Would-be assassin Thomas Crooks “extensively” searched the name and address of Rep. James Comer, King Charles and former FBI Director Christopher Wray before 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 attempted assassination and told him his name and other personal details had appeared in multiple internet searches conducted by Crooks.
Britain’s monarch and Wray also appeared multiple times in Crooks’ search history, says Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee.
He says the Capitol Police were alerted to the Comer connection by the FBI, which found the name of the Republican Kentucky congressman on Crooks’ devices after Crooks was shot dead 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 never 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 offered or advised for me to get security. Nothing . . .
“That is a pretty serious call to make and then never follow up.”
Comer’s revelations are among several disturbing new pieces of information that have emerged about Crooks in the absence of a full report from the FBI on the gunman’s online activity, psychological profile and descent from high-achieving math whiz and high school honors graduate in suburban Pittsburgh to a 20-year-old would-be assassin in declining mental health who had started staying up all night dancing and talking to himself, according to his father.
Last week, a source provided The Post with portions of the gunman’s extremist digital footprint across 17 online platforms that have never been made public.
Now there are new allegations that Crooks’ autopsy and toxicology report was missing a crucial piece of information; his blood was tested for 12 drugs but not for cannabis. More on that below.
The Capitol Police did not respond to The Post’s questions Wednesday about Comer’s claims that Crooks had done extensive web searches on him.
But ex-Capitol Police Chief Steve Sund says he never received any warning about Crooks when Sund was chief from June 2019 or when he was assistant chief before that.
And he insists that online threats by Crooks naming members of Congress such as Rep. Ilhan Omar “should have been picked up by the [Capitol Police] legislative branch intelligence division,” whose job it is to protect all 535 members of Congress and their families.
The source who provided The Post with Crooks’ digital footprint says that, in the summer of 2019 — when Crooks was in his “pro-Trump” phase before flipping to anti-Trump the following year — the then-15-year-old loner made multiple comments on YouTube calling for “extreme violence against Democrats,” especially “Squad” members of Congress.
For example, on July 19, 2019, Crooks wrote in a YouTube comment: “Illhan [sic] Omar and others are invaders and should honestly be killed and their dead bodies sent back,” according to archived material discovered by our source.
On Dec. 12, 2019, Crooks wrote “MURDER THE DEMOCRATS!!” In January 2020, Crooks’ rhetoric suddenly turned anti-Trump until his online presence vanished in August 2020, according to the source.
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No threat warning?
Sund says the mention of high-profile, controversial members of Congress, such as the members of the “Squad” and members of the Freedom Caucus, or congressional leadership, should have triggered a threat warning when associated with words such as “killed.”
Intelligence agencies and other government entities, such as the Capitol Police’s intelligence division, use “web crawler” software to find keywords that indicate a potential threat, he says.
Sund says every intelligence agency has a “duty to warn” when they encounter threats to any American citizen; the agency tasked with protecting 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, autopsy on Crooks as “shoddy.”
The toxicology report showed Crooks’ blood had elevated levels of heavy metals — lead, antimony and selenium, which Finn says is a telltale sign of a chronic cannabis user.
He cites scientific research backing his claim, including a 2023 paper in the journal of Environmental Health Perspectives titled “Blood and Urinary Metal Levels among Exclusive Marijuana Users,” finding that “because the cannabis plant is a known scavenger of metals,” users had “statistically significantly higher” levels of lead and cadmium in their blood and urine.
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Dr. Finn said he repeatedly asked the Allegheny County, Pa., Medical Examiner to test samples of Crooks’ blood, urine and hair that it retained for a year, but he was ignored.
The toxicology report shows Crooks’ blood tested negative for alcohol, buprenorphine, benzodiazepines, cocaine metabolite, opiates, oxycodone, fentanyl, methamphetamine, barbiturates, methadone, amphetamine and carisoprodol.
The congressional report said the Allegheny Medical Examiner theorized that the excess lead levels in Crooks’ blood “could possibly be a result of the time Crooks spent at the firing range.”
When the Post asked for answers from the ME’s Office, Medical Secretary Alane Barringer said “I cannot answer any of these questions” and referred The Post to the communications office, which did not respond.
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 missing cannabis test is just one of many unanswered questions about Crooks.
Despite promising Helen Comperatore, the widow of slain rallygoer Corey Comperatore, a full public report five months ago, the FBI has produced no new information on the attack beyond what The Post has reported. The FBI web page titled “Butler Investigation Updates” has not been updated since Aug. 24 of last year.
‘Acted alone’
Helen told the Dr. Drew podcast in June that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino had told her Crooks acted alone and promised that the agency would release a report on its Butler investigation around 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 told Dr. Drew.
But Kelly Comperatore, Corey’s sister, told The Post Wednesday the firefighter’s family had received “nothing” from the FBI since. All they know has been gleaned from the media, and she says relatives remain anxious to know more.
Even after complaints from several members of Congress that the FBI had “stonewalled” their investigations into Butler, the FBI has not made public new information beyond a press release provided to Fox News Digital last week confirming that The Post’s reporting on Crooks’ digital footprint was accurate.
