The Anonymous Donor: A New Mystery in the Case of the Trump Assassination Attempt Gunman
More than two years after the assassination attempt against US President Donald Trump during an election rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, new details have come to light.
Recent federal documents reveal a striking detail concerning the fate of the remains of the attack’s perpetrator, Thomas Matthew Crooks, as well as the party that covered one of the expenses associated with him, at a time when the investigation was still ongoing and questions were mounting over the circumstances of the incident and the security failures that preceded it.
The information appeared in a set of documents submitted to Chuck Grassley, chairman of the US Senate Judiciary Committee and Republican senator from Iowa, as part of the ongoing investigation into the circumstances and security failures surrounding the assassination attempt against Trump.
At the end of a summary of an interview conducted by federal investigators with Crooks’s father, Matthew, the documents included a note stating: “An anonymous donor (whose identity was not disclosed) paid the cremation costs.” The wording of the document indicates that the information came from an attorney representing the Crooks family.
The information takes on added significance in light of the family’s financial circumstances at the time. Another note indicated that Matthew was “retired,” while his wife was on leave from work, suggesting that the family likely did not have the resources needed to cover the funeral expenses for their son.
In another section of the federal records reviewed by the newspaper, Matthew said that he was “unemployed” at the time of the shooting on July 13, 2024, further raising questions about who covered the costs of cremating his son’s remains.
Cremation of the Remains Sparked Anger in Congress
Republican Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana was the first to publicly disclose that Crooks’s body had been cremated. He expressed outrage that authorities had released the remains to his family less than two weeks after the assassination attempt against Trump, while the investigation into the incident was still underway.
In a letter addressed to the bipartisan congressional working group tasked with investigating the security failures surrounding the assassination attempt, Higgins said that his efforts to examine Crooks’s body on Monday, August 5, 2024, had “caused a major uproar and revealed a troubling reality.”
He added in his letter: “The FBI released the body for cremation just 10 days after the incident,” which occurred on July 13, expressing his dismay at how quickly the remains were disposed of before all questions surrounding the incident had been resolved.
These details emerge as Congress continues to investigate a series of security failures that preceded the assassination attempt against the US president. Crooks opened fire from the roof of a building toward the platform where Trump was delivering his speech, striking him in the ear, killing one attendee and injuring others, before the gunman was killed by a security forces sniper.
