by Frank Holmes, reporter
Americans have had hard, unanswered questions for their government about the two attempts to assassinate President Donald Trump—and it looks like a private investigator just served up an enormous answer.
The first would-be Trump assassin — 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania — may have had an accomplice… and that’s a view shared by at least one member of Congress.
Crooks somehow managed to take a rifle and crawl onto a highly visible rooftop sniper’s den at Trump’s July 13 rally in Bethel, Pennsylvania. Although several rally-goers saw him and pointed out his position to officers, the agents refused to take any effective action.
Their delay let Crooks fired eight, high-caliber rounds, including one at the critical moment Trump moved his head that let the bullet graze only the president’s ear.
Another bullet killed 50-year-old former fire chief Corey Comperatore. Two Trump supporters were also wounded by bullets Crooks fired: David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 54.
Crooks rained bullets toward the president or the crowd sitting on the stage behind him as unusually husky female Secret Service agents squatted behind the candidate, then slowed down his escape.
It always looked fishy. Now, a private investigator in Erie, Pennsylvania, has pored over the facts with a team of six researchers… and they say there is far more than meets the eye.
Crooks had an accomplice in the assassination, they concluded.
“We don’t think he acted alone,” Dan Hagmann, private eye, told The New York Post. “This took a lot of coordination.”
Hagmann said his team of researchers interviewed more than 100 people and used geofencing of the area to examine phone and electronic device data of people in the crowd.
Speaking of his personal beliefs, Hagmann went even further: “I wouldn’t preclude the possibility that there were people at the rally itself helping him,” he said.
“In my view, Crooks was handled by more than one individual and he was used for this” assassination attempt, the way a criminal syndicate works through a front man or fall guy.
Some in Congress have theories about the shooting. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La.—who last December released his full, official “J13” report on the first assassination attempt—believes medication may have turned the young man into a killer.
“Thomas Crooks was a brilliant engineering student who was on a path to success,” said Higgins. “Something happened to make him go crazy and that’s why I think it might have been pharmaceuticals.”
“We’ll never know since no toxicology tests were ever performed. His family later cremated his body,” wrote Matt Vespa at Townhall.com.
Higgins wasn’t the first member of Congress to question the role drugs played in the near-fatal shooting.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., and conservative media star Benny Johnson also suggested Crooks may have acted under the influence of mind-altering hallucinogenics or prescribed psychotropic drugs last August—but they also raised doubts about the Lone Gunman theory.
“I think he had a handler. I think someone was walking him through how to do this,” Rep. Luna told Johnson last August. “Whether that was someone with known terrorist ties or whether that is a part of his very progressive, left-leaning ideologies.”
In the end, she said the shooting is “really the fault of the media saying if you are conservative or if you are Republican, you are a threat to democracy.”
“When you make those statement, it does radicalize,” especially people who are “not mentally sound,” she said.
Benny asked is “a nation state” was involved in directing the assassination attempt.
The same question overshadows the second Trump assassination attempt.
🚨WOW.🚨
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna suggests evidence leads her to conclude Trump assassin Thomas Crooks did not act alone:
"I think he had a handler. I think someone was walking him through how to do this." pic.twitter.com/WyuQ3OAk46
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 16, 2024
Mystery has shrouded both attempts on then-candidate Donald Trump’s life during the 2024 presidential election.
Theories, rumors, and serious charges have surrounded Trump’s second would-be assassin, Ryan Routh.
Footage recently resurfaced on the internet of Routh appearing in a propaganda video to support Ukraine’s infamous Azov Battalion, originally a neo-Nazi militia incorporated into the Ukrainian military.
EXCLUSIVE: Attempted Trump assassin Ryan Routh appeared in a propaganda video for the AZOV BATTALLION in May 2022 pic.twitter.com/eugjHXHXqw
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 16, 2024
The more things change inside the Beltway, the more they stay the same
Secret Service director at the time Kimberly Cheatle resigned after the first attempted assassination, but no meaningful reform followed.
News of the possible Crooks accomplice wasn’t even the only conspiracy theory that came to life that week. The revelation of Crooks’ accomplice came at the same time Attorney General Pam Bondi accused some federal agents of hiding the Jeffrey Epstein flight list, as noted Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
On today’s episode of #Verdict we talk about the latest BOMBSHELL allegations.
AG Bondi accuses the NY FBI Field office of deliberately hiding Jeffrey Epstein files plus NY Post reports Trump's attempted assassin may have had an accomplice.@BenFergusonShow and I break it all… pic.twitter.com/eWpBSB2xdn
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 28, 2025
The U.S. government’s never-ending obfuscation has infuriated reform-minded conservatives, and Americans of all locations outside the Beltway and major U.S. intelligence organizations.
“Can we go a full day without reports that the FBI is destroying or hiding information?” asked conservative researcher John Lott.
Can we go a full day without reports that the FBI is destroying or hiding information?
Would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks may have had accomplice, data shows, as investigators say FBI suppressing infohttps://t.co/Ebdfo9Bxia
— John R Lott Jr. (@JohnRLottJr) February 28, 2025
Whatever the truth, putting the pieces together paints an ugly picture:
First, Capitol Police under the authority of Nancy Pelosi allowed a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Then, a Secret Service under the authority of then-President Joe Biden (or whoever ran his administration) allowed two assassins to get within fractions of a second of killing Donald Trump.
Now we learn of:
- a suspected accomplice in the first would-be Trump assassin;
- a global network of mercenary soldiers-for-hire and informants from the Trump inner circle punctuating the second Trump assassination attempt; and
- federal agents disobeying lawful orders to hide information about the most elite child trafficker, and abusers, the world has ever known.
Whether the shadowy, unelected figures in obscure government agencies directed these events or just swept them under the rug, there could be no greater proof of Donald Trump’s battle against the Deep State.