In the summer of 2024, Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts — one at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, and another at his Palm Beach golf course on September 15 — yet the investigations into both were shut down by Trump himself, the FBI has withheld tens of thousands of records, and the events coincided with a dramatic and unexplained shift in Trump’s political identity from anti-neocon outsider to enthusiastic regime-change hawk. Ken Silva, a reporter who wrote the most detailed book on these events, walks through the unanswered questions, security failures, suspicious evidence handling, and the broader implications of a story that has been almost entirely ignored by mainstream media.
The Butler Shooting: What the Official Story Says vs. What We Know
The official account holds that Thomas Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, PA, was a lone, radicalized left-wing gunman who exploited a security gap to fire from a rooftop 150 yards from Trump, grazed Trump’s ear, killed a firefighter named Corey Comparatore, wounded three others, and was killed by a Secret Service sniper — case closed, no accomplices.
This story has never been seriously investigated, and the FBI has fought transparency at every turn.
Judicial Watch’s FOIA lawsuit revealed the FBI possesses at least 75,000 responsive records on Crooks, yet after four months of monthly productions, only about 200 pages have been released.
The FBI’s shifting excuses — first that the investigation is closed, then that it’s “open but not active” — are legally inconsistent and appear designed to avoid disclosure.
If this were truly a lone-gunman case with no accomplices, there would be no logical reason to hide anything.
Who Was Thomas Crooks?
Crooks remains a cipher. The public record paints him as a model young man — straight-A student, well-liked, planning to transfer to Robert Morris University that fall, emailing his community college about his diploma status less than a month before the shooting.
His political identity is murky. He was a registered Republican who donated to the progressive ActBlue PAC on Biden’s inauguration day. He used encryption and VPNs heavily in his final years, leaving almost no digital trail.
His community college metadata, obtained via FOIA, showed visits to mundane sites — Steelers fan pages, Reddit, Twitter, ar15.com — nothing obviously radical.
He trained at Clariton Sports Club 43 times in roughly 10 months, and on four occasions signed in simultaneously with an unidentified person who went to the same range. On at least one day, both trained on pistols and rifles. Crooks even emailed his teacher that he’d be late to class because of the range visit — highly unusual for a model student who rarely missed class.
The Day of the Butler Shooting: Cascading Security Failures
The Secret Service site agent arrived at 8 a.m. to find no colleagues present; they trickled in around 10 a.m. A Pennsylvania state trooper was kicked out of the security briefing, creating an insular information environment.
The counter-drone operator, Eduardo Castro, couldn’t get his detection equipment working until 4:20 p.m. — the exact moment Crooks returned and flew a drone over the site for 11 minutes.
Crooks first cased the site around 10 a.m., drove home to Bethel Park (45 minutes away), retrieved his rifle, bought ammunition and a ladder (later abandoned in the woods), and returned.
He never went through magnetometers or entered the perimeter, having registered via an encrypted email but never using the ticket.
He scaled the AGR building using air conditioning units, not the ladder.
Local snipers spotted a suspicious person as early as 4:20 p.m. and texted colleagues, but the information was never broadcast over radios.
At 5:20 p.m., a local sniper spotted Crooks with a rangefinder. The information was texted to the local command center leader, Edward Lenz, who called the Secret Service command center — but the Secret Service command center leader, Jeffrey Burr, claims he never heard it, and nothing was put over the radios.
At 6:03 p.m., Crooks was on the roof. A local cop spotted him at 6:06. Lenz put it on channel 3 (heard only by traffic cops), not channel 4 (the snipers and QRF team). He again called the Secret Service, who again failed to broadcast it.
At roughly 6:09, local detective Tyler Collins was boosted up to the roof, saw Crooks, who swiveled his rifle at him. Collins dropped down and announced the person was armed — about 25-30 seconds before the shooting.
At 6:11 p.m., Crooks fired eight shots in about five seconds. The first grazed Trump’s ear. The second flew over Trump’s shoulder (likely hitting wounded rallygoer David Dutch). One killed Corey Comparatore. Jim Copenhaver was shot twice, with one bullet still lodged near his spine.
The Sniper Response: The Central Anomaly
The official story credits Secret Service sniper David King with saving Trump’s life. Trump has publicly praised him, claiming King responded in 4.2 seconds from 400 yards — neither claim is true.
In reality, local cop Aaron Zalopony fired the first effective shot from the ground, hitting Crooks and stopping his firing after eight shots. Ten full seconds passed before David King fired the final shot.
King’s congressional testimony is deeply contradictory:
He told the House task force he didn’t see Crooks until after all shooting had stopped.
A Senate staffer confronted him with his own contemporaneous notes, in which he wrote that he saw Crooks “low crawling with an AR-15 into position” before the shooting started, got a rangefinder reading, observed him shooting, and then engaged.
King remains on Trump’s detail and was praised by Trump again after the second assassination attempt. Zalopony, the actual hero, has never been publicly acknowledged by Trump.
The Mishandling of Crooks’ Body and Autopsy
Crooks’ body was left on the rooftop until 6 a.m. the next morning, then sent to Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) rather than the local Butler County coroner — with conflicting explanations given (better facilities vs. avoiding press attention).
The body was released for cremation within one to two weeks, while bullet fragments remained in Crooks’ shoulder — a potential evidence mishandling.
The toxicology report, obtained by Silva after a months-long legal battle, is incomplete:
The medical examiner collected eight specimens but only reported results for five. Bile, one tube of blood, and an envelope of hair were never tested or never included.
The medical examiner, Dr. Ariel Goldschmidt, has not explained why.
Goldschmidt is a dual Israeli citizen who was in Israel after October 7 helping identify bodies and was photographed alongside Chen Kugel, an Israeli official associated with dubious claims about beheaded babies.
Goldschmidt insists Zalopony never hit Crooks, despite ballistic evidence (fragmentation inconsistent with the Secret Service round) and the fact that Crooks stopped shooting immediately after Zalopony fired.
Nobody was fired over the Butler failures. Director Kimberly Cheadle resigned under bipartisan pressure and received taxpayer-funded security. Five or six agents were suspended, mostly from the Pittsburgh field office.
The Iranian Connection: A Controlled Sting
On July 12, 2024 — the day before Butler — Pakistani national Asif Merchant was arrested in a supposed Iranian assassination plot against Trump. The case was announced in August and widely assumed to be linked to Butler, but it was a fully controlled FBI sting:
Merchant was monitored before entering the country. Initial intelligence reportedly came from Israel.
He was connected to an FBI informant — an Afghan former U.S. military translator — who drove him around and facilitated the entire operation.
Undercover FBI agents (the “hitmen” Ted Cruz cited) took Merchant to a strip club, discussed vague plans, and accepted a $5,000 down payment that the informant helped Merchant arrange.
Merchant never proposed anything illegal before being surrounded by feds. He had no capacity, no English, and no means.
The case has over 1.6 million pieces of classified evidence that even Merchant’s own attorneys cannot review under the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA).
Critically, this phony Iranian threat is what prompted the Secret Service to send snipers to Butler for the first time that year — replacing the local snipers who would have been on the barns behind Trump and who, Silva argues, would have responded far more effectively.
The Palm Beach Attempt: Ryan Routh
On September 15, 2024, Ryan Routh, a 58-year-old construction worker with an extensive criminal record, hid in the bushes at Trump’s Palm Beach golf course with an SKS rifle.
A Secret Service agent on advance spotted him at point-blank range, fired five times, missed all five, and Routh fled.
Routh was not caught by the Secret Service. A civilian witness took down his license plate after hearing gunshots; Palm Beach Sheriff’s deputies pulled him over on I-95 in another county 45 minutes later.
During the traffic backup caused by the arrest, a woman rear-ended stopped traffic, putting her three-year-old daughter into a coma with permanent brain damage.
Routh had been flagged by at least seven federal or international agencies:
The ATF had been aware of him since 2002, when he threatened undocumented workers with a shotgun, possessed dynamite, and was caught with a machine gun. He received only probation.
A travel nurse reported him to the FBI, State Department, and Customs in 2019 for dangerous rhetoric.
A former CIA officer flagged him. The State Department had an open investigation for arms trafficking violations.
Routh had gone to Ukraine in 2022 to join the foreign legion, was rejected, and turned to recruiting foreign fighters — an activity that necessarily involved CIA awareness. He appeared in an Azov battalion commercial. His “best partner” in recruiting was an Israeli man he could not name.
The most disturbing anomaly: Routh had been camping at the golf course for roughly 11 hours before the shooting. Geolocation data placed him there at 2:30 a.m. Trump had made a last-minute decision to go golfing, informed to the Secret Service at 2:00 a.m. How Routh knew to be there was never explained.
Routh represented himself at trial, delivered a disastrous opening statement about human rights that the judge made him forfeit, and was convicted. Judge Cannon sealed information on national security grounds — despite Routh being a multiple convicted felon construction worker with no obvious connection to classified intelligence. Silva suspects FISA involvement and informant networks.
The Transformation of Trump
The two assassination attempts coincided with a dramatic and unexplained transformation in Trump:
Two days before Butler, Trump had not yet chosen a running mate; all contenders were neoconservatives except JD Vance. After the shooting, Trump’s legal problems vanished, he was effortlessly elected, and he became what Silva describes as the leading neocon in the world — more hawkish than Bill Kristol or Robert Kagan.
Trump went from opposing regime-change wars to launching one against Iran in February 2025, and from promising to end the Ukraine war to sustaining it with American tax dollars.
He appointed the people who failed to protect him to positions of greater authority: Sean Curran, who was briefed on the phony Iranian threat and headed Trump’s detail at Butler, became Director of the Secret Service. Susie Wiles, reportedly Curran’s advocate, is a key White House figure.
Trump shut down the investigation into his own attempted murder — a fact Silva calls the most shocking of the Trump administration, with no non-sinister explanation.
After the Routh attempt, Trump was subjected to what Silva describes as a psy-op: the Secret Service told him Iranians had smuggled missiles into the country to shoot down his plane (no evidence, no arrests), put him on a decoy plane (Steve Witkoff’s), and had staff ride as decoys on Trump Force One — all preparatory to the Iran war.
The Unanswered Questions
Silva’s most pressing questions:
Why did the Secret Service sniper wait up to 23 seconds — through two volleys of eight shots, one of which hit Trump — before responding, and why does his testimony contradict his own contemporaneous notes?
Why is this sniper the person Trump publicly praises as a hero, while the actual hero (Zalopony) is ignored?
Why is the toxicology report incomplete, and why was the medical examiner a dual Israeli citizen with ties to controversial Israeli government narratives?
Why has the FBI withheld 75,000 records in a supposedly closed lone-gunman case?
How did Ryan Routh know Trump would be at the golf course at 2:30 a.m. when the decision was made at 2:00 a.m.?
Why does classified information surround both the Merchant and Routh cases, and what does CIPA conceal?
The broader question: why has virtually no one in media or government pursued these answers? Silva’s book is the first forensic investigation of these events, and he expects it may take decades for the full truth to emerge.
