New Butler Shooting Files Reveal Anonymous Donor Paid for Crooks’ Cremation
New FBI records show an anonymous donor paid for the cremation of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the would-be assassin who shot President Donald Trump at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally on July 13, 2024. The payment was buried in a one-line note at the bottom of a single document, according to recently released files.
The revelation is the latest gap in the FBI’s handling of the Butler shooting investigation. President Trump has directly blamed the Biden-era FBI, calling it the ‘crooked Joe Biden FBI’ and saying most of the information about the case was ‘missing, altered, corrupted, or gone’ by the time he returned to the White House on January 20th.
🚨 BREAKING: NEW BOMBSHELL FILES JUST DROPPED ON THE BUTLER SHOOTING 🚨
An anonymous “DONOR” PAID to have the BODY of Trump’s WOULD-BE ASSASSIN CREMATED.
Crooks was USING A FAKE NAME to ORDER RIFLE UPGRADES… his alias was “BOB DOLE.”
What is GOING ON?! 🚨 pic.twitter.com/OvTHO3i7l2
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) September 16, 2026
The documents also show Crooks used the alias ‘Bob Dole’ to order rifle upgrades. Packages containing parts intended to make the firearm more lethal arrived under that false name. The weapon itself came from his father’s gun safe. His father, Matthew Crooks, had changed the safe’s combination after catching Thomas watching him enter it, but he still handed over the rifle on the morning of the shooting, believing his son was heading to a shooting range.
For years, Thomas Crooks practiced at the range, progressing from missing targets entirely to hitting objects beyond 100 yards with basic iron sights. He told his father he wanted to test the limits of rudimentary equipment.
The FBI files describe Crooks as quiet from birth. His father told federal agents that Thomas did not cry as an infant and remained reserved his whole life.
The motive for the assassination attempt remains unexplained in the released materials. The cremation happened just ten days after the shooting, before congressional investigators could fully examine the body. That timing has raised serious questions about whether critical forensic evidence was destroyed.
Trump has described the Butler shooting as part of a ‘Democrat plot’ to remove him from the election, a plot that failed. The new documents do not answer who paid for the cremation or why, and they do not explain how Crooks managed to plan and execute an attempt that came within inches of killing a president.
What the files do show is a pattern of failures and missing pieces: an anonymous donor, a fake name, a father who handed over the rifle, and a federal agency that apparently lost or altered key evidence before the new administration could review it. For the American people, the Butler files are not closure. They are an invitation to ask harder questions.