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New FBI files show the Butler gunman's chat thread, with the other side blacked out.

New FBI Records Show Butler Gunman’s Chat Thread, With Every Incoming Message Blacked Out

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanOctober 3, 2026 · 4 min read
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The FBI has turned over another batch of records on Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the most intriguing page is the one the public cannot read. Judicial Watch announced on October 2, 2026, that it obtained 249 pages of FBI records, including a months-long chat thread between Crooks and a person whose name is redacted, with every incoming message blacked out.

The records came through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:25-cv-02216), which the group filed in July 2025 after the FBI failed to respond to a records request it made in July 2024, the month of the shooting.

The chat thread

According to Judicial Watch, an FBI electronic communication dated July 19, 2024, six days after the attack, describes a cell phone conversation the bureau labeled a “chat thread” between Crooks and a recipient whose name is withheld. The conversation ran from May 21, 2023, to January 2, 2024.

Crooks’ side of it, according to Judicial Watch, is mostly one- and two-word entries and strings of characters, such as “Hello,” “Yolo” and “red.” The other side, everything the unnamed person sent him over more than seven months, is fully redacted. So is the person’s identity.

There may be ordinary privacy reasons for some of those redactions. But the effect is that, more than two years after a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed a presidential candidate’s ear, the public still cannot see who Crooks was talking to over that period or what that person said.

The same release includes a “Samsung Messaging Review” dated July 18, 2024, in which agents flagged other conversations as “pertinent.” According to Judicial Watch, those included texts soliciting campaign donations for Raphael Warnock, then a U.S. Senate candidate in Georgia, and a DHL shipment notification from a sender listed as “HK.” The records do not say what that shipment contained. Being flagged as pertinent shows investigators thought the material worth noting; it does not by itself show that anyone helped Crooks.

The drone

An FBI lab report, also dated July 19, 2024, describes the bureau’s technical exploitation of Crooks’ drone. Investigators extracted 40 images and eight flight logs. The images were taken between February 6 and February 27, 2024, in the Pittsburgh area. Seven of the flights were in the Allegheny-West area. The eighth was in the Butler area on July 13, 2024, the day of the shooting. The device had been powered on 15 times.

These pages are the bureau’s own inventory of what was on the device, and they confirm that the drone was in the air over the Butler area on the day of the attack.

Twelve years at this pace

The larger problem is speed. According to Judicial Watch, the Justice Department says the Crooks investigative file totals about 75,000 pages. At the current rate of roughly 500 pages a month, it would take more than 12 years for the full file to be produced.

“These latest records reveal more pieces of the puzzle surrounding Thomas Crooks,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. The FBI, he said, “should stop the slow drip of heavily redacted records and immediately provide the full investigative record.” Fitton pointed to the recent death of James Copenhaver as a reason to release the full record now.

Copenhaver, 76, was wounded at the rally. He was shot in the arm and abdomen and went through multiple surgeries. According to the Associated Press, he died on September 23, 2026, at a Pittsburgh hospital. His lawyer’s statement did not say whether his death was directly related to his injuries. In June, he and his wife had sued the federal government, alleging the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security “utterly failed” to provide appropriate security. Trump called him “a true American Patriot.”

What the FBI and the president have said

The FBI has maintained that Crooks acted alone, and nothing in this batch identifies the person on the other end of the chat thread or shows that anyone knew of the plot.

The president has made clear he does not trust how the investigation was handled before he took office. In a Truth Social post on September 15, 2026, Trump wrote, “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,” and added, “By the time I got into Office, on January 20th, most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted, or gone.”

Whatever one believes about who, if anyone, else was involved, the case for transparency here is overwhelming. A man tried to kill a former president who was running to win the office back. A rallygoer was killed that day. Now another victim of that attack is dead. Americans paid for this investigation, and they are entitled to read it in their lifetimes, not in 2038.

Two years after Butler, the FBI is still handing out blacked-out pages one drip at a time, and Americans deserve the whole file now.

Sources

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