West Virginia–based political commentator Tim Pool said that his property was fired upon Friday night by an unidentified gunman who approached in a vehicle. Pool said no one was injured in the incident. He announced the shooting in a post on X early Saturday.
“Last night a vehicle approached our property and opened fire. No one was hurt. Our security team is reviewing the incident and will be relaying the report to appropriate law enforcement. This is the price we pay for speaking out against evil,” he wrote.
Later, he added: “My immediate thoughts is someone was trying to scare us. But we have a security gate and armed guards and its possible this deterred something more serious.”
The incident comes months after conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was shot in the neck during an event at Utah Valley University in September, an attack authorities described as an attempted assassination.
Other prominent conservative figures, including retiring Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, have also reported receiving death threats or being targeted in separate incidents, according to law-enforcement statements and public disclosures made by their offices.
A report late last month suggested a connection between President Donald Trump’s would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks and Tyler Robinson, the latter the accused assassin of Turning Point USA founer Charlie Kirk in September.
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.
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.