By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-09-17 09:51:55 | Updated at 2026-09-17 10:44:24
1 hour ago
Attorney General Todd Blanche said Tuesday that the FBI has uncovered new information about the man who tried to assassinate President Donald Trump at a 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“It is new information about the shooter and about his background, about his history, and that stuff that we didn’t know before,” Blanche told reporters at a White House press conference on Sept. 15.
He did not reveal what the bureau found.
The comments from Blanche came hours after Trump claimed on social media that new information was found about the assassination attempt and alleged that it was really a failed “Democrat Plot, to get me out of the Election.”
Investigations into the shooting have found the shooter acted alone.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sept. 15: “Everybody knows the Crooked Joe Biden FBI didn’t do what they should have with respect to the Lunatic who shot me in Butler, PA. By the time I got into Office, on January 20th, most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted, or gone. New info was just found! Why wasn’t it seen long ago?”
Trump added that former FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom he appointed in his first term, “should pay a price” for how the department responded to the assassination attempt “and certainly for the things he said.”
Blanche, who was Trump’s personal lawyer at the time of the assassination attempt, said during the briefing that he was with Trump as the investigation into the shooting was playing out, trying to ascertain what happened.
“His frustration and concern about what the former director was doing is something that is not new,” Blanche said.
The gunman was identified as
Thomas Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. On July 13, 2024, Crooks climbed onto the roof of the American Glass Research building outside the Secret Service’s inner perimeter and opened fire about eight minutes into Trump’s speech. A bullet grazed Trump’s right ear.
Corey Comperatore, a retired firefighter shielding his family, was killed, while James Copenhaver and David Dutch were seriously wounded by shots fired by Crooks. A Secret Service counter-sniper killed Crooks.
Blanche offered no further description of the new material. He did not say when it was developed or whether it would be released at a later date.
In November 2025, FBI Director Kash Patel said the evidence pointed to Crooks planning and carrying out the attack on his own. Patel said the bureau found no evidence of accomplices and no sign Crooks had discussed his intent with anyone.
The work, Patel said, involved more than 480 FBI employees, more than 1,000 interviews, about 2,000 public tips, data from 13 digital devices, review of 500,000 files, hundreds of hours of video, 10 financial accounts, and 25 social media or online forum accounts.
In July 2024, then-Director Christopher Wray told Congress that investigators had not identified a motive and had found no indication of co-conspirators. Wray said Crooks searched online on July 6, the day the Butler rally was announced, for “how far away was Oswald from Kennedy.”
The same day, Wray said, Crooks registered for the rally. Crooks legally obtained the DPMS Panther Arms A-15-style rifle from his father. He bought ammunition about five hours before the shooting, flew a drone roughly two hours before Trump took the stage, and fired eight shots from the roof, Wray said. Investigators recovered relatively crude explosive devices and a detonation device that Crooks had been in possession of.
At least nine federal reports on the Butler shooting have been made public.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton
told">toldThe Epoch Times on July 7 that FBI files on the case run to about 75,000 pages and that large portions remain redacted, with the bureau reviewing only about 300 pages a month. At that pace, he said, their full release would take more than 20 years.
The FBI, in a July 8 email, said that, under the current administration, it has been “the most transparent in history,” having released nearly 60,000 pages of classified documents to the public in the past 16 months—more than four times the volume released by Patel’s predecessors combined.
The crowd reacts after shots are fired at a rally for Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pa., July 13, 2024. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Helen Comperatore, Corey’s widow, has
pressed for a releaseof the rest of the documents. She told The Epoch Times she should “be able to have all of it.” She said she has no doubt Crooks fired the shots that killed her husband and wounded Trump and the other two men, but still believes he had help.
“I want to know: Who in Butler was involved in this conspiracy to do this?” she said.
Fitton said some released records mention cars that fled the scene; witness names were blacked out. “Unnecessary secrecy feeds conspiracy theories,” he said.
A Department of Homeland Security inspector general report from July found the Secret Service missed 102 radio transmissions from local officers searching for a suspicious person and received only a handful of calls and texts about Crooks. The report said the service
failedto detect the drone Crooks flew over the site. A 2024 House task force called the
shooting preventableand cited planning and communications failures.
On the second anniversary of the shooting, Trump said
Godhad been watching over him. His sons, he said, told him there was almost “no chance” of a miss from that distance with the rifle Crooks used.
