Kelly reacts to unearthed Thomas Crooks social media posts
After threatening social media posts, seemingly made by Thomas Matthew Crooks, were made public, U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-16th, said those posts were never made available to the Congressional Task Force he led.
“Maybe (investigators) thought there was some reason these shouldn’t be public. I’m not casting judgment. I’m just saying we didn’t have access to it. I’m just learning about it now for the first time,” Kelly said on Wednesday, Nov. 19.
Kelly was the leader of a 13-member task force that issued a 180-page report in December 2024 on its findings and recommendations related to the assassination attempts on then-candidate President Donald Trump.
He is also the representative for Butler County, where on July 13, 2024, Crooks opened fire on a political rally in an attempt to assassinate then-candidate Trump, hitting Trump’s ear and killing Buffalo Township firefighter Corey Comperatore.
The task force issued 37 total recommendations, most for the U.S. Secret Service, some for the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service jointly and the rest for Congress.
However, Kelly said between an election season and some trouble communicating with federal agencies there was a limit to the work the task force could do.
“Anytime we tried to get answers from the FBI or the Secret Service or any of the federal agencies, they were really reluctant to talk to us. In fact, they didn’t talk to us. They said they were doing their own investigation,” he said.
On Monday, Nov. 17, the New York Post unveiled Crooks had accounts on numerous social media platforms over the span of nearly a decade, including YouTube, Snapchat, PayPal, Discord, Chess.com, Quora and DeviantArt — a social media platform centered around sharing art.
Early posts pulled from these accounts show Crooks taking a pro-Trump stance while making violent remarks against Jewish people and Democrats. The remarks included detailed death threats in the comment sections of news clips, the Post shared.
In 2020, his rhetoric seemingly turned against the president as he became disillusioned with Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the Post, he claimed Trump was “too slow and everything he’s doing now should have been done,” and saying “there wasn’t any reasonable defense for Trump,” in YouTube comments in April 2020.
The Post also said it was able to find violent art posted to a DeviantArt account believed to be associated with Crooks. Other accounts showed videos of him practicing his aim with what appears to be a real handgun in his bedroom.
FBI director Kash Patel reaffirmed in a Nov. 14 post on X the bureau’s investigation revealed Crooks “had limited online and in-person interactions, planned and conducted the attack alone, and did not leak or share his intent to engage in the attack with anyone.”
Kelly said he has not seen Patel’s most recent post, but still expressed concern that a lack of transparency will drive a wedge between government institutions and the people.
“I think the fallacy here is the idea that somehow, the American people can’t handle the truth,” he said. “But what they can’t handle are the lies.”
As for what comes next, Kelly said his focus was on other Congressional duties, such as ensuring federal budget appropriations beyond the current end date of Jan. 30, 2026.
He said he does not see any reason why investigations could not continue at a later date.
