Trump rally shooter was registered Republican; Would have voted for first time in November

WASHINGTON: Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman who authorities say attempted to assassinate former president Donald Trump was a 20-year-old registered Republican who would have voted for the first time in the presidential election in November.

He lived in the Pittsburgh suburb of Bethel Park, about 56 km south of the Trump rally site where law enforcement officials said he fired at Trump, the presumptive presidential candidate of the Republican Party.

Crooks was shot dead by the Secret Service personnel on Saturday, soon after he fired a volley of shots at Trump from an “elevated position outside of the rally venue.”

He had explosive material inside his car and residence, CNN quoted multiple law enforcement sources as saying on Sunday.

He had previously made a small contribution to a Democratic-aligned group, the network reported earlier, quoting public records.

He graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022, according to a local media report and a video of the school’s commencement.

Crooks was registered to vote as a Republican, according to a listing in Pennsylvania’s voter database that matched his name, age, and a Bethel Park address that law enforcement searched.

This year’s presidential election would have been the first he was old enough to vote in, CNN said. A US citizen who turned 18 years old on or before Election Day (November 5, 2024) is eligible to vote.

Federal Election Commission records show that a donor listed as Thomas Crooks with the same address gave USD 15 to a Democratic-aligned political action committee called the Progressive Turnout Project in January 2021.

When reached by CNN after the attack on Trump, Crooks’ father, Matthew Crooks, said he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” but would “wait until I talk to law enforcement” before speaking about his son.

Crooks did not have any identification on his body, so agents had to “run his DNA and get biometric confirmation,” Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said at a press conference Saturday night before Crooks was named.

One attendee at the rally was killed and two others were critically injured, authorities said.

Crooks was spotted outside the rally by local law enforcement, who thought he might have been acting suspiciously near the walk-through metal detectors, a senior law enforcement official said on Sunday.

Authorities announced over law enforcement radio to keep an eye on him, and that information was passed to Secret Service as well, according to the source.

Later, people alerted law enforcement in a field outside the event that they saw a gunman up on the rooftop, who fired at Trump.