More than two years after the most high-profile political assassination attempt since John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan, remarkably little is known about Thomas Matthew Crooks, a seemingly model student with future college plans and normal political views who decided one summer evening to take aim at Donald Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Why he did it, how he was able to, and whether any wider conspiracy was afoot all remain open questions.
Ken Silva’s latest book, The Trump Assassination Plots, is the first public forensic investigation to attempt to answer these. Drawing on thousands of pages of congressional transcripts, exclusively obtained records, and interviews, Silva’s book digs into matters like who really stopped the shooter, which agents were responsible for the security failures at Butler, who Crooks and the later would-be assassin Ryan Routh actually were, and what motivated them.
As typically occurs in the absence of meaningful answers from federal authorities, conspiracy theories have emerged to explain what exactly happened on July 13.
And in the case of Butler, there are even two flavors of conspiracy theory.
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