Already targeted in 2016
What Trump’s team knew about the assassin’s family
Donald Trump narrowly escaped death on Saturday evening when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks shot him with a semi-automatic rifle. Investigators assume that the weapon belongs to his father. He had - ironically - been listed by Trump's campaign team in 2016 as a gun enthusiast and "persuadable voter" ...
This was revealed by the British television station Channel 4 News. According to the report, Trump's campaign team created a database in 2016 with profiles of millions of voters in contested US states, the so-called swing states. The aim of the originally secret project by Trump supporters was to compile data to identify millions of gun owners and potential voters in the USA who could respond positively to the issue of gun rights in the run-up to the 2016 election campaign.
Targeted by Trump campaign as gun owners
As the broadcaster reports, the family of assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks was also included in this extensive database. The profiles of the parents showed that they were highly likely to be gun owners and share "other gun-related lifestyle indicators", according to the report.
In the database of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, which was leaked to Channel 4 News in 2020, 53-year-old Matthew Crooks and his wife Mary are listed as residents of a house in the Bethel Park neighborhood south of Pittsburgh. In Bethel Park, Crooks senior ranked in the top 20 of the "persuadable voter" division. His wife was listed as a "Democrat" but was considered open to a pro-gun agenda.
According to FBI Special Agent Kevin Rojek, the 20-year-old Crooks had used an AR-15 rifle that had been legally purchased to commit the crime. Investigators believe that the gun belonged to Crooks' father. However, it is still unclear how his son obtained the rifle with which he fired at Trump.
Assassin was discovered early on
Meanwhile, new findings from the investigation into the assassination are increasing the pressure on the security forces. An hour before Crooks fired at Trump, local security staff classified the assassin in the crowd as suspicious - a "young man who was behaving strangely", as the New York Times reported. The Secret Service, which protects Trump, had also been informed. But then the suspect's trail was lost, it is said.
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