The FBI identified the shooter, who is dead, as Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. A motive was not clear.
…
Bethel Park is a predominantly white, relatively well-to-do city in the southern reaches of greater Pittsburgh. The site of the rally, Butler, is about an hour’s drive north of Pittsburgh.
Pennsylvania voter records listed a Thomas Matthew Crooks with the same address and birth date as a registered Republican, though it was not clear from the records when that was put in place.
Feel like I’m gonna be posting this a lot today. Pennsylvania uses a closed party primary voting system. If you’re a liberal voting in the primaries, it made the most sense to register Republican in Pennsylvania to vote for someone like Nikki Haley if you despise Trump. Don’t want to say this is what happened, just that we shouldn’t jump to false flag conspiracy conclusions right now.
I remember canvassing for Bernie back in 2016 and I knocked on a few doors of people who said “oh sorry, I switched to Republican to try to block Trump”. This is completely anecdotal evidence but it does happen. It’s rare though.
Edit: did a touch of cyber stalking… dad is a registered libertarian, mom is a democrat
He was registered back in 2021. Not sure this has much bearing on the 2024 primaries. He could have been a right leaning person who didn’t like Trump. Those people exist. Basically, most libertarians.
Those people exist
can confirm; am a small government fiscal conservative who thinks gays are people.
This is important to know, but at the same time, the majority of registered members in both parties in Pennsylvania voted for the front-runner, and given his youth (20), the primary was his first election involving presidential candidates.
We need to wait until the facts about him come out. Very little is currently known beyond the party registration and the YouTube gun channel.
He was wearing a t-shirt of a far-right militia group and owned an AR rifle. Does that sound like a Democrat?
I guarantee you that MAGA people will claim that he registered as a Republican as part of a big conspiracy that involves Biden personally sending him to kill Trump (which they won’t realize is arguably acceptable unless he is impeached and removed from office according to SCOTUS).
Already came out that he donated to a liberal group once. They will latch onto that
Yeah, single donation of $15 on January 20th, 2021 for voter turnout PAC.
You don’t think he was one of the Republicans that were outraged after January 6th?
Everything we know about him so far, screams “libertarian”.
Dad and sister are registered libertarians. Mom is a registered dem. Take from that what you will. I’m sure we’ll learn more about him in the coming days and weeks.
I read the FEC page. Same name, same zip code. Highly unlikely it’s someone else. Kid was 17 at the time and his job was “Not Employed”
NYTimes screenshot of the FEC document:
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/fe91e6ba36695009/ac182c3a-full.pdf
The donation is almost certainly him
Turns out the only good republican was a dead republican.
He was a registered Republican but he also gave $15 to The Progressive Turnout Project which is a Democratic run group.
Honestly, it kind of seems like if he didn’t do this, he would be a mass shooter. He was constantly bullied and was a quiet loner.
this is speculation but
disillusioned youth, no prospects, small hope in progressive cause (probably Bernie), gets screwed by the party, gets further disillusioned, sees TFG, thinks it’s good to have an outsider to show these establishment politicians what’s what, registers republican, gets easily reeled in to the far right pipeline, becomes interested in Q stuff, gets obsessed with pedophilia and Epstein, sees recent Epstein revelations about TFG, ends up where too many people end up in the US: full of anger and hate with easy access to guns.
could be far off, but i wouldn’t be surprised.
That Fucking Guy
Same zip code and age. Do you have evidence that it is a different person?
So, this is 100% speculative rambling at this point, but as a gut feeling on my part that can be proven wrong: I get the feeling it might have been someone from a Republican family, possibly shitty family psychology-wise, registered as Republican for his families sake but got f’d up by the pressure within his personal relationships and the state of the world, who radicalised himself on the internet.
