The last search Thomas Crooks made on his cellphone before attempting to assassinate Donald Trump was for pornography, a senior law enforcement source has told The Daily Beast.
The source, who asked not to be named, said the FBI’s Operational Technology Division in Quantico, Va., made the discovery when it finally gained access to 20-year-old Crooks’ encrypted Samsung phone. Initial attempts at the Pittsburgh field office to crack open the Android device failed, and it was taken to Quantico on an FBI plane.
The only other recent activity on the phone were texts from his parents asking where he was. The source says the parents thought their son had taken the AR-style rifle and gone to the shooting range where he sometimes practiced.
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The FBI recovered Crooks’ phone from his body, along with four rifle magazines and a remote control capable of detonating the explosives found in his car. He was on the roof (top) when he fired at Trump, who was on the red carpet covering the stage.
Carlos Osorio/ReutersThe texts began around 1 p.m. and continued throughout the afternoon.
“By 6 p.m. he was dead,” the source said.
According to the source, the FBI has largely completed its examination of the phone and is now at work on the gunman’s laptop and a number of hard drives that were recovered from his bedroom.
The agents hope to find clues as to why someone with no clear political motivation or a known psychiatric disorder clambered on a rooftop at a Trump rally in Butler, Pa. with an assault rifle and attempted to kill Trump.
Crooks’ shots only grazed the former president, but wounded two rally attendees, one fatally, before the would-be assassin was killed by a Secret Service counter sniper team. The former president said during his speech to the Republican National Convention on Thursday that the Secret Service used a single bullet to kill Crooks.
Trump, wearing a bandage over his wounded ear, spoke about being shot at during his Republican National Convention speech Thursday. He disclosed Crooks was killed by a single bullet.
Mike Segar/ReutersAlong with four rifle magazines beside Crooks’ body, agents found a remote control capable of detonating explosives discovered in his vehicle.
The discovery of searches for pornography did not surprise law enforcement. “It’s not unusual,” the source said, noting that Sandy Hook elementary school mass shooter Adam Lanza had images of child abuse on his phone, and that numerous al Qaeda suspects have been found to have searched for extreme pornography along with tracts for Islamist purity.
But it will add to the picture FBI profilers are building of Crooks, who lived with his parents 40 miles from the Trump rally venue. He had graduated community college and was working in a skilled nursing and rehabilitation center near his home.
Other reporting has revealed that he searched for both Trump and for Joe Biden. He also looked for information on the Democratic National Convention and members of the British royal family.
Early Friday, CNN reported that he searched for information about Ethan Crumbley, the mass shooter who murdered four students at his Michigan high school in 2021. Crooks also searched for information about the prosecution of Crumbley’s parents, CNN reported. They were both sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in prison for not securing the handgun that he used to commit the mass shooting.
