Judicial Watch sued the FBI for records of the Butler, related to the Butler assassination attempt. It was like a year we waited, they didn’t give us anything, and now it’s been one year almost and completely, and they finally started giving us documents in tranches. So we had one tranche released to us, I guess, a few months ago, that we talked about here, detailing issues about Secret Service failures at Butler, and we just got another batch of documents that we released earlier, and I’ve got some contacts for the prior work, I think I posted on the website here, and of course all of this is a result of a catastrophic failure by the Secret Service to protect President Trump.

It’s inexcusable, the more we learn, the more outrageous it is, and you can be sure that Judicial Watch will, well, A, we’ve initiated a massive, a massive investigation into the Secret Service failure. We already have upwards of 20 open records investigations requests at the federal, state, and local level over this shooting, because I don’t know about you, I don’t trust the federal agencies, the FBI, the Secret Service Department of Homeland Security, its mother agency, even Congress. You know, promises made, we pushed hard for the release of these records, or records related to the attempt to kill President Trump up in Butler, Pennsylvania, and initially we were only able to get records from the local police in Pennsylvania.

We got documents, there were pictures of Thomas Crook, the shooter that had not previously been released, it’s only because of Judicial Watch. Congress has been completely absent on this, a wall audit, and so as I said, we had this long standing litigation with the FBI, and they finally started releasing documents, and the new batch of documents just further confirmed very serious and disturbing failures of security, like core competencies related to the federal protective net that was supposed to be around the former president at the time, the candidate at the time, President Trump.

And this is the headline from our release, and I’ll give, look at this, FBI records reveal altercation at Trump rally site before shooting. Crooks was making hateful comments towards Trump. So this is the news. You had witnesses tell the FBI in these reports released for the first time only to Judicial Watch, exclusively to Judicial Watch, that Thomas Crooks was involved in altercations with Trump supporters, was making hateful comments directed at Trump immediately before he went and shot at President Trump. In fact, he walked from the altercation and went up on the roof, and minutes later nearly killed President Trump.

Now, this hasn’t been reported before because the FBI has been sitting on this information for years, which is bothersome to put it mildly. So let’s get into some of the details here. Now the number of records that are being released are woefully small in terms of the volume. We just got 27 records this time, heavily redacted. I think the last material was about 30 records, the last batch. So it’s really a kind of a modified limited hangout. We filed the lawsuit in July of 2025, and we’re now just getting just the beginnings of the records they might have about the Butler assassination.

I could read you everything we’re asking about, but it’s a pretty comprehensive lawsuit. And I’m glad the FBI is finally beginning to release this information. It’s never too late to be transparent, but we’ve had instances where we could wait for years and years and years, even though it’s outrageous to wait for two years, we could be waiting for six years sometimes. So I’m not going to look this gift horse in the mouth, I’m going to celebrate the release, but express concern at the same time about the pace of the release and why it took so long to begin releasing the information at all.

And this isn’t just applied at the Trump Justice Department. The Biden gang was sitting on this as well. And finally the Trump people figured out we need to start getting this material out because it’s important. On July 17th, 302 Investigative Report. Now, 302 Investigative Report is a report written by the FBI documenting witness interviews. I mean, that’s my layman’s understanding of what 302s are. And it’s really quite the racket, in my view, because they don’t make recordations typically of these interviews. So they’re kind of narratives of what is said. I mean, they’re seen as generally reliable, I guess, you know, in the courts.

I’ll defer to the defense lawyers out there or the prosecutors or just how reliable they are. But you can imagine my skepticism about a process where the FBI, the only record of an interview is a report written by the FBI agent and his colleague who participated in the interview. There’s no written record or no recordation of the interviews at all, typically. So anyway, we get these 302s and these 302s are the basis for this release because the information that I’m talking about is in these witness interviews documented in these 302 reports. So one report states it was a July 17th report.

When was this shooting? When was the shooting of President Trump? What was the day? July 13th. So it was a few days after the shooting. A woman who attended the Trump rally was interviewed by the FBI and reported that Crooks, quote, had an altercation with a group of people in the area where the woman was standing prior to the shooting. The witness continued that, quote, she observed Crooks climbing the building a short time after the interaction. So it’s clear he’s arguing with Trump supporters because this is another report that shows another rally attendee, actually it’s the same report, interviewed by agents, said he also heard the altercation involving Crooks at the rally.

The report states, in the name of the witnesses redacted, which is I guess appropriate, reported just before Donald Trump came on the stage, Crooks was making hateful comments towards Trump. The witness wasn’t sure if Crooks was filming the event or speaking with someone on his cell phone. So the witness obviously heard the altercation with the Trump supporters. Then he witnessed, and this is I think very interesting, Crooks on the phone and he wasn’t sure if he was filming Trump while he was saying these hateful comments, maybe he was providing commentary, I don’t know what that was about.

But it was like maybe he was, according to the witness, talking on the phone, the witness wasn’t sure, which would be extremely interesting for obvious reasons. But either way, this guy was causing a commotion, this potential murderer of the president in a very public way, and then he goes up on the roof. Where on earth was the Secret Service? I mean, you have a guy causing a commotion and the security isn’t there to at least take note of it or take action and say what’s going on here. And I tell you, these documents, beyond this kind of interesting witness testimony, have information from law enforcement officials who were there who essentially say, look, we were there, I showed up, there’s no communication, I don’t know who knew what about what briefings.

I mean, another series of reports documenting the lack of communication among the Secret Service and local law enforcement. And other law enforcement that were there because it wasn’t just Secret Service that were there, you obviously had, I think you had, from what I recall, HSI there, which is Homeland Security folks, also providing support. So it’s like failure on top of failure. We knew about the lack of security, communications, coordination. And then I keep on going back to that video and I think, let’s play it here, we’re going to play it. And you know, that’s a little bit old, that chart, that chart’s a couple of months old.

And if you want to really see something to say, take a look at what happened. Move it to the square. Move it to the square. Hold, hold. Are you ready? On you. Move! Move! Okay, we are watching live at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where former President Trump was speaking on the stage. There has been some kind of disturbance that clearly sets law enforcement and Secret Service into motion, immediately jumping around the former president in a protective mode. The crowd has been screaming, they are standing by. You can hear some voices there saying, are we ready to go, are we ready to go? We are looking at President Trump.

This does not look good. I’m going to be honest with you, from what we can see right here, it looks like they are attempting to move him out, that he may have been injured. He is holding up his arm, he is pumping his fist, but clearly Secret Service wants to get him out of this situation. He is attempting to stand and walk down his own, he has got his hand pumping in the air, his fist is pumping in the air, but quickly they are removing him from the stage. And you see in that video, where it just drives me crazy to see how long it took for them to get Trump out of there.

And of course you see the Secret Service female agent acting as if she never holstered or had handled a weapon before. It was a nightmare. I said in the press release, it should have taken two years in a federal lawsuit to find out that the Butler shooter was involved in an altercation with Trump supporters and made hateful comments towards Trump at the Butler rally minutes before he nearly killed Trump. Now, these new FBI documents are disturbing and astonishing, detailing more conduct by the shooter that should have gotten the attention of Secret Service.

And this is why, and I am sure many of you share my concerns, I am terribly concerned about the safety of the President. I think the Secret Service is a dysfunctional organization. The proof is the pudding. He has been nearly killed twice while under their alleged protection. Story after story, and Judicial Watch has been investigating the Secret Service for years now, decades in some respects, shows that it is kind of a nightmare agency in terms of accountability, in terms of, you know, they had the DEI craziness that I don’t think has been sufficiently curtailed, really contempt for the lying agents out there in a way that destroys morale, and it puts the agents at risk and it puts the protectees at risk.

And I just see material like this where there is an eruption at a rally for the President or the candidate, the number one candidate for President of the United States at the time, and nothing is done. And we still got records and lawsuits pending on all sorts of issues. Remember the President was confronted by those leftists at the restaurant as the Secret Service stood around, almost waiting for something to happen before they would act. It was crazy. Those were the Code Pink protesters. You can look it up. Watch the video. We’ve got lawsuit after lawsuit.

You can go to our website and look at them at our press release. You’ll have the link there. Following up on all sorts of issues really into the Secret Service and the protection of the President. I don’t know about you. I consider this an important aspect of Judicial Watch’s work, because it might be lives or at stake with this one, including the President’s. So to read all the Butler documents, go to judicialwatch.org, the link’s below. And again, share the wealth. What do I mean by share the wealth? The important educational materials about what your government’s up to and what it’s not up to in bad ways, at least with respect to the Secret Service.

Because this information is a blockbuster. [tr:trw].

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