New FBI files expose Crooks’ redacted chat thread and drone flights before Butler attack

Judicial Watch forced out 249 pages of FBI records on Thomas Crooks showing a blacked-out chat thread and a drone flight over Butler on the day of the shooting, and the full file is still being slow-walked.

Breitbart reported that Judicial Watch obtained the new batch of FBI records through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in July 2025 after the bureau failed to answer a request for material on Crooks and the July 2024 assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The production includes an FBI electronic communication dated July 19, 2024, a Samsung Messaging Review from July 18, 2024, and a laboratory analysis of a drone tied to Crooks. Incoming messages in a long chat thread are completely blacked out. The full investigative file runs to roughly 75,000 pages. At about 500 pages a month, production would take 12 years.

That pace is the story. A gunman nearly killed a presidential candidate, killed a rallygoer, and wounded others. Years later the public still gets redactions and drips.

Blacked-out chats and one-word strings

The records describe a cell-phone chat thread running from May 21, 2023, to January 3, 2024, between Crooks and a redacted recipient. Outgoing messages consist largely of one- and two-word strings such as “Hello red,” “Yolo,” “890,” and mashes of letters. Incoming messages are entirely blacked out.

A July 18, 2024, Samsung Messaging Review flagged other communications on a Crooks phone as “pertinent.” Those included campaign solicitations from then-U.S. Senate candidate Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and DHL shipment notifications from Hong Kong.

Just The News reported additional unredacted texts from February 2023 in which an unknown contact asked Crooks, “did you 3D print the parts?” and he replied that he did, minus the “fan blades.” Messages also show Crooks traded Christmas 2022 gifts with the mystery person and discussed college classes. Crooks’ father had previously said his son tried to fashion a handgun with a 3D printer and fired only one round, fearing it would explode.

The same 3D-printing exchange appears in other coverage of the Judicial Watch release. On Feb. 9, 2023, the unknown contact messaged, “Did you 3D print the parts?” Crooks answered, “Yes, except for the fan blades.”

The New York Post noted those February 2023 texts alongside the later coded one- and two-word strings running from May 2023 into January 2024, plus the DHL package notice from Hong Kong and dozens of drone images.

Drone logs put a flight over Butler on shooting day

FBI laboratory analysis extracted 40 images and eight flight logs from a drone associated with Crooks. The images and logs cover February 6 to February 27, 2024, in the Pittsburgh area. Seven flights occurred around Allegheny-West. The eighth was over Butler on July 13, 2024, the day of the rally attack. The device had been powered on 15 times.

Fox News reported that the drone photos included Pittsburgh sports venues, among them PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium, and that the same records set contained the Hong Kong DHL notification and the strange short-message strings. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton tied the release to the recent death of James Copenhaver, a rallygoer severely wounded in the attack.

Fitton said the latest records “reveal more pieces of the puzzle surrounding Thomas Crooks.” He pressed the FBI to “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 wounded in the attempt “on President Turmp [sic].”

The same demand for full production appears across the Judicial Watch comments in the new reporting. The bureau’s partial releases leave the recipient of the long chat thread unknown and the incoming side of that conversation invisible to the public.

FBI still says Crooks acted alone

The Washington Examiner reported the FBI’s conclusion that Thomas Matthew Crooks acted alone in the 2024 attempted assassination of Trump in Butler. Crooks, then 20, struck Trump in the ear and killed rally attendee Corey Comperatore. It was the first assassination attempt on a former or current president since the 1981 attempt on Ronald Reagan.

That official finding sits beside the new paper trail: a multi-month redacted chat, 3D-printing talk a year earlier, a package notice from Hong Kong, and a drone that logged a flight over Butler on the day of the shooting. The records do not, on their face, replace the bureau’s lone-actor conclusion. They do show how much of the file remains withheld or blacked out.

Separate records described under a “January 7 Intel Chain” heading reference “two CIA bomb techs” assisting at a pipe-bomb scene and “several CIA dog teams on standby.” The year attached to that heading is not clearly stated in the released summary.

Accountability fights inside federal law enforcement have not been limited to this case. FBI personnel decisions have drawn scrutiny in other politically charged probes, and the Crooks production lands in that same climate of distrust over what gets released and what stays buried.

Trump says the file was gutted before he took office

In a September post on Truth Social, Trump said the Butler attack “was all a Democrat Plot” and that much of the case file was “missing, altered, corrupted, or gone” by the time he took office. The new Judicial Watch pages do not prove that claim. They do show heavy redaction, a multi-year chat with one side erased, and a production schedule that would stretch toward a decade if the full 75,000-page file moved at the current rate.

Threat cases around the former president have kept federal agencies busy on other fronts as well. Federal charges over repeated threats to kill Trump have underscored how seriously those investigations are treated when they are pursued in public. The Crooks file is the one that still arrives in black bars and partial dumps.

Leadership turnover at the bureau forms part of the backdrop. Recent FBI leadership changes have left the public watching a revolving door while major assassination-attempt records remain heavily redacted more than a year after the shooting.

FOIA pressure is one of the few tools outside groups have. Other FOIA releases on FBI directives have shown how internal priorities get set. Judicial Watch’s lawsuit over the Crooks material follows the same path: sue, wait, then publish what the bureau finally produces.

Protection questions around the Trump family have also stayed live. Secret Service threat assessments continue for a reason. Butler showed what happens when the perimeter fails. The records fight shows what happens when the paper trail fails to keep up.

What the public still cannot see

The redacted recipient of the May 2023, January 2024 chat remains unnamed in the released pages. The incoming half of that thread is gone from public view. The absolute date of James Copenhaver’s death is given only as “last week” in Fitton’s comments. The precise case number of the FOIA suit is not stated in the summary material. The full unredacted investigative file is still not out.

What is out is specific enough to demand faster production: short coded outgoing strings, a year of contact with someone the public cannot identify, 3D-printing talk, a Hong Kong shipment notice, dozens of drone images, seven flights near Allegheny-West, and an eighth over Butler on July 13, 2024. The FBI’s lone-actor finding may stand. The redactions and the 12-year math on the full file do not inspire confidence that the public has the whole record.

When a near-assassination of a presidential candidate still yields blacked-out chats and a multi-year drip, the bureau is not finished earning the public’s trust, it is testing it.