President Donald Trump made an extraordinary allegation on Tuesday, claiming that the 2024 assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pennsylvania, was part of a “Democratic Plot” designed to remove him from the presidential election.
The shooting at the Pennsylvania rally left one person dead and two others wounded. The incident has remained under federal investigation since it occurred, but new questions have emerged about what investigators knew and when they knew it.
During testimony before the Senate Oversight Committee on Tuesday, FBI Director Kash Patel addressed what his agency has learned about suspected shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks. The director’s testimony was notably sparse on details connecting Crooks to any broader conspiracy.
“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 testified under oath. The FBI’s investigation, according to Patel, found no connections between the suspect and other individuals.
The president did not provide evidence to support his claim of a Democratic conspiracy. However, he maintained that “most of the information” regarding the investigation had gone missing when he assumed office, though new documents had recently surfaced. Trump offered no elaboration on the nature of these documents or their contents.
“Why wasn’t it seen long ago?” Trump asked in a statement. “This was all a Democrat Plot, to get me out of the Election, that failed. Dirty Cop Christopher Wray should pay a price for the way he handled this assassination attempt, and certainly for the things he said.”
Christopher Wray, whom Trump himself nominated as FBI director during his first term, became a target of the president’s criticism. Wray had testified two weeks after the shooting that investigators remained uncertain whether Trump was struck by a bullet or shrapnel. That testimony evidently angered the president, who viewed it as an attempt to minimize the severity of the attack.
Wray resigned before Trump’s second inauguration, reportedly concerned that a public firing could destabilize the department. He has not responded to requests for comment.
Attorney General Todd Blanche declined to provide specifics about the alleged plot when questioned by reporters. He would only confirm that the “new information” Trump referenced was produced by the FBI in response to a Senate inquiry.
“It is new information about the shooter and about his background, about his history and that’s stuff that we didn’t know before,” Blanche stated, though he refused to elaborate further when pressed.
When asked whether the Department of Justice would take action against Wray following Trump’s statement that he should “pay a price,” Blanche drew a careful distinction. “The Department of Justice doesn’t punish,” the attorney general said.
However, Blanche did express the administration’s broader frustrations with the FBI’s handling of security matters surrounding the former president turned candidate. “You have a situation where it’s not really clear what the leadership of the FBI were doing in the weeks and months ahead of the attempted assassination to protect President Trump,” Blanche said. “That’s the same organization that was simultaneously trying to put him in prison till he dies.”
The attorney general praised Patel’s efforts to review the investigative materials, describing it as a “Herculean effort to go through all the documents.”
The allegations raise significant questions about the investigation’s thoroughness and the handling of security for presidential candidates. Whether evidence will emerge to support the president’s claims of a broader conspiracy remains to be seen.
Related: FBI Documents Reveal Trump Attacker’s Five-Year Obsession with Firearms and Long-Range Shooting
