right below the countersnipers, who were upstairs in a warehouse owned by AGR International. One of the countersnipers took pictures of him, according to a law enforcement after-action report, which along with the texts from the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit was provided to the Times by the office of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

At 5.38 pm, the photos were shared in a group chat, and another text went out among the officers, saying they should inform the Secret Service.

“Kid learning around building we are in. AGR I believe it is. I did see him with a range finder looking towards stage. FYI. If you wanna notify SS snipers to look out. I lost sight of him.”

By 6.11 p.m., the “kid” would be dead on the roof of a warehouse connected to the one the countersnipers were stationed in, after having been shot by the Secret Service for trying to kill a former president.

Taken together, the text messages provide the most detailed picture yet of the hours before the assassination attempt. They reveal that the gunman, later identified as Thomas Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, aroused police suspicion more than 90 minutes before the shooting, rather than about 60 minutes, as has been previously discussed in congressional hearings.

The messages also add to the evidence that the would-be assassin was often one step ahead of security forces, and in particular the Secret Service.

Crooks scoped out the rally site a day before the Secret Service did. He used a drone to survey the site while the Secret Service did not seek permission to use one for the rally.

He researched how far Lee Harvey Oswald was from John F. Kennedy when he fatally shot the president in 1963 — the answer is about 265 feet — and managed to climb onto a roof that was about 400 feet from Trump at its closest point. The Secret Service left that roof unmanned.

And while countersnipers were assigned to surveil the rally, Crooks was also in a position to watch them.

Even after the episode ended, police seemed confused about what Crooks had done and how.

“So, on TV, they’re saying Trump was shot at, and he got hit, but I don’t believe that,” one local police officer said to another 17 minutes after the shooting, in a conversation captured on a body-worn camera.

As the officers in the video walk toward the warehouse on which Crooks’ lifeless body lay, one can be heard saying, “I’m trying to figure out how this guy got here.”

Investigators are still trying to determine Crooks’ motivations and his actions in the days before the rally, in part from what they have found on his personal devices. But the texts and footage, combined with interviews by the Times and public testimony by investigators, have filled in some of the answers.

Crooks already had the AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle he brought to the rally. He purchased it in October from his father, who had acquired it legally in 2013.

He began to receive packages at his house in the Pittsburgh suburbs, including fertiliser pellets and radio devices. He would later use some of this material to build rudimentary bombs, two of which were found in his vehicle after the shooting and another in his home.

Crooks had started searching online for information on famous people, including FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden and Trump. He also looked up “major depressive disorder.”

On July 3, Trump’s campaign announced the rally in Butler for 10 days later, and Crooks narrowed his focus to the former president — and to past assassinations.

On July 6, Crooks typed in an ominous phrase.

“He did a Google search for ‘How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?’” Wray told a congressional committee last week.

The next day, Crooks drove to the farm show grounds, about an hour from his home. He spent 20 minutes there, investigators said. He also registered to attend the rally.

Secret Service agents would not hold their first walk-through until the next day, July 8, joined by law enforcement officials from several local and state agencies.

It was then that the Secret Service decided to exclude the entire warehouse complex owned by AGR — including Building No. 6, which Crooks would later use — from its inner security perimeter. This meant that on the day of the rally, Crooks was able to approach the building without passing through security screening.

There is still confusion about which agency was supposed to oversee the roof. Kimberly A. Cheatle, then the director of the Secret Service, told a House committee on Monday that she did not know whose job that was. She resigned the next day.

After their walk-through, the Secret Service had asked local agencies to provide more help. Text messages show that Beaver County struggled to find enough volunteers to cover the 12-hour shift. A leader says that one of the available snipers could arrive at 8 am but would need to leave by 4 pm.

“That works,” another leader responded in the texts.

On July 11, the Secret Service returned to the site for a final walk-through with its local partners.

The next day, Crooks made his own final preparations. He went to a shooting range, the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, around 2.30 pm and practiced with his AR-15-style rifle.

On the morning of July 13, the timelines of the security personnel and the would-be assassin converged.

Officers from several local law enforcement agencies were scheduled for a briefing at 9 am at the Brady Paul Lodge in Butler, according to a plan shown in the text messages. The after-action report indicates the Secret Service was not in attendance.

At the same time, Crooks was at the Home Depot in Bethel Park purchasing a ladder. A bloody receipt, found in the shooter’s pocket after he was killed, showed he bought it around 9.30 am.

Then Crooks drove to the rally site, reaching the show grounds by around 10 am and staying about 70 minutes — even as the local countersnipers were arriving.

When Crooks left, he drove back to his hometown and bought 50 rounds of ammunition at Allegheny Arms & Gun Works. Then he returned to Butler, arriving at the farm show grounds in his Hyundai Sonata at about 3.35 pm, according to geolocation information from one of his cellphones. About 15 minutes later, he flew his drone over the site for 11 minutes, including in a path about 200 yards from Trump’s podium.

He finished using his drone and sat at the picnic table, where the countersniper spotted him.

Crooks walked to his car, left the drone inside and was soon hanging around the warehouse complex.

Unlike the other visitors, he was not trying to enter the rally site through the security checkpoints, a fact that attracted the attention of the local countersnipers inside the warehouse. One of them took photos of him at 5.14 pm.

Col. Christopher Paris, the Pennsylvania State Police commissioner, testified in a congressional hearing Tuesday that officers were busy that day, responding to more than 100 heat-related emergencies. There were also other suspicious people whom security officials were trying to assess at the rally, which is not unusual for such events, Paris said.

But then, Crooks did something that alarmed the police. They saw him using the range finder.

A Beaver County countersniper shared two photos of Crooks with his colleagues at 5.8 pm, which were then relayed to the Secret Service, through a series of steps in the command centre.

One of the two remaining countersnipers “ran out of the building attempting to keep eyes on Crooks until other law enforcement arrived,” according to a statement by Richard Goldinger, the Butler County district attorney, who supervises some of the law enforcement units.

But Crooks ran off, taking a backpack with him, Goldinger said. When the officer was unable to find Crooks, he returned to his post.

Four Butler Township police officers who had been directing traffic joined the manhunt.

At 6 pm, one officer in the group texts guessed that Crooks was moving toward the back of the complex of AGR buildings, “away from the event.” Instead, Crooks clambered onto the low-slung building in the complex closest to the stage.

Trump took the podium at 6.03 pm, to a roaring crowd.

Six minutes later, rally attendees began pointing to someone on the roof of the warehouse. Either through luck or preparation, Crooks had found a place on the roof that let him see Trump clearly but also seemed to keep him somewhat hidden from the Secret Service countersnipers.

Although Crooks did not bring his newly purchased ladder, he managed to climb onto the roof and walk across a complex of interconnected roofs, Wray testified.

The Butler Township officers had no ladder themselves, so one officer boosted up another, who grabbed the roof and pulled himself up — to find Crooks pointing a gun at him. With no hands left to pull his own gun, the officer dropped.

At 6.11 pm, Crooks let loose his first rounds.

In the end, Trump was spared not by the vast law-enforcement contingent protecting him, but by chance. He turned his head, and Crooks’ first bullet whizzed by close enough to graze his right ear.

Trump dived to the ground, and Crooks sent off another round. The second Secret Service sniper team fired back and killed Crooks.

The body-camera footage shows officers climbing a ladder to find Crooks lying dead on the roof: a slight man, wearing black sneakers, a T-shirt and cargo shorts. His backpack and rifle lay nearby. A long trail of blood ran from his body down to the roof’s gutter.

“Looks like, what, at least eight,” one of them says, counting shell casings around him. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. At least eight.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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