Someone else picked up the tab for the funeral. An anonymous donor paid to cremate Thomas Crooks, the man who tried to kill Donald Trump. This detail sits inside new FBI records. The Daily Caller and Daily Wire both report this specific fact. It came out while lawmakers asked why the body was gone so fast.
Crooks died on July 13, 2024. His family got the body just ten days later. It went to a funeral home on July 22. Then it was cremated. Matthew Crooks, the shooter’s father, told agents he had no job. His wife was on leave too. The Daily Wire notes the FBI files say neither parent was working. They likely had no money for a funeral. The documents say the donor funding came from a lawyer for the family.
Some lawmakers are upset the body burned so quickly. Rep. Clay Higgins says the fast cremation killed the chance to test more evidence. He observed that releasing the body made it impossible to perform additional testing or gather remaining evidence. He argues the FBI should have kept the body longer.
Higgins wrote that ballistics talks still happen sixty years after President John F. Kennedy died. He called the FBI’s move “wholly unacceptable” because they did not save all evidence. The FBI says they cleared the release after Allegheny County finished its own autopsy. But the speed still bothers some people in Congress.
The files also paint a picture of the shooter as a quiet kid. The records say Thomas “never showed interest in girls.” He also had trouble with his aim. His father said “he could not hit the paper [target].” Yet Thomas wanted to try anyway. He sought to determine the maximum range achievable using rudimentary sights.
He bought “parts, tools and items to increase the capacity of his rifle.” The goal was to make the gun work better. The documents suggest the family struggled to pay for things. The donor step-in solved that problem. It also ended the physical evidence before more tests could happen.
The debate over the body continues. Rep. Higgins says it is not standard for police to ask a coroner to hold a body. The files contain an incomplete sentence regarding the matter. The cremation happened days after the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The family got the body back on July 22. The question of who paid and why the evidence vanished stays open.
