No one who had ever met Thomas Crooks could believe that the inconspicuous 20-year-old had almost shot Donald Trump. The FBI is examining every detail of his electronic communications and has already questioned 100 people in his circle. Without result. No memberships in organizations, no sick postings in relevant Internet forums, no revealing statements to others.
Perhaps he enjoyed the idea beforehand that the world would be puzzled about him. That he would remain a mystery forever. A manifesto would have destroyed the aura of mystery and would have contained either directly or indirectly shabby, primitive and irrational motivations. Since he was considered to be withdrawn in his life and avoided communication, he was never used to saying what was going on inside him anyway.
The more silent he was, the more room there would be for wild conspiracy theories and more chaos in the USA after his crime.
A study examined 74 incidents of such terrorism: The US President was the main target in 34% of cases. Often the perpetrators want to die themselves in the attack and thereby draw attention to some issue, pursue a political goal or even “save the world”.
60% of the attackers had no identifiable connections to any organization. Two thirds had never been to prison in their lives.
https://www.secretservice.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/ecsp1.pdf
The attackers often have suicidal tendencies, especially when the target person is protected by the Secret Service. This seems to apply to Crooks. He was considered relatively intelligent and probably expected to be eliminated by police and Secret Service snipers.
Many such terrorists are said to have higher education, and most are socially isolated. This is also true of Crooks. A diffuse hatred of successful political figures who take what they want is typical. Trump had gotten away with all sorts of crooked things in his life, while someone like Crooks had to follow completely different rules. Money is hard to come by and any violation of the countless laws is strictly punished.
There are also the typical schizophrenics and psychotics: One of the people investigated heard voices and was firmly convinced that they came from a secret federal government satellite program. The murder of a federal official would lead to the program being revealed.
Crooks was exactly the age at which schizophrenia usually occurs.
Lynette Fromme had tried to kill President Ford in 1975 because the government was imprisoning cult leader Charles Manson and “destroying the environment”. Fromme was suffering from depression and was broke when she met Manson. The cult killed celebrity Sharon Tate and left false evidence at the crime scene to give the impression that African Americans were behind it. They had a vague and confused plan to start a race war. When Fromme pointed the gun at Ford, she was immediately restrained by Secret Service agent Larry Buendorf.
Assassins often have multiple goals at once: to end an unbearable life, to change the course of the country, and to become famous posthumously. Crooks chose the formally highest target, a former president, and was apparently prepared to die on a grand stage in front of the whole world.
Lee Harvey Oswald had a cynical, Marxist-Leninist strategy. He did not care who held the presidency and assumed that the next president would not be much different from Kennedy. It was about getting the ball rolling and destabilizing the country. He had a concrete escape plan and wanted to travel by bus to Mexico, then find a communist embassy there and get a visa for Cuba.
The idea that killing a US president will have a significant political impact is irrational. The system always produces enough new personnel and always has redundancy. The Republican Party could have quickly replaced Trump with Nikki Haley and then probably won the election by a large margin.
Investigators are of course looking for a special trigger in Crooks, some diagnosed illness or other negative event. He fits the profile of a radical incel who saw no prospects worth living for himself.
Crooks was relatively intelligent and could have used obfuscation tactics to research online what the authorities knew about assassins. As a hobbyist programmer, he may have known how to gain access to unsecured or poorly secured WiFi networks nearby. With a throwaway operating system and the TOR network, he could have acquired the essential knowledge. He apparently made no verbal threats beforehand and remained completely under the radar.the authorities’ radar. Perhaps he had a rough idea of the NSA’s capabilities, as described by Edward Snowden.
Crooks had to know that killing Trump would unleash massive chaos in the country. Coupled with his previous silence and lack of a manifesto, all sorts of conspiracy theories would have spread. One would assume he was aware of the wild media narratives surrounding Trump and the Capitol storm.
Crooks was called “the school shooter” in high school and teased for his poor hygiene, a classmate said. During his freshman year at Bethel Park High School, Crooks became “an easy target” for bullies who targeted the often lonely teenager, 19-year-old Julianna Grooms told the New York Times. “The other kids would always say, ‘Hey, look at the school shooter over there!'” Grooms recalled.
“They teased him about his poor hygiene, his body odor. He was an easy target,” she added. Grooms said Crooks definitely stood out as a freshman because he wore baggy jeans and SpongeBob SquarePants T-shirts. Grooms’ description is similar to that of classmate Jason Kohler, who told KDKA that Crooks was bullied “relentlessly” in high school.
Crooks was actually a Republican, but Trump may have seemed like the ultimate bully, or “Chad,” to him.
Even after successfully breaking into his phone, searching his computer, scouring his search history and bedroom, and interviewing his family and friends, agents have still found no evidence to suggest a political or ideological motivation for the shooting, law enforcement sources told CNN.
On Friday, he went to a gun range he was a member of and practiced shooting, a law enforcement official told CNN. The next morning, Crooks went to a Home Depot, where he bought a 5-foot ladder, and to a gun store, where he bought 50 rounds of ammunition, the official said. Investigators believe he used his newly purchased ladder to scale a nearby building and opened fire on the former president.
