Social Media CEO Counters FBI's Claims About Trump Shooter's Political Beliefs

With no clear motive yet unearthed for Thomas Matthew Crooks’ attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, a heated debate erupted Tuesday over Crooks' potential political ideology.

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate ignited the controversy by informing members of the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary Committees during a hearing that the FBI might have discovered a clue, according to Reuters.

“Something just very recently uncovered that I want to share is a social media account which is believed to be associated with the shooter in about the 2019-2020 time frame,” Abbate said, noting that the account had posted more than 700 comments. He did not specify which platform hosted the account.

“Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature,” Abbate explained.

At the time described by Abbate, Crooks, who was 20 when he was shot dead while trying to assassinate Trump, would have been about 15 years old.

Andrew Torba, the founder and CEO of the social media site Gab, pushed back hard on the allegations.

Torba had earlier posted on X that “the deranged Joe Biden supporter who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump may have had an account on our platform.”

He noted that nine posts on Gab from 2021 showed Crooks supporting Biden’s policies on immigration and COVID-19 lockdowns.

“The FBI is now claiming that the Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks had an unspecified ‘social media account’ in 2019/2020 (when he was 14/15 years old) that posted ‘anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic’ content,” Torba posted on X on Tuesday.

“This is not consistent with Gab’s understanding of the shooter’s motives based on an Emergency Disclosure Request (EDR) we received from the FBI last week for the Gab account ‘EpicMicrowave’ which, based on the content of that EDR, the FBI appeared to think belonged to Thomas Crooks,” he wrote.

The post garnered significant attention on social media:

Torba argued that biases are influencing the investigation into Crooks' motive for attempting to kill Trump.

“Many, particularly regime media reporters, have doubted Gab’s claims that this request existed. Normally we don’t confirm the existence or content of law enforcement communications. In this instance, we had to make an exception due to the overwhelming public interest in disclosure and transparency,” he wrote, noting that he posted the first page of the request Gab received.

“The story is this: the account for which data was requested was, UNEQUIVOCALLY, pro-Biden and in particular pro-Biden’s immigration policy. To the best of Gab’s knowledge, as of 2021, Crooks was a pro-lockdown, pro-immigration, left-wing Joe Biden supporter,” he wrote.

Torba later praised Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee for a line of questioning that forced Abbate to admit that the Gab account’s postings came after the other alleged postings, reflecting Crooks’ state of mind closer to the time of the shooting.

A former high school classmate of Crooks said that even before that, Crooks disliked Trump.

Citing a debate in an English class after the 2016 presidential contest, Vincent Taormina told Fox News that Crooks showed open disdain for Trump supporters.

“I brought up the fact that I’m Hispanic and, you know, I’m for Trump. And he said, ‘Well, you’re Hispanic, so shouldn’t you hate Trump?’” Taormina said.

“And I was like, no. He’s great. He’s a great president. He called me stupid – or insinuated that I was, like, well, that’s kinda stupid.”