➡ Judicial Watch, a group known for obtaining government information, has finally received the first FBI documents about the assassination attempt on President Trump in 2024. Despite warnings about a dangerous individual, the President was allowed on stage and nearly killed. The documents reveal details about the investigation and the events of that day, but hundreds of pages are still being withheld. This information was only released due to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, highlighting the need for such watchdog groups.
➡ Judicial Watch, a watchdog organization, has been crucial in obtaining public information about a near-assassination attempt on the president. Despite the FBI and Justice Department’s reluctance to release these documents, Judicial Watch has persisted, raising concerns about the Secret Service’s failure to protect the president. The organization continues to fight for transparency and accountability from these agencies, particularly in relation to the protection of the president.

You have this dramatic confirmation that the Secret Service and, you know, the Secret Service is the lead agency here, so they’re ultimately responsible. We’re warned that there’s someone up to no good. And yet the President was allowed to get on the stage and later, obviously, he was nearly killed. What is Judicial Watch? Judicial Watch, those of you who watch this program regularly know, is the leader when it comes to extracting government information. We do it by asking under federal law, typically, the Freedom of Information Act, or the state variations of it at the state level, for documents from federal government agencies in the executive branch.

In this case, it’s the FBI and Justice Department. We asked almost immediately after the assassination attempt on President Trump in 2024 for records about that assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. And we’ve been ignored. We had the SU back last year. And finally, we have received the first FBI documents to be released under FOIA thus far about an event that took place nearly two years ago. And again, it’s Judicial Watch that’s getting this information out, not Congress, not the media. It’s not being voluntarily disclosed. It’s being disclosed under court process in our FOIA lawsuit that is the reason you are gaining access to this information, which is disturbing to read again.

Because if you, I mean, you remember, I’m sure, where you were when you heard that President Trump was almost murdered and two others injured. A poor man was murdered on that day. It was a terrible day. It was a terrible day for the country. And so to go back and read these new FBI documents that Judicial Watch was able to uncover through our FOIA lawsuit, it puts you one back in that place and that time period. So it’s not terribly pleasant, but it’s important to read them because they show what the FBI was asking about, what they were looking at, what information they were gaining, why they were doing the investigation, and other information that we might have guessed about but didn’t know until Judicial Watch’s litigation forced the release of it.

I think it was just last week. So according to the cover letter that they gave us with this first batch of documents, 255 pages were reviewed and 37 pages are being released. So hundreds of pages are being withheld from Judicial Watch. And this is the first batch. I don’t know if we’re going to get anything else. But the key, there are many highlights or lowlights, depending on your point of view, in this document. But it further confirms that everyone who was in a position to do something about it was alerted to the fact that there was a dangerous individual.

And the proof is the pudding, right? He was able to get shots off and more shots than he should have been able to get off even once he began firing, which is even more disturbing, despite there being everyone put on alert. And Trump wasn’t protected. Prior to the start of the shooting, one document shows, and this is an interview, it looks like, for the law enforcement agent, redacted. I think it’s a state official, received reports over the radio about an unknown male acting suspiciously. The unknown male had bags and was wearing a gray T-shirt with demolition ranch written on the front of it.

One report included the unknown male looking at a law enforcement sniper position. Several operators were communicating information about the unknown male back and forth over the radio, including two from command, from the Secret Service to the PSP, which is the Pennsylvania State Police, who are providing support to everybody. And they quote everybody, meaning they put everybody in quotes. This is from the FBI. So you have this dramatic confirmation that the Secret Service, and the Secret Service is the lead agency here, so they’re ultimately responsible, were warned that there’s someone up to no good. And it was allowed to get on the stage, and later, obviously, he was nearly killed.

Really inexcusable, and as far as I’m concerned, it raises questions about whether the Secret Service has been reformed enough to provide him the security necessary as President of the United States. I don’t think he’s secure under Secret Service protection. Is he partly secure? Yes. Is he sufficiently secure? I don’t believe it for one minute. It’s not based on my experience, and what I know about the Secret Service, which is quite extensive given Judicial Watches, investigations, and lawsuits over how it’s run and the problems over there. There’s another interesting document here, and there’s a lot of interesting things here, and I’m not going to go through all 35 pages, but they interview a woman who had some interesting run-ins with some folks there.

But this, I thought, was particularly interesting, and I want to show it to you and show you how it looks like in the documents themselves. Can we bring that up? So the FBI is interviewing this woman, and you’ll see in this center part here, so she recalled, they obviously redacked her name, that approximately five minutes after the shots were fired, a light silver-silveroo hatchback sped past her and almost struck her. She didn’t remember the vehicle having any stickers or distinct markers, didn’t get a look at the license plate, but believed the driver to be an older white male with short hair and tan skin.

She saw the Subaru in the parking lot near houses, specifically a brown house of the post. The vehicle departed the parking lot, making a sharp right turn near the old buildings. So what do you think of that? I think that’s interesting. Was it someone who panicked? Was it a law enforcement officer? Or was it someone else? I don’t know. But this is why it’s important to get these records. Once again, it’s Judicial Watch’s investigators that begin this process, and then our lawyers follow up with lawsuits when we get the runaround. And I encourage you to read the full batch of documents.

It’s accessible. As I said, it’s not pleasant to read, because some of it puts you in that spot again a few years ago, where Trump was almost killed. But it’s important information. I mean, you read about the heroic acts of the local police. I mean, you know, the shots are fired and the local police get in their armored vehicle and immediately go start working. They start protecting people and the medics who were attending to the injured and the poor man who was killed. Then they run to the hospital, provide security there for President Trump. Some fine law enforcement officials certainly at the local level.

Prior to these FBI records coming out, the only records we received substantively about the Butler assassination attempt were from local police in Pennsylvania. We’ve made seen videos. We’ll draw out some videos here. I’ll pause and show them to you. There’s the video of him crooks holding his phone, looking at his phone. That was uncovered only by Judicial Watch. There are some graphic photos that we’ll show you here. You’ll see there the blood and everything from where he was shot. And I think we have photos of his body as well. So all of that is because of Judicial Watch.

And it’s frustrating as all get out that we had to sue the FBI to get access to the basic information about this assassination attempt. Now, what was the FBI doing? It’s interesting to see administratively the basis for the investigation because it’s given to us in the documents. So I think I’ll share it with you. It’s kind of interesting. So you see here, FBI Pittsburgh is opening captioned investigation based on an articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that on July 13, 2024, Thomas Matthew Crooks utilized a DPMS Panther Arms AR style 556 rifle serial number listed to attempt to assassinate former president and current presidential candidate, political candidate Donald J.

Trump. They were speaking at a political rally at the Butler County Fairgrounds. And they list here on the next page the various laws that were at issue in his near killing of President Trump and the murder of that poor innocent man and injuring others. And so based on the information set forth within this case opening, it is requested that a blank case be opened and assigned to a list of special agents who will be running it for further investigation such as the subject’s motivation and to identify if there are any co-conspirators. As I said, this is just the beginning.

I think it’s just the beginning of the records we’re getting. But this is the first batch of records that the FBI has released to anyone publicly about the investigation of President Trump’s assassination or the assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. And it’s because of Judicial Watch. And isn’t it interesting how, like the most important story of the year, arguably other than the election, the near murder of a former president and presidential candidate, Judicial Watch is filing the lawsuit to get basic information about it. I mean, you may think because the story is of historic importance that the government just automatically releases information or people are lined up to get the info.

That’s not the way it works. So we need watchdogs on the wall like, let me start over on that one. So we need watchdogs on the wall like Judicial Watch, who in this case is literally at the tip of the spear gaining access to public information about the near murder of our president. And as I say in the press release, I’m happy to get the documents. I’m glad the FBI finally got its act together to release the information. But it wouldn’t have happened but for Judicial Watch. And that’s not really acceptable. The leadership of the FBI and the Justice Department, because when you sue the Justice, if you ask for documents from the FBI and don’t get them, you’re really asking the Justice Department because the FBI is a sub-agency of the Justice Department.

So we sue the Justice Department for FBI documents. So it’s a little bit confusing. But the leadership just get these records out in a timely way. Why are we having to even sue for these records? Or play this game where we get only a percentage of the records that they’ve actually reviewed. It’s not the way Americans want the government to behave. They want the transparency. I mean, you can see this with the Epstein files. They want information. But the chips fall where they may. These documents raise troubling new questions about Secret Service failures to protect President Trump.

And it shouldn’t have taken years in a federal lawsuit to get this basic FBI material about the near assassination of President Trump. Unacceptable. So this litigation will continue. Our other lawsuits over Secret Service issues will continue. I mean, we have this lawsuit we just filed not that long ago about how the FBI essentially led Trump into an ambush in a D.C. restaurant that had a bunch of Code Pink protesters who were within dangerous arms-length proximity to the President. Unacceptable. Unacceptable. And Judicial Watch will continue to hold the Secret Service to account and frankly hold the Justice Department and the FBI to account, who seem to be covering for them as opposed to exposing what went on so the American people can have some accountability for misconduct and ensure the Secret Service mission is actually being performed, if not by the Secret Service or someone else.

Which is the protection of President Trump and others who they by statute and otherwise have to protect. So I will keep you apprised as events warrant. Thank you. [tr:trw].

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