Thomas Matthew Crooksa 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, has been identified as The Attacker Who Fired an AR-15 at Donald Trump’s RallyHe had no criminal record in Pennsylvania, and investigators have not yet identified a motive.
A voter roll showed that Crooks was registered as a republicanthough federal campaign finance records show he donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a liberal voter turnout group, through the Democratic donation platform ActBlue in January 2021.
Investigators are searching the man’s home in Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh and about an hour’s drive from the rally site in Butler.
According to The Tribune-Review in western Pennsylvania, Crooks appears to have graduated in 2022 from Bethel Park High School, which has about 1,400 students, and received a $500 “star award” from the National Math and Science Initiative that year. In an online recording of the 2022 graduation, The New York Times reports, Crooks can be seen walking across the stage to modest applause after his name was called: a slim young man with glasses and a black graduation gown who posed briefly with a school official and accepted his diploma.