Judicial Watch has obtained 249 pages of FBI records about Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman who tried to kill then-presidential candidate Donald Trump at a July 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The records, released through a federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, include drone photos Crooks took of the Pittsburgh area, campaign fundraising texts linked to Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, and a strange chat thread between Crooks and an unidentified person.
An FBI electronic communication dated July 19, 2024, describes a chat thread recovered from Crooks’ phone. The conversation ran from May 21, 2023, to January 2, 2024, and the outgoing messages consist mostly of one- or two-word strings: “Hello,” “red,” “Yolo,” “Hdudhdbdbbd,” “7888ejdj,” and similar entries. All incoming messages in the thread are fully redacted.
A separate FBI report dated July 18, 2024, labeled a “Samsung Messaging Review,” identified other conversations on the phone as pertinent to the investigation. Those include exchanges with multiple redacted contacts dating back to December 2022. Investigators also flagged text messages that were campaign solicitations for then-Senate candidate Raphael Warnock, along with a DHL shipment notification from “HK.” According to the Thomas Crooks FBI records release, the Justice Department estimates the full investigative file runs roughly 75,000 pages. At the current release pace of about 500 pages per month, Judicial Watch says it would take more than 12 years to receive everything.
Much of the new material covers FBI laboratory analysis of Crooks’ drone. A lab report dated July 19, 2024, says agents extracted 40 images and eight flight logs from the device. The photos were taken between February 6 and February 27, 2024, in the Pittsburgh area. Seven of the eight flights took place in the Allegheny-West, Pennsylvania, area, and the eighth was on July 13, 2024, the day of the assassination attempt, in Butler. The drone had been powered on 15 times total.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called on the FBI to speed up its disclosures. These latest records reveal more pieces of the puzzle surrounding Thomas Crooks,” Fitton said. The FBI should stop the slow drip of heavily redacted records and immediately provide the full investigative record, especially since the death last week of James Copenhaver, who was severely injured from being shot during the assassination attempt on President Trump.”
Earlier releases from the same lawsuit have added other details to the picture. Records from September 2026 showed Crooks purchased a chest rig and ceramic plates and displayed increasingly erratic behavior. June 2026 records revealed a SWAT officer found a gray remote device with an antenna in Crooks’ pocket after he was shot. April 2026 disclosures showed law enforcement had broadcast radio warnings about a suspicious male before the shooting started, and that Crooks had reportedly been involved in an altercation and made hateful comments about Trump at the rally.
Judicial Watch originally sent its records request to the FBI in July 2024 and filed its lawsuit in July 2025 after receiving no response. The case is docketed as Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice, No. 1:25-cv-02216. Further document releases are expected in the months ahead as the litigation continues.
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