The FBI missed several opportunities to intercept Thomas Matthew Crooks before he attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump, a former senior Bureau official told the New York Post.
The Post reported last week on multiple extremist social media posts believed to be connected to Crooks, including threats of political violence and a sudden shift toward anti-Trump rhetoric after previously expressing admiration for the president.
Chris Swecker, a retired FBI assistant director, said that if even "half" of Crooks' alleged digital footprint is verified, the 20-year-old should have appeared on the FBI's radar long before he opened fire at Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
"It's clear that he was popping off on the social media sites and saying things that should have garnered attention," said Swecker, who spent 24 years at the Bureau before retiring in 2006. "That constitutes a miss on the part of the FBI," he added, rating the agency's handling of the case "a C-."
Among the recently surfaced online comments were YouTube posts in which Crooks allegedly wrote, "I always believed being patriotic was lining up a bunch of socialist Jews and blasting their useless brains out with an AR."
He also allegedly wrote "KILL DEMOCRATS," called for members of the "Squad" to suffer a "quick, painful death," and advocated using "terrorism-style attacks" against government figures and infrastructure.
Swecker also asserted that the FBI under then–Director Christopher Wray appeared eager to categorize Crooks as a far-right lone gunman. When evidence pointed elsewhere, he claimed, "the Bureau had its thumb on the scales."
He argued that this contributed to a lack of transparency that allowed conspiracy theories to flourish. "A little bit of transparency goes a long way in these types of investigations," he said.
Swecker added that while the FBI has historically moved quickly to highlight right-wing extremist motivations, it has been slower to identify left-wing ideological drivers.
"If there was a right-wing extremist ideology, that got surfaced real quick. But if there was a left-wing extremist ideology driving it, it was glossed over," he said.
Asked for comment, the FBI directed the Post to a Bureau statement concluding that Crooks acted alone.
On Wednesday, GOP Reps. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania and Pat Fallon of Texas accused Wray of stonewalling Congress on the investigation. Swecker pushed back somewhat on that characterization, saying the Bureau's issue was less obstruction and more a failure to communicate.
"What they're calling stonewalling was really a missed opportunity to be transparent and enlist the public," he said.
He urged current FBI Director Kash Patel to avoid repeating those mistakes and to release all unclassified files related to the case as soon as possible. "They ought to come out with the full motivation — that's not classified — and then let's get it out there," he said.
"We've got to use the opportunity to teach and educate the public about the threats on social media and the internet."
Swecker also warned that the online radicalization that allegedly drove Crooks to violence could be exploited by hostile foreign governments. "The scariest thing about the Post's article was the thought that a hostile foreign intelligence service could be looking for guys like Crooks and grooming them and weaponizing them," he said.
Such risks, he added, underscore the importance of vigilance. "This isn't about creating a citizenry full of snitches," Swecker cautioned. "But if you know somebody who says, 'I'm going to kill the president,' pass that on."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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