25 Minutes - The Secret Service Knew. The Radio Stayed Silent. Donald Trump Took the Stage.

Crooks did not come to the Butler County Fairgrounds with only a rifle. He came with a rifle, a backpack to conceal it, and two improvised explosive devices in the trunk of his car — built with remote detonation capability. The IEDs failed to detonate due to construction problems and because the remote detonation receiver was in the off position. What happened on July 13, 2024 could have been significantly worse.

The most important documented fact in this entire investigation is not about Thomas Crooks. It is about what happened inside the Secret Service security room between 5:45 PM and 6:11 PM on July 13, 2024.

At 5:45 PM, the Pennsylvania State Police Security Room Officer — stationed inside the USSS security room at the Butler County Fairgrounds — received a call from the Butler County command post reporting that a local tactical team was looking for a suspicious individual. During the conversation, the PSP officer relayed that the suspicious individual was outside the perimeter and had a rangefinder. The PSP officer relayed this information directly to the USSS Security Room Agent — the man responsible for all communications at a USSS protected event.

What happened next is documented in conflicting testimony before the Senate and in the FBI's own joint interview records. The PSP Security Room Officer described the USSS agent's reaction: "I got a distinct impression that there's, like, a lack of urgency… it was like, oh, like, okay. Like, it wasn't like he rushed around or did anything."

The USSS Security Room Agent did not transmit the information over the radio. He relayed it by phone to the C-UAS Advance Agent. Because he chose phone instead of radio, the message never reached USSS post standers, counter snipers, or — critically — the DTD shift detail. The DTD shift detail is the team that had the authority to prevent Trump from taking the stage.

Congressman Clay Higgins spent 20 hours on the ground at the Butler crime scene in August 2024, accompanied by retired SWAT operator John Chautin and assisted by ESU Commander Edward Lenz and Butler County DA Senior Detective William Mayhugh. He reenacted Crooks' movements, examined every window at AGR, climbed the air conditioning unit, and reconstructed the complete shot sequence from eyewitness ESU accounts. The following is his documented reconstruction, consistent with FBI records.

The United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs spent one year investigating what happened. They interviewed 17 USSS personnel under oath. They reviewed 75,000 pages of documents. Their conclusion, stated in the title of their final report: these were the U.S. Secret Service's failures surrounding the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt.

These were not the failures of a single agent on a bad day. The Senate documented a pattern that began more than a year before the shooting, included denials of requested assets at the headquarters level, and culminated in a communications breakdown on the ground that left the man responsible for transmitting life-critical information choosing a phone call over a radio.

The intelligence picture surrounding the July 13 rally adds another layer of documented failure. On July 12, 2024 — the day before the shooting — the FBI arrested Asif Raza Merchant, a Pakistani national with ties to Iran and the IRGC, on murder-for-hire charges related to a plot to assassinate U.S. political officials. Merchant had paid $5,000 to undercover federal law enforcement and attempted to flee the country. The New York Times reported that FBI Director Christopher Wray was personally involved in ensuring USSS was made aware of the threat to Trump. It was in response to this threat that USSS made the decision to send counter snipers to Butler on July 13.

And yet: none of the USSS counter snipers deployed at Butler were informed of the threat intelligence that drove the decision to deploy them. The Senate confirmed this in multiple transcribed interviews. The ATSAIC of DTD — the man who would have had authority to keep Trump off the stage — told the Committee he never received a verbal briefing from PID indicating an elevated threat environment. He knew only that there was "a credible, long-range threat to [Trump] and it's by the typical actors."

One year after the assassination attempt on the current President of the United States, the Secret Service had formally disciplined six people. Not one was fired. The details on those disciplinary actions were withheld from the Senate Committee until Chairman Rand Paul issued a subpoena on July 1, 2025. USSS completed the disciplinary process for two of those six personnel only after the subpoena was issued.

The FBI's FOIA release in this case — Case 25-cv-2216 — came with a deletion sheet attached. It is the first two pages of the document package Brian received. It is not a list of minor administrative redactions. It is a ledger of everything the public is not allowed to see.

More significant than the redactions is what happened to Crooks' body. Congressman Higgins, on the ground in Butler on August 5, 2024, attempted to examine the body for his Congressional investigation. He discovered that the FBI had released the body for cremation on July 23, 2024 — 10 days after the shooting. Nobody knew. Not the County Coroner. Not local law enforcement. Not the Sheriff. The Butler County Coroner told Higgins he would never have released the body to the family for cremation without specific permission from the FBI.

Higgins noted the date with precision: July 23, 2024 — the day Crooks was cremated — the Homeland Security Committee and the Oversight Committee had already begun formal jurisdictional investigations into the shooting. Speaker Johnson had already publicly announced he was forming an Official Congressional investigative body. The FBI knew all of this. The body was cremated anyway.

The autopsy and toxicology reports exist. The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records ruled in January 2025 that they are available for a $600 fee. But the identification records — the DNA, dental records, fingerprints, and forensic documentation used to confirm that the body was actually Thomas Matthew Crooks — were ruled exempt from public disclosure. A citizen who filed a Right-to-Know request specifically seeking those records was denied. They cannot be obtained without a subpoena.

The Senate Committee encountered the same obstruction at the federal level. The Committee's request to the FBI was transmitted July 24, 2024. Beginning in October 2024, the Committee went to the Department of Justice four separate times to view FBI interview summaries, lab reports, and firearms and explosives examinations in-camera. When they arrived, the documents were produced in-camera — but redacted. The Senate Committee's conclusion: DOJ producing redacted documents in-camera "greatly rendered the purpose for the Committee's visit moot."

The ATF was asked to make available a specific individual involved in the July 13 rally. The ATF produced one overly redacted document and a general statement that the ATF had "no official involvement in the rally." The interview request was never fulfilled.