Federal documents reveal that an unidentified donor covered the cremation costs for Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman who tried to kill President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, raising fresh questions about who wanted the evidence destroyed and why.
The detail, buried in a note at the end of a federal interview summary with the shooter's father, surfaced in a trove of investigative records provided to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley as part of his ongoing probe into the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt. The New York Post reviewed the records, which include the four-word notation: "Anonymous donor paid for cremation."
The information appears to have come from a lawyer representing the Crooks family. The addendum to the interview summary noted that Matthew Crooks, the gunman's father, was "retired" and that his wife was on leave from work, suggesting the family lacked the means to pay for funeral arrangements on its own. Matthew Crooks described himself as "unemployed" at the time of the shooting.
No name, no affiliation, and no dollar amount attached to the donor have been disclosed. The federal records do not explain how the arrangement was made or who facilitated it. The New York Post's attempts to reach Matthew Crooks for comment were unsuccessful.
The anonymous cremation payment is only one piece of a broader pattern that has troubled Republican investigators. The FBI released Crooks' body to his family roughly ten days after the July 13 shooting, less than two weeks after a gunman opened fire at a presidential campaign rally and struck the former president.
Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana, a Republican member of the bipartisan congressional task force investigating security failures around the shooting, tried to examine the body on Monday, August 5, 2024. He was too late. The remains had already been cremated.
Higgins wrote to the task force describing what he found:
"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)."
The Butler County Coroner, local law enforcement, and the county sheriff were all unaware the body had been released until Higgins raised the alarm, the congressman revealed in August 2024. That timeline meant no independent congressional or local examination of the shooter's remains was ever conducted.
The assassination attempt against Trump was not the only threat the former president has faced. Months later, an armed man was arrested near a Trump golf course carrying 208 pages of sketches, Melania Trump's schedule, and Secret Service details, a reminder that the security landscape around the former president remained volatile well beyond Butler.
Higgins did not hold back about the FBI's broader conduct at the crime scene. He said the bureau released the scene itself after only three days and cleaned biological evidence, steps he called extraordinary departures from standard law enforcement procedure.
"The FBI cleaned up biological evidence from the crime scene, which is unheard of. Cops don't do that, ever."
Higgins added that the premature cremation permanently limited what investigators could verify on their own:
"We will actually never know. Yes, we'll get the reports and pictures, etc, but I will not ever be able to say with certainty that those reports and pictures are accurate according to my own examination of the body."
Separately released FBI documents have added unsettling details about the shooter's background. Thomas Crooks used the alias "Bob Dole" to receive suspicious packages at the family home before his father returned from work, Fox News reported, citing the same batch of federal records.
Matthew Crooks told FBI agents that his son had no social connections to speak of. The elder Crooks said Thomas "never identified anyone as a friend throughout middle school and high school." The documents shed light on an isolated young man whose secretive behavior extended well before the day he brought a rifle to a campaign rally, yet investigators have still not publicly identified a motive for the attack.
The threat environment around Trump and his family has extended far beyond domestic actors. Israel reportedly warned the United States of a separate Iranian assassination plot targeting the former president, and Trump himself has spoken publicly about contingency measures he put in place in the event of an attempt on his life.
Those threats have also touched Trump's family directly. Iranian propaganda has targeted Melania and Barron Trump with explicit assassination content, part of a pattern of political violence and intimidation that has reshaped daily life for the former president's inner circle.
Senator Grassley, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, received the federal documents as part of his broader investigation into the first Trump assassination attempt. The scope of the full document trove has not been publicly detailed, and it remains unclear what additional findings the records may contain beyond the cremation payment and the interview with Matthew Crooks.
Several basic questions remain unanswered. Federal records do not identify the anonymous donor or explain the donor's relationship, if any, to the Crooks family. They do not say when the payment was made, how it was arranged, or whether investigators made any effort to determine the donor's identity. The name of the family's lawyer, who appears to have been the source of the anonymous-donor information, has not been disclosed.
Nor have federal authorities publicly addressed why the FBI moved to release the body so quickly, or why local law enforcement and the county coroner were kept in the dark. The bipartisan task force's response to Higgins' letter has not been made public.
What the record does show is a sequence that any investigator would find troubling: a shooting that shook the nation, a body released before Congress could inspect it, a cremation funded by someone who chose to remain nameless, and a crime scene scrubbed within days. Each step, taken alone, might have an innocent explanation. Taken together, they form a pattern that rewards secrecy over transparency at every turn.
For a case this consequential, a rifle aimed at a former president and current candidate, the public deserves answers, not ashes.