Vice President JD Vance has admitted that he has no clue what inspired the deceased would-be Trump assassin, Thomas Crooks to try to kill current President Donald Trump in the summer of 2024.
“I don’t know,” the VP bluntly told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview published on Friday.
This, despite his assurance only days after the attempted assassination in 2024 that he would “get to the bottom” of the case.
At the time, Vance blamed the shooting on then-incumbent President Joe Biden and his campaign’s insistence that Trump was a fascist.
“That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” Vance argued.
BREAKING: Republican Senator J.D. Vance claims that the Biden campaign’s rhetoric ‘led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination’
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) July 14, 2024
Years later, he’s directing blame toward Crooks himself, telling the Daily Mail that he was a “loner who got radicalized on the internet.”
“He was a Trump guy at some point in his life and then about six months or so before he took a shot at the President of the United States, or maybe it was a little bit beforehand, he went from very radically pro-Trump to very radically anti-Trump,” Vance correctly noted.
The VP also revealed that his discussions with law enforcement have yielded no additional details or narratives.
“I have not gotten a satisfactory answer to how Thomas Crooks went from radically pro-Trump to so radically anti-Trump,” he said. “Maybe we will never know the answer to that — sometimes motivations go unsolved.”
Years later, law enforcement is reportedly still probing the case. The latest update came in November, when the FBI concluded that Crooks had acted alone and that there had been no cover-up.
“We have reviewed this case over and over, looked into every nugget. We have spoken to the families, the president. There is no cover-up here. There is no motive for it, there is no reason for it,” then-Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino said at the time.
“The case now sits in a ‘pending, inactive’ status, meaning that further investigation would only be pursued on credible new information,” according to the Daily Mail.
We demand more information on Thomas Matthew Crooks.
“Republicans in particular think it’s bizarre how little we know about Thomas Crooks. We know nothing about what led up to the assass*nation attempt. We don’t know why he did it. We don’t know whether there was other people… pic.twitter.com/MLYFLlCOnH
— JaneDoeUKnow (@MsJaneDoeUKnow) February 5, 2026
Months earlier, in July, CBS News ran a story about Crooks’s “double life.” The report revealed that Crooks grew up in a quiet suburban home in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, with his social-worker parents and older sister.
Described as a “nice” but insular boy who kept to himself, he enjoyed Legos, model airplanes, cooking family meals, and cheering for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He rarely invited friends over and maintained few close relationships. A childhood friend recalled him being polite but distant.
Academically gifted, Crooks scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and excelled as an engineering student at the Community College of Allegheny County, where professors praised his diligence, work ethic, and innovative projects like a 3D-printed chessboard for the visually impaired.
Despite this promising path, Crooks led a hidden double life starting late 2023. While outwardly pursuing college transfers and a career in engineering, he secretly researched explosives, firearms, and political events.
He also used encrypted tools like Mullvad VPN and Mailfence email to mask activity, built homemade improvised explosive devices in his bedroom, and practiced at a gun club — often with a rifle purchased from his father.
Online logs showed shifts from routine browsing to focused searches on guns, ammo, bombs, and rally details, including the Butler Farm Showgrounds, where the attempted assassination later occurred.
No manifesto or clear motive emerged after the shooting. His political views appeared mixed and unclear. Investigators found no radicalization history or mental health diagnoses that publicly explained the turn to violence. Friends and professors expressed shock, with one asking why someone with a bright future would destroy it.
The attack exposed security lapses, including poor communication between local police and the Secret Service. Crooks scouted the site with a drone and climbed the roof undetected before firing.
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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