'Born without a sound': How Trump's shooter grew from a silent child to a gunman

Newly surfaced FBI interview records have laid bare a disturbing portrait of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally in July 2024, describing a withdrawn, difficult-to-read young man who was fixated on firearms in the years before the attack.

The documents were reviewed by the New York Post and shared with Senate judiciary committee chairman Chuck Grassley as part of his ongoing probe into the shooting, according to a Times of India report.

The July 13, 2024 attack


Crooks opened fire from a rooftop near the Butler Farm Show grounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, during a Trump campaign rally on July 13, 2024, grazing the then-presidential candidate's ear. Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former fire chief attending the rally, was killed shielding his family, while two other attendees, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, were critically injured, according to earlier reporting from Reuters.

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Secret Service snipers shot Crooks dead at the scene within seconds. A subsequent Senate judiciary committee report led by Grassley found that the Secret Service had received threat intelligence about Trump's life ten days before the rally but failed to relay it to law enforcement securing the event.

'Always quiet from that point on'

According to the new documents, Crooks' father, Matthew, told FBI investigators that his son had been unusually silent from birth. "When Thomas was born he did not scream and he was always quiet from that point on," Matthew said, as per the FBI interview notes cited by TOI.

Matthew said he never built a strong bond with his son, who rarely showed emotion, seldom laughed and was hard to read. He recalled Crooks acting out as a child, including damaging a school desk out of boredom, and said the family suspected ADHD by the time he reached middle school. Crooks reportedly grew increasingly reserved through high school, struggled to communicate with teachers and often talked to himself, a habit that grew more pronounced with age.

Despite these difficulties, Crooks did well academically and put considerable pressure on himself over college admissions. He explored career interests including the idea of working on nuclear submarines, though his father said this seemed to stem from thinking it sounded "cool" rather than genuine commitment. Matthew also told investigators that Crooks never showed romantic interest in women and repeatedly denied being gay when the subject came up.

A growing firearms obsession

Crooks began visiting a gun club as a teenager around the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. His father said he was initially a poor shot but improved steadily over several years, eventually becoming a skilled marksman experimenting with long-range shooting using basic sights. After buying a prism sight, he grew increasingly adept at adjusting and zeroing it.

His interest extended to building and modifying equipment: Matthew told investigators his son once tried to build a Glock 19 using carbon-fibre plastic and household tools, alongside a 3D printer, a homemade gaming computer and a Raspberry Pi-based security camera. Investigators noted separately that bomb-making materials were later found in Crooks' car and at his home, according to earlier AP reporting.

As his stockpile of firearms parts and tools grew, Crooks began using the alias "Bob Dole" for online deliveries, a habit his father said began after a bank account compromise led to fraudulent charges. Crooks believed the pseudonym would make his purchases harder to trace, despite his father's efforts to explain otherwise, and reportedly introduced Matthew to privacy tools and encrypted email services.

No clear political motive

The FBI documents point to a mixed political picture. Crooks was a registered Republican who opposed welfare programmes and "woke" ideology, but according to his father he did not strongly identify with the party and preferred mocking politicians generally rather than engaging in partisan advocacy.

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He reportedly did not believe the 2020 election was stolen and was shocked by the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. His father was also surprised to learn Crooks had donated $15 to the Democratic-aligned Progressive Turnout Project in 2021.

Despite close to a thousand interviews and a review of roughly half a million digital files across 25 online accounts, FBI investigators have said they found no conspiracy and could not establish a clear motive for the shooting, according to earlier reporting.

Matthew told investigators the family remains unable to explain why his son targeted Trump, saying Crooks had shown no obvious signs that something was wrong.