By Haley Willis, Aric Toler, David A. Fahrenthold and Adam Goldman
“Guys I am out. Be safe,” he texted to a group of colleagues at 4:19 p.m. on July 13. He exited the second floor of a warehouse that overlooked the campaign rally site, leaving two other countersnipers behind.
Outside, the officer noticed a young man with long stringy hair sitting on a picnic table near the warehouse. So, at 4:26 p.m., he texted his colleagues about the man, who was outside the fenced area of the Butler Fair Show grounds where Trump was to appear. He said that the person would have seen him come out with his rifle and “knows you guys are up there.”
The countersniper who sent the texts confirmed to The New York Times that the individual he saw was later identified as the gunman.
By 5:10 p.m., the young man was no longer on the picnic table. He was right below the countersnipers, who were upstairs in a warehouse owned by AGR International. One of the countersnipers took pictures of him, according to a law enforcement after-action report, which along with the texts from the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit was provided to the Times by the office of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. The text messages were independently verified by the Times.
At 5:38 p.m., the photos were shared in a group chat, and another text went out among the officers, saying they should inform the Secret Service. “Kid learning around building we are in. AGR I believe it is. I did see him with a range finder looking towards stage. FYI. If you wanna notify SS snipers to look out. I lost sight of him.”
By 6:11 p.m., the “kid” would be dead on the roof of a warehouse connected to the one the countersnipers were stationed in, after having been shot by the Secret Service for trying to kill a former president.
Taken together, the text messages provide the most detailed picture yet of the hours before the assassination attempt. They reveal that the gunman, later identified as Thomas Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, aroused police suspicion more than 90 minutes before the shooting, rather than about 60 minutes, as has been previously discussed in congressional hearings.
The messages also add to the evidence that the would-be assassin was often one step ahead of security forces, and in particular the Secret Service.
Crooks scoped out the rally site a day before the Secret Service did. He used a drone to survey the site while the Secret Service did not seek permission to use one for the rally. He researched how far Lee Harvey Oswald was from John F. Kennedy when he fatally shot the president in 1963 — the answer is about 265 feet — and managed to climb onto a roof that was about 400 feet from Trump at its closest point. The Secret Service left that roof unmanned.
And while countersnipers were assigned to surveil the rally, Crooks was also in a position to watch them.
Even after the episode ended, police seemed confused about what Crooks had done and how.
“So, on TV, they’re saying Trump was shot at, and he got hit, but I don’t believe that,” one local police officer said to another 17 minutes after the shooting, in a conversation captured on a body-worn camera.
As the officers in the video walk toward the warehouse on which Crooks’ lifeless body lay, one can be heard saying, “I’m trying to figure out how this guy got here.”
Investigators are still trying to determine Crooks’ motivations and his actions in the days before the rally, in part from what they have found on his personal devices. But the texts and footage, combined with interviews by the Times and public testimony by investigators, have filled in some of the answers.
Crooks already had the AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle he brought to the rally. He purchased it in October from his father, who had acquired it legally in 2013.
He began to receive packages at his house in the Pittsburgh suburbs, including fertilizer pellets and radio devices. He would later use some of this material to build rudimentary bombs, two of which were found in his vehicle after the shooting and another in his home.
Crooks had started searching online for information on famous people, including FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden and Trump. He also looked up “major depressive disorder.”
On July 3, Trump’s campaign announced the rally in Butler for 10 days later, and Crooks narrowed his focus to the former president — and to past assassinations.
On July 6, Crooks typed in an ominous phrase.
“He did a Google search for ‘How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?,’” Wray told a congressional committee last week.
The next day, Crooks drove to the farm show grounds, about an hour from his home. He spent 20 minutes there, investigators said. He also registered to attend the rally.
Secret Service agents would not hold their first walk-through until the next day, July 8, joined by law enforcement officials from several local and state agencies.
It was then that the Secret Service decided to exclude the entire warehouse complex owned by AGR — including Building No. 6, which Crooks would later use — from its inner security perimeter. This meant that on the day of the rally, Crooks was able to approach the building without passing through security screening.
There is still confusion about which agency was supposed to oversee the roof. Kimberly A. Cheatle, then the director of the Secret Service, told a House committee on Monday that she did not know whose job that was. She resigned the next day.
In the end, Trump was spared not by the vast law-enforcement contingent protecting him, but by chance. He turned his head, and Crooks’ first bullet whizzed by close enough to graze his right ear.
Trump dived to the ground, and Crooks sent off another round. The second Secret Service sniper team fired back and killed Crooks.
The body-camera footage shows officers climbing a ladder to find Crooks lying dead on the roof: a slight man, wearing black sneakers, a T-shirt and cargo shorts. His backpack and rifle lay nearby. A long trail of blood ran from his body down to the roof’s gutter.
“Looks like, what, at least eight,” one of them says, counting shell casings around him. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. At least eight.”
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