Newly released FBI documents detail a pattern of erratic behavior by the 20-year-old who tried to assassinate President Donald Trump at a 2024 Pennsylvania rally, warning signs a former FBI agent says should have raised alarms long before the first shot.
Thomas Matthew Crooks talked to himself, paced through his home late at night, stayed up dancing and whispering until morning, and enrolled in three firearms courses in the span of eight weeks before he opened fire at a Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign rally on July 13, 2024. The unclassified FBI memos, turned over to the Senate and first reported by Fox News Digital, paint a picture of a young man whose conduct alarmed the people closest to him, yet never triggered intervention.
One person died in the attack. Two others were seriously injured. Secret Service agents shot and killed Crooks at the scene. Nearly a year later, the FBI still has not publicly identified a definitive motive, and a former agent who reviewed the documents says the bureau should not close the book on that question.
The federal documents describe behavior that grew more pronounced over time. An unidentified individual close to Crooks, whose name was redacted from the memos, told the FBI that Crooks "began to 'get more agitated' as he got older and 'talked to himself a lot.'" The individual said Crooks would admit to the self-talk but denied hearing voices.
Another passage from the memos describes nighttime episodes in detail:
"THOMAS would be in [redacted] at night and it sounded like he was dancing and whispering each night. About two to three times each week, he would pace through [redacted] When [redacted] confronted THOMAS about the pacing, THOMAS would say that he was bored and trying to entertain himself."
A separate FBI notepad entry stated plainly: "Sometimes he would stay up all night, always endless energy." The redacted individual also told investigators that "after community college, he would talk to himself more and more, moving his hands and speaking to himself."
That behavioral escalation is exactly the kind of trajectory that should concern investigators, according to Jonathan Gilliam, a former FBI special agent who reviewed the documents for Fox News Digital:
"These are definitely examples of somebody who is mentally not stable and also somebody who was spiraling into almost a manic or delusional state."
Gilliam went further, arguing that the combination of mental instability and outside influence, whether from people around Crooks or from content he consumed online, may hold the key to understanding what drove the attack. The threats facing Trump have only continued to mount since the Butler rally shooting, making the question of motive more than academic.
The documents also lay out a compressed timeline of weapons training that should unsettle anyone reviewing the case with fresh eyes. Crooks, a Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, resident who had graduated from the Community College of Allegheny County with an associate degree in engineering science, enrolled in his first firearms course on April 30, 2024, a Basic Carbine Course at the Keystone Shooting Center, priced at $139.99 and scheduled for May 25.
By June 1, he had signed up for an Intermediate Handgun Course at the same facility, costing $149.99 and scheduled for June 22. Six days later, on June 7, he enrolled in a Basic Handgun Course scheduled for June 13, another $139.99. Three courses in under six weeks, all completed or scheduled before the July 13 attack.
On May 25, the same date his carbine course was scheduled, FBI documents place Crooks at Keystone Armory in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, accompanied by two unidentified white males. One was described as being in his mid-30s; the other was older with a gray beard, "potentially one of the individual's father," the memo noted. The three were seen "wandering throughout the firearms store looking at various firearms." Crooks purchased 20 rounds of Red Army 7.62x54R ammunition for $19.07.
A separate entry in the documents states that an individual believed to be Crooks "purchased ammo online going site to site until he found one that would sell to him." The persistence suggests a buyer who encountered resistance, and kept looking.
The security environment around the president remains a serious concern. Iranian assassination plots targeting Trump have drawn attention from Israeli intelligence and prompted operational changes across federal agencies.
Not every detail in the memos involves weapons. One passage describes a confrontation between Crooks and an unidentified individual over "a gallon jug of something that he said was used to clean the bed of his [3D printer]." The individual did not believe the explanation, noting that Crooks' "ears would flame red when he lied." The FBI memo does not resolve what the substance actually was, and the timing of the confrontation remains unknown.
The documents also note that Crooks was "never into explosives", a detail that may narrow the investigative picture but does not eliminate it.
A coworker offered a different observation. In the weeks before the attack, Crooks had "opened up a little more" and seemed more "excited about going to school." He had been planning to attend Robert Morris University to study mechanical engineering. That apparent optimism sits uneasily alongside the nighttime pacing, the self-directed conversations, and the accelerating firearms training.
The contrast matters. People who knew Crooks saw different versions of the same person, one seemingly looking forward, the other behaving in ways that alarmed those living under the same roof. The Secret Service has faced its own scrutiny over how threats to the president and his family are assessed and managed.
FBI Director Kash Patel testified before the Senate Oversight Committee and offered a stark assessment of Crooks' social world:
"We found no evidence that that individual was literally even speaking to any other human being other than his parents, who he resided with."
Patel's testimony described an investigation that reached across borders, the FBI contacted at least one foreign government during its inquiry, though the documents offer no further detail on why. The scope of that outreach has not been explained publicly.
Gilliam, the former agent, pushed back on the idea that the case is settled. He told Fox News Digital that the investigation into Crooks' motive "should not be closed," and he pointed to the gap between what the documents show and what the FBI has concluded:
"When you combine somebody who is delusional, somebody who's hearing voices and is having almost a manic type of episode... with potential influence either by persons that they're around or things that they see online... it's very possible that that is the large part of this equation that we just have not seen."
Gilliam's reference to "hearing voices" is worth noting. The FBI's own documents state that Crooks admitted to talking to himself but denied hearing voices. Whether Gilliam was characterizing a broader pattern in the documents or drawing an inference remains unclear.
The broader question of presidential security has taken on new urgency. An Iranian missile threat forced Trump's emergency departure from Turkey aboard a military aircraft, underscoring that the threat landscape extends well beyond lone domestic actors.
The documents raise as many questions as they resolve. The identities of the two men who accompanied Crooks to the Edinboro gun store remain unknown. The FBI's contact with a foreign government has not been explained. The gallon jug that made Crooks' ears turn red has not been accounted for. And the memos themselves are heavily redacted, names, locations, and context stripped away in passage after passage.
Did Crooks actually attend the three firearms courses he enrolled in, or did he only register? The documents do not say. What was he reading or watching online in the weeks before the attack? The FBI has not disclosed that either.
The New York Post first reported on these federal documents, which were turned over to the Senate as part of ongoing oversight. The fact that these details are surfacing now, through congressional channels rather than through proactive FBI disclosure, tells its own story about how forthcoming the bureau has been.
Threats against Trump have come from multiple directions and multiple actors, and each new revelation about the Butler rally attack makes the security failures harder to dismiss as isolated.
A 20-year-old paced his home at night, whispered to himself, enrolled in three gun courses in eight weeks, and then nearly killed a president. The people around him noticed. The system built to prevent exactly this outcome did not.
