FBI Files Expose Trump’s Would-Be Assassin’s Heavily Redacted Chat Thread and Drone Records

Judicial Watch announced that it obtained 249 pages of new FBI records detailing a heavily redacted chat thread connected to Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump during a July 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Trump was a presidential candidate at the time of the shooting. The newly obtained material offers additional fragments from the investigation, though numerous messages and identifying details remain concealed by FBI redactions.

The conservative watchdog group secured the files through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in July 2025. Judicial Watch said it went to court after the FBI failed to respond to its records request concerning Crooks and the Butler shooting.

One FBI electronic communication, dated July 19, 2024, describes a cell phone conversation between Crooks and an unidentified recipient. The recipient’s name is redacted, and the conversation covered a period beginning May 21, 2023, and ending January 3, 2024.

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Crooks’ outgoing messages largely consist of brief and sometimes cryptic strings. Among the entries listed in the records are “Hello red,” “Yolo,” “890,” and various combinations of letters.

The incoming side of the conversation offers even less public information. According to the records obtained by Judicial Watch, those incoming messages were completely blacked out.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the records provide more information about Crooks while also showing how much remains withheld. “These latest records reveal more pieces of the puzzle surrounding Thomas Crooks,” Fitton said.

Fitton called on the bureau to “stop the slow drip of heavily redacted records” and release the complete investigative file. His demand came “especially since the death last week of James Copenhaver,” a rallygoer wounded in the attack “on President Trump.”

.@TomFitton James Copenhaver, who was shot and grievously wounded at a Trump rally in Butler, has died. This comes as the FBI continues to slow walk the release of 75,000 pages of records. READ: https://t.co/dZHSosLT5s pic.twitter.com/IDfxTblZzF

— Judicial Watch ⚖️ (@JudicialWatch) October 3, 2026

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A separate “Samsung Messaging Review,” dated July 18, 2024, identified other communications found on a Crooks phone as “pertinent.” Those communications included campaign solicitations from Raphael Warnock, then a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Georgia.

The review also identified DHL shipment notifications from Hong Kong. The supplied records do not provide additional details about the campaign solicitations or the shipment notifications beyond identifying them among the communications marked as pertinent.

A large portion of the FBI production involves laboratory analysis of a drone. A report dated July 19, 2024, states that agents extracted 40 images and eight flight logs from the device.

The logged flights occurred between February 6 and February 27, 2024, in the Pittsburgh area. Seven of the flights took place around Allegheny West, according to the report.

An eighth flight occurred over Butler on July 13, 2024, the day of the shooting. The report also states that the drone had been powered on 15 times.

EXCLUSIVE: Judicial Watch obtained records revealing that Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man who shot President Donald Trump at a July 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, used a drone to take photos in and around Pittsburgh in the months leading up to the assassination attempt.… pic.twitter.com/h3QMKTbjz1

— Judicial Watch ⚖️ (@JudicialWatch) October 2, 2026

In a companion release, Judicial Watch said the records contain texts filed beneath a “January 7 Intel Chain” heading. Those messages referenced “two CIA bomb techs” assisting at a pipe bomb scene and “several CIA dog teams on standby.”

Judicial Watch said the complete investigative file contains roughly 75,000 pages. At a production rate of approximately 500 pages each month, the group calculated that releasing the entire file would take 12 years.

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The release comes after Trump wrote on Truth Social in September that the Butler attack “was all a Democrat Plot.” Trump also claimed that much of the case file was “missing, altered, corrupted, or gone” by the time he took office.

The FBI, however, has maintained that Crooks acted alone. The newly released records provide more investigative material, but extensive redactions continue to obscure the incoming chat messages, the identity of Crooks’ correspondent, and other portions of the bureau’s files.

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