Why Do We Still Know So Little About Thomas Matthew Crooks?

I tried to learn a little bit about Thomas Matthew Crooks in the days after the attempted shooting of then-candidate, now-President-elect Trump, and while I gleaned some basic crap that was publicly available, it wasn’t much. That was in July. It’s now January, and in reality, the public does not know much more about this kid than it did in July. One parallel you will hear sometimes in casual conversation is that we know almost nothing about a guy who missed a President by two inches, but we know seemingly a lot about Luigi Mangione, even though he tried to go off the grid for six months before (probably) shooting a CEO in the back.

Why would that be?

The Basic Logic

The basic reason is very simple: an attempt on a once-and-future President’s life is high-level national security type stuff, so even though virtually all aspects of that rally seem to have been utterly bungled by the feds, whatever they do know about that kid and his family is likely redacted to the hilt for 25 years.

Luigi killed a CEO (again, probably) and while it is worth exploring whether he’s a patsy, a CEO is still essentially a citizen. While the terror charge in the Magione case is a bit weird and seemingly an overreach of pro-capitalist thinking, killing a CEO on a street is unhinged but not necessarily top secret clearance information. Plus, Mangione comes from a rich family, and a chunk of stuff about rich families is publicly-available.

There is still a lot we don’t know about Mangione too, including where he was for most of the summer and how soon after the photos and videos came out his mom was talking to authorities.

Back to Crooks

Some of the deeper conspiracy thinking about Crooks comes from two things:

1. How would a 20 year-old not be chronically-online?
2. Videos about his background and house, such as this one:

That video gets used in tons of online discussions, because it seems to imply Crooks was a patsy. His home was pristine and had no silverware or trash. Was this dude just a fall guy for a bigger plan?

It seems very tin foil hat-y, and it probably is. There was a part of me that wanted to believe Trump and his people set this up to define him as a hero — remember, Elon endorsed Trump officially basically after this happened, although he would have anyway, and even Zuck came out and called it “bad ass” — but then I remember: this was three weeks after that debate, and Biden was in absolute free fall. The Democrats themselves had already begun conspiring to push him over a cliff, which they did, and then in turn the rest of them went over a similar cliff. That’s a different story.

I don’t really think Trump would need to orchestrate something like this after Biden’s debate performance. He was well on his way to winning. Plus, someone else died in this deal. Unless you think two people are patsies, or two people (drum roll) aren’t really dead, this being a deep conspiracy is hard to believe.

Interesting Overlap

According to federal sources — and again, maybe you yourself believe it’s easy for the feds to cover stuff up or create narratives — Crooks’ parents called the cops hours before the Butler shooting to report him missing, much like Mangione’s parents called San Francisco PD about three weeks before the UnitedHealth Shooting.

So, it could be a case of parental neglect with parents catching up the possible horrors of their child too late. I think that’s more reasonable than “deep state conspiracy,” personally.

This is apparently Crooks’ dad leaving a grocery store last summer, talking about releasing a statement when advisable:

And, as would seem logical for parents in this situation, they retained a high-end Pittsburgh law firm as they’re probed federally. That part seems normal-ish. What’s weird with those parents is they were licensed social workers, purportedly, so you would think they’d be on top of the stuff going on with their son. Perhaps not.

Do I think it’s reasonable to believe Thomas Matthew Crooks is a character invented by the federal government to make Trump into a hero and get Biden out? Not really. Do I believe he was the patsy for something else dastardly that happened at that rally, like the sometimes-discussed theory on the Las Vegas shooting that it was really something tied to MBS over in Dubai? Not really, either.

The Occam’s Razor on Luigi and Crooks

On Crooks, I think he was a misguided kid who probably didn’t like being online (I don’t really like it either) and might have fired a shot to impress a girl or something. Stranger things have happened to the male brain.

On Luigi, I think it’s pretty easy to understand the factors around his radicalization.

I don’t see it as any broad conspiracy, and it feels like why we seemingly know “more” about Luigi is because Crooks’ attempted target is a man tied much deeper to national security.

You see smoke and fire on Crooks?