CHICAGO — The gunman at a Trump rally, Thomas Matthew Crooks, used encrypted messaging accounts on various platforms in Belgium, New Zealand and Germany, said a member of a congressional task force investigating his assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Republican Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida, one of 13 lawmakers selected for the House bipartisan task force, told reporters at a news conference Wednesday at the Trump Hotel in Chicago that the “offshore accounts” immediately raised his suspicions about the shooter’s motives.
“Why does a 19-year-old boy who works in healthcare need encrypted platforms that are not even located in the United States, but rather overseas – where, as most terrorist organizations know, it is harder for our law enforcement agencies to get in?” asked Waltz.
“I’ve been asking myself that question since day one,” the Republican committee member said, before moving on to sharply criticize the U.S. intelligence community and the FBI for refusing to release the full results of their investigation into the July 13 shooting at a Trump rally.
“They need to release information as soon as they find it, because this was not an isolated incident. The threats continue,” Waltz claimed, referring to the alleged “sophisticated plot” by a Pakistani national who paid alleged hitmen to assassinate Trump and other U.S. officials.
The FBI is expected to brief task force members later Wednesday, and the Florida congressman and retired Green Beret hopes the briefing will shed light on the “ridiculously inadequate” security at Trump’s campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Waltz also hoped the information would reveal who was “still in charge of security operations” – including the Secret Service agent tasked with monitoring the Butler rally site – and be held accountable.
Both agencies, together with the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, are conducting their own investigations into the attack.
Crooks, 20, opened fire on the main stage just minutes after Trump, 78, took to the stage to rile up the crowd, striking the former president in the right ear and killing protester Corey Comperatore, 50, while critically wounding two other people, David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 54.
New photos from local police – who confronted the gunman but failed to stop him in time – show Crooks sitting on a wall and staring at his phone shortly before he climbed to the roof of the AGR International building and took aim.
Butler’s officers on site at the rally had long since labeled him “suspicious.”
