An unidentified donor quietly paid to cremate the body of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman who tried to kill President Donald Trump at a 2024 rally, and congressional investigators still don't know who wrote the check.
Documents provided to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, show that a note appended to a federal interview summary with the gunman's father states plainly: "Anonymous donor paid for cremation." The note also indicated that Matthew Crooks, the shooter's father, was retired at the time and that his wife was on leave from work, implying the family could not afford funeral arrangements on its own. The National Desk reported on the disclosure, which first surfaced through a New York Post exclusive.
The identity of the donor, whether an individual, an organization, or some other entity, remains unknown. So does any connection, if one exists, between the donor and the Crooks family. Those are not minor loose ends. They sit at the center of an investigation into the most serious attack on a sitting or former president in decades.
On July 13, 2024, Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire at a Trump rally, killing firefighter Corey Comperatore and wounding two other attendees, David Dutch and James Copenhaver. Trump himself was shot in the ear. Secret Service agents shot Crooks dead seconds later.
What happened next raised alarms on Capitol Hill. The FBI released Crooks' body for cremation roughly 10 days after the shooting, less than two weeks after the most high-profile assassination attempt in modern American politics. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Louisiana, tried to examine the body on August 5, 2024, only to discover it was already gone.
Higgins described the timeline in a letter:
"My effort to examine Crooks' body on Monday, August 5 [2024], caused quite a stir and revealed a disturbing fact... the FBI released the body for cremation 10 days after (July 13)."
A 10-day turnaround for releasing a body in a routine homicide might not raise eyebrows. But this was not a routine case. This was the body of a man who nearly killed a former president and current candidate, who murdered an innocent bystander, and whose motive investigators have never publicly identified. The rush to cremate, funded by someone who has never been named, eliminated any possibility of further independent forensic examination.
The threat landscape around Trump has remained serious. An armed man was arrested at a Trump golf course carrying notebooks with detailed surveillance information, including Melania Trump's schedule and Secret Service details, a reminder that the Butler shooting was not an isolated incident.
Federal investigators interviewed Matthew Crooks after the shooting. He told agents his son had been deeply isolated. Fox News reported that the elder Crooks told the FBI his son "never identified anyone as a friend throughout middle school and high school." The 20-year-old had also used the alias "Bob Dole" to receive suspicious packages at the family home before his father returned from work.
Matthew Crooks also told investigators he was not employed at the time of the assassination attempt. The documents provided to Grassley's committee noted that the father's unemployment and the mother's leave from work left the family without the means to cover funeral costs, a gap the anonymous donor filled.
The motive behind Crooks' attack remains unknown. Two years after the shooting, investigators have not publicly explained why a young man with no known friends and no apparent political footprint tried to kill the president. That unanswered question makes every other gap in the record, including who paid to destroy the physical evidence of his body, harder to dismiss as a bureaucratic afterthought.
Threats against Trump have come from multiple directions. A Los Angeles man was indicted on federal charges for allegedly threatening to kill the president, and foreign actors have entered the picture as well.
Grassley's committee now holds the interview summary and the cremation note. What remains unclear is how the documents reached the chairman, whether they were provided voluntarily, compelled by subpoena, or delivered through some other channel. The full contents of the interview summary, beyond the cremation detail, have not been made public.
Higgins' letter, too, has only been quoted in part. The full scope of what he found, or failed to find, when he tried to examine Crooks' remains on August 5 has not been disclosed. His description of the episode as causing "quite a stir" suggests internal friction, but the details remain locked behind congressional doors.
Western intelligence agencies have separately warned the U.S. of an Iranian assassination plot targeting Trump, underscoring the broader security environment in which these investigative gaps persist.
The Secret Service's own institutional failures have drawn scrutiny in parallel. An inspector general found the agency failed to secure mobile devices, raising risks to the nation's leaders, a finding that lands differently when set against the July 2024 shooting and its chaotic aftermath.
Several basic questions remain open. Has Grassley or the Senate Judiciary Committee taken any formal action based on the documents? What did the full federal interview with Matthew Crooks reveal beyond the cremation note? And why did the FBI move so quickly to release a body that a sitting congressman wanted to examine, in a case where the shooter's motive has never been established?
The known facts trace a troubling sequence. A man with no apparent social connections and no established motive tried to assassinate the president. He killed a firefighter. He wounded two others. He was shot dead on the spot. And within 10 days, the FBI released his body. Someone, no one will say who, paid to have it cremated. By the time a congressman showed up to look at the remains, there was nothing left to examine.
None of this proves a cover-up. But it describes a pattern of decisions, the rapid release, the anonymous funding, the destruction of the body, that closed doors investigators might have walked through later. In a case this serious, closing doors should require explanations. So far, the public has received almost none.
When the government moves faster to destroy evidence than to explain a motive, the people paying for that government have every right to demand answers.
