Trump was shot a year ago. Why do we still know so little?

Summary

Post Reports: Trump Was Shot a Year Ago. Why Do We Still Know So Little?

Podcast Information:

• Title: Post Reports
• Host/Author: The Washington Post
• Episode: Trump was shot a year ago. Why do we still know so little?
• Release Date: July 13, 2025

Hosts:

• Colby Ikowicz
• Carol Lennig (Guest, Investigative Reporter)

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1. Introduction and Context

On the one-year anniversary of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, Post Reports delves into the lingering mysteries surrounding the attack. Host Colby Ikowicz engages in an in-depth conversation with investigative reporter Carol Lennig to explore the limited understanding of the gunman's motives and the security failures that allowed the incident to occur.

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2. The Incident and Initial Investigation

Colby Ikowicz begins by recounting the day of the shooting:

"One of the days from last year that stands out most clearly in my mind is the day Donald Trump was shot." ([00:34])

The incident occurred during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Trump was shot by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks. Despite extensive investigations, the motive behind Crooks' actions remains largely unclear.

Carol Lennig describes Crooks as follows:

"Thomas Crooks is the classic profile of a mass shooter... but he didn't leave a manifesto or any document explaining his motives." ([02:17])

Unlike previous presidential assassins like John Hinckley Jr. or Arthur Bremer, Crooks did not provide any clear ideological or personal motive through writings or communications, making his actions particularly enigmatic.

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3. Unraveling Crooks' Background

Over the past year, Carol Lennig has uncovered various facets of Crooks' life:

• Dual Life: Crooks was both an exemplary student and someone deeply engrossed in violent ideologies. He maintained high academic performance while simultaneously researching explosives and attending shooting ranges.

  "He was an enthusiastic dean's list kid with great grades... and on the other hand, he was researching Biden and Trump events maybe 60 times before he became fixated." ([04:06])

• Political Ambiguity: Crooks did not exhibit a strong or consistent political ideology. He supported both Democratic and Republican causes at different times, making it difficult to pin his motives on partisan lines.

  "He didn't have a very strong or strident ideology... he just liked to debate back and forth the policies of Republicans and Democrats." ([06:24])

• Social Isolation: Investigators found no evidence of close friends or confidants in Crooks' life, suggesting he may have been a loner, which aligns with typical profiles of mass shooters.

  "The FBI could not find anyone that would define themselves as a friend of his." ([07:25])

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4. Investigating Foreign Connections: The Iran Angle

Early suspicions arose that Crooks might have ties to foreign adversaries, particularly Iran, especially given Trump's adversarial stance towards the country. Carol Lennig explains:

"The US government began sifting through NSA intelligence... They suspected he might be a recruit of a foreign adversary, particularly Iran." ([04:06])

An Iranian operative named Asif Merchant was arrested shortly before the shooting, raising concerns about potential ties. However, extensive investigations found no substantive evidence linking Crooks to Iran.

"Everyone I've spoken to who's been involved in this case has ruled it out... there was no element, no evidence to connect Crooks to Iran anywhere." ([10:46])

Despite the initial fears, authorities concluded that Crooks acted alone without foreign assistance.

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5. Trump's Perspective and Response

The shooting had a profound impact on Donald Trump, intensifying his focus on national security and particularly on Iran.

"He is extremely mindful that Iran, ever since he authorized the 2020 strike to kill... it is on his mind." ([12:01])

Trump has expressed that surviving the attempt was divine intervention and has continued to take extraordinary security measures to protect himself against perceived threats.

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6. Secret Service Failures and Security Lapses

A critical aspect of the investigation highlights significant lapses within the Secret Service, which failed to adequately protect Trump during the rally.

Colby Ikowicz questions Carol Lennig about the security failures:

"It remains stunning to me that this guy was able to kind of survey the area outside the rally, get himself to a roof, and take a shot." ([16:12])

Carol Lennig elaborates on the shortcomings:

"Donald Trump wasn't a president, he was a presidential candidate. And so he automatically got a lot less help... the Secret Service treated it as just another event." ([17:29])

These lapses include insufficient protection measures and inadequate preparedness, despite prior warnings from the National Security Council about potential threats.

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7. Current State and Future of Secret Service Protections

In response to the Butler incident, the Secret Service has announced a major reorganization aimed at enhancing presidential security. However, Carol Lennig remains skeptical:

"They say they're doing this massive reorganization... I have not seen that with my own eyes yet." ([22:49])

She emphasizes the need for tangible changes and increased accountability to prevent future security breaches.

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8. Conclusion

Despite a year passing since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, many questions remain unanswered regarding the gunman's motives and the security failures that occurred. The investigation, led by reporters like Carol Lennig, underscores the complexities involved in unraveling such high-profile incidents and the imperative to strengthen protective measures for national leaders.

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Notable Quotes:

• Colby Ikowicz: "It was stunning that Crooks was able to graze Trump's ear, get off eight shots from a building..." ([17:29])

• Carol Lennig: "If we don't get serious about protecting the president... we're just courting disaster." ([21:20])

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For a deeper dive into the ongoing impacts of the Butler shooting and related investigations, subscribe to Post Reports and explore The Washington Post's comprehensive coverage of these critical issues.

Transcript

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[Colby Ikowicz]

One of the days from last year that stands out most clearly in my mind is the day Donald Trump was shot.

[Unknown Speaker]

If you want to really see something that said, take a look at what happened.

[Colby Ikowicz]

Most of us have probably seen the photos from the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania of Trump rising up surrounded by Secret Service, pumping his fist in the air with blood smeared across his face. We would later learn that the gunman was 20 year old Thomas Matthew Crooks. He grew up in Pennsylvania, not far from where the rally took place. And in the days and weeks following the shooting, it wasn't clear why he had done it or how he'd been able to get so close to killing the then former president. From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Colby IKOWICZ. It's Sunday, July 13th. Today we're bringing you a special episode on the one year anniversary of the shooting. I spoke with my colleague, investigative reporter Carol Lennig, about why we still know so little about the gunman's motive and what we can learn from the security failures of that day. Carol, I'm so thrilled to have you on.

[Carol Lennig]

Oh, it's so good to be here with you, Colby.

[Colby Ikowicz]

So, Carol, in the last year you've been looking into the gunman who attempted to assassinate Trump. What have you learned about him?

[Carol Lennig]

In many ways, Thomas Crooks is the classic profile of a mass shooter. And I say many ways because there's one way in which he's not the many ways. Like a Hinckley, a John Hinckley who tried to kill President Reagan, like an Arthur Bremer who tried to kill President Nixon and eventually shot and paralyzed George Wallace. These individuals were isolated men, loners, very disaffected and separate from their peers and colleagues, didn't have very many friends. They had something sad and torturous about their lives. And they also plotted a bold and violent act that would gain them enormous attention and really a high profile, attention grabbing headlines. But the way in which Thomas Crooks did not match this profile of a would be assassin of a president or a mass shooter in a school was he didn't really leave a fingerprint or a manifesto that said, here's what I'm trying to do. Despite the entirety of the US Government's enormous resources invested in this investigation, they never found that manifesto. They never found that diary that explained or an email or a note that explained. Here's what I'm trying to do.

[Colby Ikowicz]

I imagine they interviewed as many people as they could. I mean, talk to me about what their investigation has looked like over the last year. The people they've talked to, have they been able, what were they able to learn about him?

[Carol Lennig]

COLBY this investigation spanned the globe, you know, from Butler, Pennsylvania to Tehran. Because of the concern that he might have been a recruit of a foreign adversary, particularly Iran, the US government began sifting through NSA intelligence, signals intelligence. They began asking their foreign allies for information that they could collect about communications between the US And Iran and different people in different places. They had an emergency interview in a Houston jail cell with an Iranian operative that they had just arrested on that Friday before the shooting, without his attorney, citing the urgent potential threat to national security and public safety. They interviewed him in the middle of the night, right after the shooting. We're talking wee hours before dawn. And while they did not find these links to him connected to any foreign adversary, they began piecing together all of Thomas Crook's move going back to when he was 16. They found a young man who became interested in explosives and in the year before the shooting had become fairly obsessed about taking shooting practice at a nearby range, had begun researching how to make a bomb from fertilizer, had on the one hand been leading a kind of double life that nobody noticed. He was a enthusiastic dean's list kid with great grades, straight A's at a community college, hoping to transfer to a four year college for an engineering degree. And on the other hand, he was researching Biden and Trump events maybe 60 times before he became fixated and hyper focused on an event in Butler that Trump would appear at that was advertised.

[Colby Ikowicz]

On July 3, which wasn't that far away from where he lived at the.

[Carol Lennig]

Time, 50 miles from his little suburban and very sweet community in sort of south Pittsburgh.

[Colby Ikowicz]

And in any of the communications that he had that they found politics, like, was he interested in politics?

[Carol Lennig]

That was such a confusing riddle for the investigators on this case. He didn't have a very strong or strident ideology. He was at one point a proponent of some of Biden's policies. When he was young. He had donated $15 to Act Blue, a progressive organization. He was a registered Republican. His father was a registered libertarian and his mother was a Democrat. They had some Trump signs in their front lawn, which eventually disappeared before the shooting. But at some point they indicated some support for Trump. But his politics were not defining. And in fact, his father, in a curbside interview sometime after midnight after the shooting, told federal agents that his son just liked to debate back and forth the policies of Republicans and Democrats, Biden versus Trump, without taking a very firm stand.

[Colby Ikowicz]

Did he have friends?

[Carol Lennig]

The FBI could not find anyone that would define themselves as a friend of his. He had classmates, he had people he ran into. But his father again said in an interview with federal agents that, you know, he'd not heard his son mention friends or a girlfriend. He didn't know who his son's co workers were, if he was close to any of them.

[Colby Ikowicz]

So there was really no one in his life that he would have confided in or kind of shared any of his emotional burdens.

[Carol Lennig]

Not that the FBI could find. Which is such a good question on your part. Right. Because one of the things people say about mass shooters and federal authorities will say this often, is that there's always some sort of clue ahead of time, but nobody picked up his clue. Whatever it was, he didn't drop one.

[Colby Ikowicz]

You mentioned Karol Aran, which is such a fascinating part of this story. Why did the government think that that could be a possibility, that crooks could be some operative working for the Iranian government?

[Carol Lennig]

It seems like a stretch, right? A 20 year old in rural Pennsylvania.

[Colby Ikowicz]

Sounds like a plot of a movie.

[Carol Lennig]

Yeah. I don't want to make fun of it or light of it because it is completely reasonable. Why? In the hours after the shooting, sources that I spoke to at the time were very nervous that he could be an Iranian plant. On Friday, July 12, the FBI in Houston arrest secretly arrested a man named Asif Merchant. They had been monitoring him in an undercover sting since April of 2024. And the reason was that an informant came to the FBI and said that Asif Merchant, a friend of his, had tried to recruit him to find and help him find hitmen who would be willing in the United States to kill a quote unquote High profile U.S. political figure. The informant went to the FBI, who then arranged undercover agents to pose as hitman that a SIF merchant could meet with and potentially hire. The undercover agents met with him in a hotel room and a SIF merchant on a napkin drew a map for them of a Stage, potentially at a rally, a podium where a prominent figure might be standing, and how you could kill this person from close range, if it was indoors, or from long range, if it was outdoors, with a long gun. And Merchant told the undercover agents that he would give them instructions about who they would kill and where when he left the country. But before that happened, the FBI arrested him on that Friday, July 12, as he was planning to put his baggage in the trunk of a car and head to the airport for a flight which they believed was going to Pakistan.

[Colby Ikowicz]

Wow.

[Carol Lennig]

So you can imagine how bizarre it was to then have someone try to assassinate Donald Trump the next day.

[Colby Ikowicz]

I know they've found no evidence that connects this 20 year old from Western Pennsylvania to Iran, but have they completely ruled it out?

[Carol Lennig]

Everyone I've spoken to who's been involved in this case has ruled it out. In the words of one prominent investigator briefed on almost every element of this case. If we didn't see it here, it didn't exist. You know, they had turned over the earth and they were looking at classified signals intelligence. And of course, that middle of the night interview Sunday morning, just hours after the shooting, they question Merchant about this. And it's conceivable he could have tried to lie to them, right? But he said, no, no, no, I don't know this guy. But every other leaf they picked up, every other stone they turned over. There was no element, no evidence to connect Crooks to Iran anywhere.

[Colby Ikowicz]

So now I'm thinking, Carol, Trump has this fixation with Iran. He's been hell bent on destroying their nuclear program. He recently bombed several nuclear sites, and so does the fact that there were people in Iran, maybe still people in Iran that wanted to have him killed. Is there some connection between that and Trump's fixation on the country?

[Carol Lennig]

It's hard to know with absolute certainty. But having written a lot and reported a lot about Donald Trump, I know he is obsessed with Iran and I know that the shooting changed him. He has said at different times that God meant for him to live, but on top of that, it was terrifying and continued to be terrifying throughout the campaign for him and his aides. As you know, they took extraordinary measures to protect him. All sorts of devices, including dummy planes and different kinds of armored cars and decoy motorcade routes. So he is extremely mindful that Iran, ever since he authorized the 2020 strike to kill the revered Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, and ever since then and their plot to kill him, it is on his mind. It's hard to separate that does it affect his decision on, in his words, obliterating the nuclear capacity of Iran? It's hard to imagine it doesn't impact him.

[Colby Ikowicz]

After the break, what the failures at Butler tell us about the state of the Secret Service and whether anything has changed to make presidents and candidates safer. We'll be right back.

[Jessica Contrera]

I'm Jessica Contrera and I'm a reporter at the Washington Post. Every day at the Post, we are trying to make sure that we are holding public, powerful institutions accountable. For the last two years, for me, that has meant looking at child sexual abuse by members of law enforcement all across the country. We identified at least 1800 police officers who have been arrested for crimes involving child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2022. That number, figuring out that this is happening and figuring out how it's happening. It never would have been possible without the time and resources it takes to do an investigation like this. And when you subscribe to the Washington Post, that's the kind of work that you're supporting, making sure that powerful institutions are held accountable by the taxpayers who pay for their work. Subscriptions support this work and the people behind it. I'm Jessica Contrera and I'm one of the people behind the Post.

[Colby Ikowicz]

So the government investigates this, and as we've established, crooks at least seems to have acted alone. They've not found any link to Iran or another group or co conspirators. Has that been a conclusion that Trump has accepted? Is he okay with the fact that there's just not really an answer?

[Carol Lennig]

It strikes me that he's not satisfied with this.

[Unknown Speaker]

Really. Why is it that the father of the shooter and the butler instance has one of the best and most expensive lawyers in the entire state of Pennsylvania? How did he get to this expensive lawyer? Big, big law firm, the biggest in Pittsburgh. Where did he get this big law firm from? It's sort of strange.

[Carol Lennig]

There's something still gnawing at Donald Trump about this. And despite the evidence pointing almost exclusively to this conclusion, it's not sitting right with him. And it's certainly not sitting right with what you'd consider sort of MAGA land. There's still a lot of people pushing conspiracy theories about Iran or about a deeper political motive. And one way in which that came to the fore was when FBI Director Kaj Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino went onto Fox News and sort of said, look, there's no there there. In fact, it was Bongin. She knows words that like, hey, if there was something amazing, we'd tell you.

[Unknown Speaker]

In some of these cases, the there you're looking for is not there. And I know people, I get it. I understand it's not there. If it was there, we would have told you.

[Carol Lennig]

And I've heard that the current leadership of the FBI has reached the same conclusion that the Biden FBI reached, which is this was a loner, a lost soul, a person who was willing to shoot anybody, really, that was high profile for whatever mental health problems he had. That's what he was going for. But whether Trump and his fan base will accept that is another question.

[Colby Ikowicz]

Carol, I have to say that that night of the shooting a year ago, I was on vacation with my family. I think we all kind of jumped into coverage. But the first person who popped into my mind was you, because no one has covered the Secret Service like you have. And it is remains stunning to me that this guy was able to kind of survey the area outside the rally, get himself to a roof, and he was able to take a shot at the then former president. How? How did that happen?

[Carol Lennig]

I remember that night really pointedly, too, because my editor, Peter Walston, woke me up. I was taking a nap. We had just finished, like, a marathon editing session on a different story, and he woke me up. He said, you gotta get up. Trump's been shot. I immediately went to the videos. Everything I could see. I called sources. Some Secret Service sources that were still on the job were just aghast, right? Because it was stunning that crooks was able to graze Trump's ear, get off eight shots from a building that essentially was a billboard screaming in this open rally site that said, lone gunman on a high building. You know, this is how John F. Kennedy was killed. And this is something the Secret Service agents that I know stay up all night worrying about the day before an event have. We made sure there is no line of sight where a long gun can pierce our guy. And to know that that flank was not protected was stunning. I remember looking at some of the pictures of the event that night and just calling my editor and saying, something's way wrong. Something went way wrong here. And add on to that, the thing I didn't know that night, but would learn later, which is National Security Council had warned the Secret Service in the days before this rally, donald Trump needs extra protection right now because of Iran. Now, that wasn't told to everyone in the Secret Service, but it was told to leadership. It was told, be on your guard. We need extra protection for this guy. Because the FBI had been monitoring this guy, a sif Merchant, they knew he was trying to kill a prominent US Figure. They suspected strongly that he was trying to kill Trump. In fact, as a result of that second threat about Iran, the Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheadle at the time arranges to send countersnipers at the last minute. If she hadn't sent countersniper teams, he could be dead, because the countersniper is the one who kills crooks with one shot when he finally spots him on the roof. But to your question of how. The problem with the Secret Service that so many agents have warned me about is that it's very by the book. And Donald Trump wasn't a president, he was a presidential candidate. And so he automatically got a lot less help, he got a lot less security around him. And so this was just, in the words of one agent, just another event we gotta tick off and get through, as opposed to a place where it might happen. This might be the day somebody tries to kill him.

[Colby Ikowicz]

I mean, Carol, when you were covering the Secret Service and its lapses during the Obama administration, there was obviously, after your reporting, an effort to shore up the Secret Service. Right. So that something like this didn't happen. And yet it did. And to your point, he wasn't president anymore, but he was a former president. Were you surprised, given the fact that the Secret Service had been under such a microscope, you know, during Obama, that then there was this massive lapse?

[Carol Lennig]

I hate to say that I wasn't surprised. I was really disappointed. It was a call to arms. In 2014 and 2015. Agents risked their careers and some of them lost their careers talking to me to sound the alarm. And their repeated refrain to me was, he's gonna be killed on my watch. That's what's gonna happen. And that's why I'm talking to you.

[Colby Ikowicz]

At that time, talking about President Obama.

[Carol Lennig]

Exactly. They knew that threat matrix for him was really high. They knew the Service was suffering from kind of a duct tape and glue approach sometimes to public events. And there weren't enough bodies, there wasn't enough of an investment in technology to really make him secure. And that just went on for interminable amount of time. And they couldn't take it anymore. Unfortunately, it was the result partially of funding and partially of a slightly dysfunctional leadership. But all of the Secret Service's weaknesses and vulnerabilities, agents attributed to a budget cutting default mode that just kept cutting into the bone for resources, for technology, for replacing the alarm system around the White House, which ultimately allowed a jumper to get inside the building. And I fear, Colby, that if we don't get serious about protecting the president, which is ultimately about protecting democracy, if we don't get serious about it now, we're just courting disaster.

[Colby Ikowicz]

Do you feel then that like in the year since this happened, has there been positive change, or do you still think that there's a major risk out there?

[Carol Lennig]

The Secret Service has said to me that they're doing this massive reorganization to channel resources more and more towards protection and presidential security. I have not seen that with my own eyes yet and verified it, but they say that's the reorganization direction they're headed. We'll have to test them on that. You know, we'll have to make them show us.

[Colby Ikowicz]

Carol, thank you so much for being here. It was such a serious topic, but a joy to have you on.

[Carol Lennig]

Oh, it's nice to talk to you about it.

[Colby Ikowicz]

Carol Lennig is is an investigative reporter for the Post. We'll put a link to her story about the investigation into Thomas Matthew Crooks in our show Notes along with the rest of the Post's coverage of the Butler anniversary. Late last week, the Secret Service suspended six agents who were involved in security for the Butler campaign event. The agents were suspended without pay. That's it for Post reports. Thanks for listening. Today's episode was produced by Sabi Robinson and and mixed by Rennie Siernofsky. It was edited by Maggie Penman. In case you missed it, check out our episode from Friday for a deeper dive into how the shooting in Butler changed Trump and how that fits into the larger story of his rise back to power. That episode is with my colleague Isaac Arnsdorf, who has a new book out about the 2024 election. We'll put links in our show notes for the book and that episode, too. I'm Cole Bjekowicz. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from the Washington Post.

[Sally Jenkins]

I'm Sally Jenkins and I'm a sports columnist and feature writer for the Washington Post. My job entails pulling the curtain on really big sports events at what is going on in locker rooms, what's going on in the stadium tunnel, most importantly, what's going on in the minds of the athletes that I cover. I think that we have an instinct that sports are really important in some primal way. We pay a lot of money for them. We build really big stadiums for them. And I think that athletics really gets us in touch with aspiration and teach something very, very important about accountability, about self determination. And so my job is to really make those links explicit for readers and users subscriptions support this work and the people behind it. Find out [e-mail] I'm Sally Jenkins and I'm one of the people behind the Post.