New reporting indicates a connection between President Donald Trump’s would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks, and the killer of a Turning Point USA activist, Tyler Robinson. TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet said the development is “a five-alarm fire,” responding Monday on social media to a report by New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, The Western Journal reported.
Devine highlighted Crooks’ online interest in transgenderism and the “furry” subculture. Robinson’s roommate was described as his transgender partner, who also reportedly had a furry fetish. Devine reported that investigators have provided little clarity about Crooks’ motive for attempting to assassinate then-candidate Trump in July 2024.
“Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper, but not before he killed rallygoer Corey Comperatore, 50, and seriously wounded David Dutch, 58, and James Copenhaver, 75, who were sitting in the bleachers behind Trump,” Devine wrote.
“There is something very wrong with the official story and that invites conspiracy theories,” she said.
Devine added that a source revealed new details from Crooks’ digital footprint, including posts showing he shifted from enthusiastically pro-Trump to openly hostile toward the former president and his supporters beginning in 2020.
“How can you people call others sheep, but you are [too] brainwashed to realize how dumb you are,” he wrote on Feb. 26, 2020.
“I mean literally you guys sound like a cult at times.”
In August 2020, Crooks posted that “the only way to fight the gov is with terrorism style attacks,” urging followers to bomb essential buildings and assassinate political leaders.
Rod Swanson, a former senior FBI agent and former chief of investigations for Nevada during the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, said there is no scenario in which the FBI would have missed Crooks’ online behavior.
“No matter how ridiculous the allegation, no matter if it’s COVID or not, somebody is going to knock on somebody’s door,” Swanson said.
“If they investigated that kid there’s a record of it and there’s an assessment that some leader made that this was not a threat or it rose to a level and they did something else.”
Devine also noted Crooks’ identification with “they/them” pronouns on the art platform DeviantArt, a major hub for the furry community.
She wrote that he showed a deep interest in anthropomorphized animal characters, often associated with sexual themes.
Lance Twiggs, Robinson’s roommate, was also reportedly involved in the furry subculture.
Turning Point USA’s Jack Posobiec said Robinson’s trial should be televised.
“There’s questions coming out about the strange relationship between Lance Twiggs and Tyler Robinson,” Posobiec said.
“Drug use, obsessions with ChatGPT, the furry lifestyle, black market HRT (hormone treatment).”
Both the Crooks and Robinson cases appear to involve similar underlying mental health struggles.
This does not include other high-profile attacks involving suspects who identified as transgender, such as the shootings at Christian schools in Minneapolis in August and in Nashville in 2023.
Kolvet is correct that the correlation is a “five alarm fire,” and the first step toward addressing it is acknowledging the emerging pattern.
The FBI is pushing back on claims made by conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, rejecting his assertion that the bureau “lied” about details surrounding Thomas Crooks, the would-be assassin who attempted to kill President Donald Trump in 2024. Carlson had alleged that the FBI falsely stated Crooks had “no online footprint,” and he promised to release evidence disproving that claim, Newsweek reported.
The FBI Rapid Response account on X refuted Carlson’s accusation. “This FBI has never said Thomas Crooks had no online footprint. Ever,” the account wrote.
More than a year after the July 13, 2024, shooting, relatively little information has been publicly released about Crooks, the 20-year-old gunman who opened fire on Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Crooks fired eight rounds from an AR-15-style rifle while positioned on a nearby rooftop, killing one audience member and injuring two others before grazing Trump’s ear.