Trump shooter planned to 'take out people in the crowd in a mass Vegas-style shooting,' said 'July 13 will be my premiere': report

Real Clear Politics White House reporter Susan Crabtree reported that there are multiple working theories surrounding the assassination attempt on Donald Trump last Saturday in Butler, Penn., including that he was planning a mass casualty event, was not initially planning to target the president, and that he'd left a message on a gaming platform that read "July 13 will be my premiere, watch as it unfolds." 

"IMPORTANT SECRET SERVICE DEVELOPMENT," Crabtree posted. "I just talked to a well-positioned source in the Secret Service community who confirmed reports of agency intelligence gathering that supports a theory that rally shooter Thomas Crooks was likely planning to take out people in the crowd in a mass Vegas-style shooting and wasn't initially planning to attempt to assassinate Trump. 

"He changed his mind after he was scrambling to escape police and climbed onto the roof," she added. 

"When he saw that nobody was on the roof and he had a clean shot at Trump, he went for it. No one can completely get inside the shooter's head because he's dead. But high-level sources within the Secret Service are convinced that he was planning to shoot at the crowd because he used his range-finder on the ground first and was trying to escape police when he scrambled onto the roof."

"I'm also hearing that he assembled the gun from parts in his backpack once on the roof. I'm told he DID NOT use the range-finder on the roof -- maybe why his shot at Trump was off and the fact that he failed to get into or got cut from his h.s. shooting club." 

Community notes on the post attempted to debunk that theory, saying that the shooter brought his own ladder and scope and that he was initially flagged by Secret Service due to the fact that he was carrying a rangefinder. Other reports indicate that Crooks had been in the sights of law enforcement up to an hour prior to the shooting.  



Amid the release of more reports surrounding the attempted assassination of Trump, the House Judiciary has called for FBI Director Christopher Wray to testify in front of Congress on the investigation into the incident.

Whistleblowers have revealed that the USSS had “limited resources” for the Trump rally as many of the USSS agents had gone to the NATO summit in Washington DC earlier that week, per the Judiciary Committee. There were security failures that led up to the assassination attempt on Trump, calling into question the reliability of the federal agency. Many have called for USSS Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign as a result.