Thomas Matthew Crooks became increasingly obsessed with guns and long-range shooting before he attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump on the campaign trail in July 2024, according to newly unclassified documents released by the FBI.The 20-year-old engineering student spent the day before he fired at Trump at the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, where he practiced shooting on average once a week, according to the federal files.He was a “terrible shot” at first, his father told investigators, according to documents cited by the New York Post, but diligently practiced on his own and at shooting ranges.
An employee at Keystone Shooting Center outside Pittsburgh described Crooks as “an odd duck” and “not someone they would want their daughter to spend time with,” federal investigators noted in the documents.One person at the Clairton gun club told investigators he remembered Crooks practicing a 100-yard shot the day before the president’s speech in Butler, Pennsylvania.The collection of reports and interviews comprise 600 pages of interviews with Crooks’ relatives, neighbors, teachers and classmates.
It also includes reports from responding law enforcement officers and details from the ensuing investigation.Together, the documents provide the first detailed look at Trump’s would-be assassin and his obsession with firearms, which Crooks’ father, Matthew Crooks, told investigators he developed during the Covid pandemic, according to the Post.Attempts to reach Matthew Crooks were unsuccessful Tuesday night.NBC News has not independently verified the documents cited by the Post in its reporting on Crooks’ father, which the office of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said it showed the outlet in person.
NBC News requested the documents from Grassley, but his office did not provide them.In a brief interview with NBC News on Tuesday, Grassley said, “We don’t know anything about the motivation [of] why [Crooks] wanted ...