The attempted assassination of President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024, continues to unravel with deeply disturbing layers—and each revelation only intensifies the urgent questions surrounding how this tragedy was allowed to come so close to claiming a life.
The accused, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, did not fit the tired narrative of a “lone wolf” acting on impulse. According to new reporting, Crooks left behind a sprawling digital footprint—one filled with violent threats, ideological extremism, and a fetishistic obsession with “furry” subculture, an often-overlooked corner of the internet where anthropomorphized animal figures are sexualized, sometimes in shockingly grotesque ways.
BREAKING: The US Secret Service has uncovered a “suspicious HUNTING STAND” with DIRECT line of sight to where President Trump exits Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport
Reportedly set up “MONTHS AGO.”
They will never stop going after him. Trump is in Florida NOW… pic.twitter.com/2m67HGxpcJ
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 19, 2025
As investigators pieced together Crooks’ online presence, a dark transformation emerged. Once a pro-Trump teen, Crooks underwent an ideological about-face between early and mid-2020. He began railing against the president and his supporters, describing Trump’s base as “sheep” and floating openly violent fantasies.
One uncovered post was chillingly prophetic: Crooks suggested that “terrorism-style attacks” and the assassination of government officials were, in his view, the only viable way to fight back against perceived tyranny. And then, as if to erase the trail, he went dark.
Yet despite this archive of rhetoric and behavior—which any diligent background check would flag as dangerous—the system failed. In testimony before Congress, former FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate allegedly left out this very timeframe from his review of Crooks’ history, failing to mention his descent into extremist thought. Former FBI agent Rod Swanson put it plainly: if they investigated him, there’s a record of it. And if they didn’t, that’s an even bigger failure.
But Crooks’ story doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk by Tyler Robinson, who also shared a disturbing affinity for explicit furry content, raises even more questions.
Both attackers had ties to dark internet spaces that promote sexually deviant, violent, and in some cases pedophilic content. Robinson played pornographic furry games so extensively he unlocked hidden rewards—and his username was linked to viewing materials so disturbing they could only be described as depraved.
There’s a common thread here: an unpoliced online culture festering beneath the radar, home to deranged ideologies, violent fantasies, and an echo chamber for those who see political assassination not as horror but as heroism.
Senator Rand Paul didn’t mince words when he declared the Butler attack preventable. And he’s right. How could someone with this much digital baggage, this many red flags, and this level of premeditated malice slip through every safeguard? Especially when we now know that the Secret Service had already detected elevated threats, including a hunting stand with a line of sight to Trump’s aircraft in Florida.
