Miranda Devine: The FBI still hasn’t released – Latest News
Would-be murderer Thomas Crooks “extensively” searched the title and deal with of Rep. James Comer, King Charles and former FBI Director Christopher Wray earlier than the 20-year-old shot Donald Trump at a Butler, Pa., rally in July 2024.
According to Comer, the Capitol Police contacted him three days after the tried assassination and advised him his title and different personal particulars had appeared in a number of web searches carried out by Crooks.
Britain’s monarch and Wray additionally appeared a number of occasions in Crooks’ search historical past, says Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee.
He says the Capitol Police have been alerted to the Comer connection by the FBI, which discovered the title of the Republican Kentucky congressman on Crooks’ units after Crooks was shot lifeless by a Secret Service sniper. “I asked if any other members of Congress were on his search engine, and they said no,” Comer says.
“They said he had ‘extensively’ searched King Charles, Christopher Wray and me.”
‘Never followed up’
But Comer by no means again heard from the Capitol Police — or the FBI.
“It’s kind of crazy they called and told me that, then never followed up,” says Comer.
“Never provided or suggested for me to get security. Nothing . . .
“That is a pretty serious call to make and then never follow up.”
Comer’s revelations are amongst a number of disturbing new items of data which have emerged about Crooks within the absence of a full report from the FBI on the gunman’s online exercise, psychological profile and descent from high-achieving math whiz and high faculty honors graduate in suburban Pittsburgh to a 20-year-old would-be murderer in declining mental health who had began staying up all night time dancing and speaking to himself, in keeping with his father.
Last week, a source supplied The Post with parts of the gunman’s extremist digital footprint throughout 17 online platforms which have by no means been made public.
Now there are new allegations that Crooks’ post-mortem and toxicology report was lacking a essential piece of data; his blood was examined for 12 medication however not for hashish. More on that under.
The Capitol Police didn’t reply to The Post’s questions Wednesday about Comer’s claims that Crooks had performed intensive web searches on him.
But ex-Capitol Police Chief Steve Sund says he by no means obtained any warning about Crooks when Sund was chief from June 2019 or when he was assistant chief earlier than that.
And he insists that online threats by Crooks naming members of Congress comparable to Rep. Ilhan Omar “should have been picked up by the [Capitol Police] legislative branch intelligence division,” whose job it’s to guard all 535 members of Congress and their households.
The source who supplied The Post with Crooks’ digital footprint says that, in the summertime of 2019 — when Crooks was in his “pro-Trump” part earlier than flipping to anti-Trump the next yr — the then-15-year-old loner made a number of feedback on YouTube calling for “extreme violence against Democrats,” particularly “Squad” members of Congress.
For instance, on July 19, 2019, Crooks wrote in a YouTube remark: “Illhan [sic] Omar and others are invaders and should honestly be killed and their dead bodies sent back,” in keeping with archived materials found by our source.
On Dec. 12, 2019, Crooks wrote “MURDER THE DEMOCRATS!!” In January 2020, Crooks’ rhetoric abruptly turned anti-Trump till his online presence vanished in August 2020, in keeping with the source.
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No risk warning?
Sund says the point out of high-profile, controversial members of Congress, such because the members of the “Squad” and members of the Freedom Caucus, or congressional management, ought to have triggered a risk warning when related to phrases comparable to “killed.”
Intelligence companies and different authorities entities, such because the Capitol Police’s intelligence division, use “web crawler” software program to seek out key phrases that point out a potential risk, he says.
Sund says each intelligence company has a “duty to warn” once they encounter threats to any American citizen; the company tasked with defending members of the House and Senate is the Capitol Police.
As for Comer, Sund says: “It is unusual [the Capitol Police] didn’t follow up. [Crooks] was dead, so no longer capable of carrying out the threat, but it’s just good police work to . . . follow up and say ‘this is what we found.’ ”
Dr. Ken Finn, a board member of the International Academy on the Science and Impact of Cannabis (IASIC), described the July 22, 2024, post-mortem on Crooks as “shoddy.”
The toxicology report confirmed Crooks’ blood had elevated ranges of heavy metals — lead, antimony and selenium, which Finn says is a telltale signal of a continual hashish consumer.
He cites scientific analysis backing his declare, together with a 2023 paper within the journal of Environmental Health Perspectives titled “Blood and Urinary Metal Levels among Exclusive Marijuana Users,” discovering that “because the cannabis plant is a known scavenger of metals,” customers had “statistically significantly higher” ranges of lead and cadmium of their blood and urine.
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Dr. Finn stated he repeatedly requested the Allegheny County, Pa., Medical Examiner to check samples of Crooks’ blood, urine and hair that it retained for a yr, however he was ignored.
The toxicology report reveals Crooks’ blood examined unfavorable for alcohol, buprenorphine, benzodiazepines, cocaine metabolite, opiates, oxycodone, fentanyl, methamphetamine, barbiturates, methadone, amphetamine and carisoprodol.
The congressional report stated the Allegheny Medical Examiner theorized that the surplus lead ranges in Crooks’ blood “could possibly be a result of the time Crooks spent at the firing range.”
When the Post requested for solutions from the ME’s Office, Medical Secretary Alane Barringer stated “I cannot answer any of these questions” and referred The Post to the communications workplace, which didn’t reply.
Finn describes Crooks’ “elevated levels of heavy metals [as] the literal smoking gun . . . The increase in potency of today’s cannabis products, normalization of cannabis use, and the correlation between cannabis use and violence may have set the stage for a young man carrying out an act of violence against our president.”
The lacking hashish take a look at is only one of many unanswered questions on Crooks.
Despite promising Helen Comperatore, the widow of slain rallygoer Corey Comperatore, a full public report 5 months in the past, the FBI has produced no new data on the assault past what The Post has reported. The FBI web web page titled “Butler Investigation Updates” has not been up to date since Aug. 24 of final yr.
‘Acted alone’
Helen advised the Dr. Drew podcast in June that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino had advised her Crooks acted alone and promised that the company would release a report on its Butler investigation across the time of the one-year anniversary on July 13.
“They’re going to come out in a couple weeks to the public and basically [say] it’s the shooter and nothing else,” she advised Dr. Drew.
But Kelly Comperatore, Corey’s sister, advised The Post Wednesday the firefighter’s household had obtained “nothing” from the FBI since. All they know has been gleaned from the media, and he or she says kinfolk stay anxious to know more.
Even after complaints from a number of members of Congress that the FBI had “stonewalled” their investigations into Butler, the FBI has not made public new data past a press release supplied to Fox News Digital final week confirming that The Post’s reporting on Crooks’ digital footprint was correct.
