James Copenhaver just died with bullet fragments still lodged in his body from the Butler shooting.
Two years later, the FBI is still hiding who Thomas Crooks was secretly messaging before the attack.
Judicial Watch just forced the bureau to reveal something about those messages that the FBI does not want you to see.
New FBI Records Show Thomas Crooks Was Messaging a Contact Called Red for Eight Months
Judicial Watch obtained 249 pages of FBI records related to Thomas Crooks through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
An FBI electronic communication dated July 19, 2024 – six days after Crooks put a bullet through Trump's ear – reveals a "chat thread" between Crooks and an unidentified recipient whose name is completely redacted.
The conversation ran from May 21, 2023 through January 3, 2024 – eight full months before the Butler assassination attempt.
Crooks's outgoing messages include strings like "Hello red," "red red," "Hello red," "Yolo," "Hdudhdbdbbd," "7888ejdj."
Every incoming response from "red" is completely redacted.
The FBI will not say who "red" is, what "red" sent back, or even what kind of person "red" is – law enforcement, foreign contact, handler, or something else.
They buried it all under black ink.
Thomas Crooks: Hong Kong Package, Drone Photos, and a Remote Device the FBI Never Explained
That chat thread was not the only thing buried in those 249 pages.
The records also show Crooks received a package from Hong Kong, and FBI agents found drone photos of a Pittsburgh-area arena among his materials.
A previous Judicial Watch release surfaced a detail the FBI has still never addressed: after Crooks was shot dead on that Butler rooftop, a SWAT officer reached into his pocket and pulled out a gray remote device with numerical push buttons and an antenna – the kind that brought explosive ordnance personnel running to inspect it.
The FBI has never said what it was.
FBI agents also flagged additional phone conversations as "pertinent" to the investigation – exchanges with redacted contacts dating back to December 2022, January 2023, and February 2023, all of them blacked out.
A year and a half of Crooks's phone history – and the FBI has released none of it.
James Copenhaver Is Dead and the FBI Is Still Hiding Who Thomas Crooks Was Messaging
Corey Comperatore – the firefighter who threw himself in front of his family – died on that Butler field on July 13, 2024.
James Copenhaver, 76, survived two years of surgeries, court battles, and permanent injuries before dying on September 24 with bullet fragments still lodged in his body.
Donald Trump called him "a true American Patriot."
Trump survived by a fraction of an inch, and the FBI is still releasing heavily redacted documents with the name of Crooks's mystery contact blacked out.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said: "The FBI should stop the slow drip of heavily redacted records and immediately provide the full investigative record – especially since the death last week of James Copenhaver."
Last month, President Trump revealed that by the time he returned to the White House in January 2025, the Thomas Crooks records were already missing, altered, or corrupted.
An anonymous donor paid to cremate Crooks just ten days after the assassination attempt.
Nobody knows who that donor is either – and the FBI has never explained why it allowed the body to be destroyed before any of these records were public.
When Judicial Watch forced the release of earlier records showing a Butler County sheriff's deputy had exchanged emails with Crooks before the shooting, the FBI's own social media account called it "click bait."
The same bureau that conducted nearly 1,000 interviews and still cannot name the "red" contact decided the problem was the people asking questions.
Two years of stonewalling, redacted documents, missing records, and one mystery contact the FBI refuses to name.
The Oswald search, the eight months of "red" messages, the Hong Kong package, the remote device pulled from his pocket – none of it has been explained, and the FBI shows no urgency to change that now.
Two men who were standing in that Butler field are dead.
The FBI still has the answers buried under black ink.
Sources:
- Cristina Laila, "New FBI Records Obtained by Judicial Watch Reveal Thomas Crooks' Mysterious Chat Thread with Unidentified Person and Drone Pictures," The Gateway Pundit, October 2, 2026.
- "FBI Docs Reveal Trump's Would Be Assassin Emailed Butler Officials Before Attack," HotAir, June 6, 2026.
- "James Copenhaver, Survivor Injured in Trump 2024 Butler Rally Shooting, Dies," Fox 13 News, September 24, 2026.
- "Motive Still a Mystery in Trump Assassination Attempt, FBI Says," Fox News, August 29, 2024.
