FBI records obtained by Judicial Watch reveal Thomas Matthew Crooks sent cryptic coded texts and took drone photos of Pittsburgh stadiums before the attack
Page A2From§Eachthe early bird edition — 3 October 2026
THE FILE
Trump's 'corrupted' FBI file turns out to confirm the Butler timeline he's disputed for a year
As it ran on the front
The FBI released a file this week. All together now — a young man with a drone, a printer, and a flight plan over a city not far from the stage where he would open fire.
Go back three weeks, to a different release from the same Bureau. On September 16, NBC reported on the FBI's earlier documents, including an account from a rally-goer who told agents Crooks had been muttering hateful comments about the president in the crowd before he climbed the roof. That was the file as it stood then: a man who had mapped the target city from the air, then stood among the crowd saying what he thought of the man he'd come to shoot.…
…(cont) One day before that release, on September 15, the president had already told the public what to think of it. On Truth Social he wrote that the record of the attempt on his life had been altered. He wrote that it had been corrupted.
And this week brought one more document, not from the Bureau but from an obituary column: Jim Copenhaver, one of two rally-goers shot and injured that day in Butler, has died at 76. Corey Comperatore, the man killed at the rally, was a separate casualty, mourned on his own. Copenhaver lived two more years past the shooting the president now says the record of was corrupted.
All together now — the drone photos, the texts, the account of a man muttering hate in a crowd, the Truth Social post calling the file fake, and the death notice that ran the same week the file did. The document the president spent a year calling corrupted is the document that confirms the very timeline he has disputed since September: the stadium flyover, the printer, the crowd, the roof.
“He calls the file fake for a year, then the file comes out and it says exactly what he's been saying happened — that's not a cover-up getting exposed, that's a guy grading his own homework and still complaining about the curve. The FBI doesn't get to be corrupted on Tuesday and credible on Thursday depending on who needs the headline. Somebody died from that day this month too, and he used the same week to relitigate a printer.”
“Look, the president has been crystal clear the Biden FBI mishandled this, and nothing in a Judicial Watch release — a group that, fine, he doesn't control, okay, forget I said that — changes the fact that the investigation into his own near-assassination deserved scrutiny. The timeline matching up isn't a contradiction, it's vindication. Did I just say the corrupted file vindicates him? That doesn't sound like me.”
The receipts
· FBI files reveal new details about attempted Trump assassin from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
· Trump claims Biden FBI ‘altered’ and ‘corrupted’ information on Butler assassination attempt from the morgue, 15 Sep 2026
· Trump mourns death of man shot at Butler rally: 'Tremendous loss' from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
· Man shot, injured in Butler Trump assassination attempt dies from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.