FBI Releases Redacted Crooks Texts; Fitton Calls Release a “Slow Drip”

The FBI has turned over another 249 pages on Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who opened fire on Donald Trump at a July 13, 2024, rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the bureau should stop the “slow drip” of heavily redacted records and release the full file.

Judicial Watch received the pages Friday through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in July 2025 after the FBI did not answer a July 2024 request. The Justice Department has said the Crooks investigative file runs to about 75,000 pages. At the current pace of roughly 500 pages a month, Judicial Watch said the rest would take about 12 years.

Crooks fired from a rooftop near the stage. A bullet grazed Trump’s ear. Firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed while shielding his family. Two other spectators were wounded. A countersniper shot and killed Crooks.

One set of messages the bureau marked pertinent is an exchange with an unidentified contact in February 2023. The contact asked, “did you 3D print the parts?” Crooks replied that he had, minus the “fan blades,” according to Just the News and the New York Post. The thread then moved to classes at separate colleges. The same contact and Crooks exchanged Christmas gifts in 2022. The records do not say what the gifts were.

Crooks’ father, Matthew Crooks, has said his son tried to build a handgun on a 3D printer and fired a single round before stopping because he feared the weapon would explode. The rifle used in Butler was not that printed gun.

A separate FBI electronic communication dated July 19, 2024, describes a “chat thread” between Crooks and a person whose name is blacked out. The messages run from May 21, 2023, to Jan. 3, 2024. Outgoing texts are mostly one- and two-word strings, including “Hello red,” “Yolo,” “890,” and strings of letters. Incoming messages in that thread are fully redacted. Agents also noted other conversations with redacted contacts in December 2022 and January and February 2023.

A Samsung messaging review dated July 18, 2024, flagged campaign solicitations from then-Senate candidate Raphael Warnock and DHL shipment notices from Hong Kong.

Most of the new production is laboratory work on a drone. An FBI report dated July 19, 2024, says technicians extracted 40 images and eight flight logs. The photos were taken between Feb. 6 and Feb. 27, 2024, in the Pittsburgh area. Seven flights were in the Allegheny-West area. An eighth flight was logged July 13, 2024, in Butler. The device had been powered on 15 times.

Fitton said the pages fill in part of the record and leave most of it closed.

“These latest records reveal more pieces of the puzzle surrounding Thomas Crooks,” he said. “The FBI should stop the slow drip of heavily redacted records and immediately provide the full investigative record — especially since the death last week of James Copenhaver, who was severely injured from being shot during the assassination attempt on President Trump.”

Copenhaver, 76, of the Pittsburgh area, died Wednesday, Sept. 23. The death was announced Sept. 24. He was shot in the arm and abdomen at Butler and had walked with a cane since. He and his wife had a pending federal lawsuit against the United States over security at the rally. David Dutch, also wounded that day, filed a similar suit.

A September production in the same case showed Crooks bought a chest rig and ceramic plates and that family members described him talking to himself, pacing at night, and staying awake for long stretches. President Trump said last month that by the time he returned to office in January 2025, some Crooks records were missing, altered, or corrupted. The FBI has not released the rest of the 75,000-page file.