FBI Deputy Director: Trump Shooter Believed To Be Author Of ‘Anti-Semitic’ And ‘Anti-Immigration’ Posts Online

Former President Donald Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks is believed by the FBI to have shared “anti-semitic and anti-immigration” posts on social media and espoused “extreme” views in support of “political violence.”

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate told senators at a joint hearing of the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees on Tuesday that the FBI’s investigative teams are still working to verify that the account does belong to the shooter.

The deputy director told senators:

While the investigation is not to determine motive, the investigative team continues to review information from legal returns, including online and social media accounts. 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 timeframe.

There were over 700 comments posted from this 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. While the investigative team is still working to verify this account to determine if it did, in fact, belong to the shooter, we believe it important to share and noted today particularly given the general absence of other information to date from social media and other sources of information that reflect on the shooter’s potential motive and mind set.

These are the factings, in part, that the investigation has revealed to date. While the shooter is dead, our work is very much ongoing and urgent.

Abbate appeared alongside acting Secret Service director Ronald Rowe. Rowe replaced the agency’s former director Kimberly Cheatle last week after she resigned in the aftermath of a House hearing in which she failed to answer questions — to the committee’s satisfaction — about the communication failures in the lead up to the July 13 rally attack.

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