WASHINGTON — Wannabe presidential assassin Thomas Crooks used a pseudonym to conceal his purchase history and obsessed about keeping his digital footprint to a minimum, according to federal records seen by The Post.
The 20-year-old made many Amazon or online purchases under the name “Bob Dole” to have packages delivered to his parents’ house, his dad Matthew Crooks told the FBI in an interview two days after his son shot former President Donald Trump in the ear at a campaign rally in July 2024.
Parcels sent to the residence included “parts, tools and items to increase the capacity of his rifle,” the same weapon that his father would give to him on the morning of the rally at the Butler Farm Show Grounds in Pennsylvania.
It’s unclear why the younger Crooks, whose parents maintain he did not express much interest in politics, adopted the political moniker for the late senator from Kansas who failed to win the 1996 presidential contest as the Republican Party’s nominee.
Matthew Crooks told FBI investigators his son began deploying the false name after his father’s bank account got hacked, later instructing his dad how to use a virtual private network and secure browser to surf the web.
Thomas mentioned that Cyber Ghost VPN and a BraveNet Browser were just two platforms that wouldn’t be targeted by hackers and were “less likely to be compromised by outside actors,” his dad recalled.
The elder Crooks said his son believed that if one were to purchase items under a pseudonym, a person would never be hacked. However, his dad said even if you were to purchase an item using a pseudonym, those charges are still being made to a financial account under your real name.
Thomas apparently dismissed his dad’s logic and continued to use pseudonyms to make online purchases in an attempt to avoid having his accounts compromised.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) obtained the FBI documents as part of his probe into the Butler assassination attempt against Trump.
Bureau officials revealed last year that Thomas Crooks had maintained at least 35 digital accounts in total, all of which agents were “able to access” — including several foreign-based email accounts from Germany and Belgium.
FBI Director Kash Patel and others concluded that there was still no foreign nexus for the assassination attempt.
Crooks’ use of a political name for an online account was also an outlier, as previous reports show his profile on a fan art website was called “epicmicrowave.”
While his father told investigators his son had no clear political allegiances, an unidentified interviewee of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) also revealed Thomas Crooks was a “big history buff” who was “interested in politics” and “spoke often about ‘Trump and Biden’ back when ‘Trump initially got elected.’”
The files raise more questions than answers about the quiet gunman who took aim at Trump more than two years ago, as Patel prepares to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
