Corey Comperatore put his body over his family when the shots rang out at Butler.
Two years later, the FBI still will not tell his widow what really happened that day.
She says she has her answer – and the FBI is not going to like it.
FBI Is Sitting on 75,000 Pages About the Butler Assassination Attempt
Helen Comperatore sat down with NewsNation anchor Rich McHugh on the second anniversary of the day she watched her husband die protecting their family at the Butler Farm Show grounds during a 2024 Trump campaign rally.
“I believe it was an inside job, inside the government somewhere,” she said.
McHugh asked if this was a political plot.
“Oh yeah, absolutely,” she said.
McHugh pressed her – what evidence had she seen?
“Oh, I’ve been told things,” she said – and that once she added them up, “it just made total sense.”
Thomas Crooks fired eight rounds from a rooftop 155 yards from the stage on July 13, 2024 – killing Comperatore and wounding two other rally-goers along with then-candidate Donald Trump.
The FBI declared the case closed in November 2025 – after interviewing thousands of people and concluding Crooks acted alone.
Helen Comperatore does not believe that.
“I don’t believe there was another shooter there, but I believe he was working with somebody,” she said.
She says she will not have closure until the people who orchestrated it face justice.
The Secret Service did not bother to interview Helen Comperatore until a full year after her husband was murdered.
The widow of Corey Comperatore says she has reason to believe that the assassination attempt in Butler, which took the life of her husband, was an inside job.
Helen Comperatore is pleading with Trump to do something and says she won’t have closure until the people responsible… pic.twitter.com/QAwkcRXIKp
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 15, 2026
Secret Service Missed 102 Warnings About Thomas Crooks and Nobody Has Answered for It
Tom Fitton at Judicial Watch has spent two years dragging the truth out of a bureau that would rather wait Helen Comperatore out than give her answers.
In April 2026, the FBI released 37 heavily redacted pages showing that local law enforcement had broadcast radio warnings about an “unknown male acting suspiciously” near the rally site before a single shot was fired.
Those warnings never reached the agents protecting Trump.
A DHS inspector general report released June 30, 2026 explains why: the Secret Service never set up a joint communications room with local law enforcement.
Local officers sent 102 radio transmissions about Crooks in the half hour before the shooting.
The agents guarding Trump got five phone calls and three text messages.
When word finally reached the command post that Crooks was on the roof, the counter-drone operator was still searching online for the building’s location when the first shots fired.
The counter-drone system was already broken – and the operator lacked the training to fix it.
Crooks had flown a drone over the rally site for nearly nine minutes – two hours before the shooting.
Nobody noticed.
In June 2026, Judicial Watch forced out 48 more heavily redacted pages with a detail the FBI had never publicized: a SWAT officer pulled a gray remote device – numerical push buttons, an antenna – from Crooks’ right pocket, along with a cell phone.
Bomb technicians were called to the roof to examine it.
While they worked, a police canine hit on the building below and everyone on the roof was ordered off.
Crooks’ body stayed up there until after 1 a.m.
The FBI has never explained what the device was or what it was built to trigger.
Records also confirm a Butler County sheriff’s deputy had email contact with Crooks before the shooting – details the FBI kept buried under black ink.
The bureau holds approximately 75,000 pages of records on the Butler shooting and is releasing a few hundred per month.
At that pace, the full file will not see daylight for more than 20 years.
Helen Comperatore has every reason to believe she is being managed, not informed.
“Don’t forget us and remember what we went through that day,” she told McHugh when asked what she wanted Trump to know. “We’re still here, we need answers.”
Two years in, the widow of a man who died shielding his family from an assassin’s bullet is not asking for sympathy.
She is asking for names – and she says she already knows who helped Crooks.
Sources:
- Janice Hisle, “2 Years After Trump Rally Shooting, Slain Hero’s Widow Still Seeks Answers,” The Epoch Times, July 13, 2026.
- Tom Fitton, “Case Closed? Judicial Watch Investigates Butler Assassination Attempt,” Judicial Watch, July 2026.
- Judicial Watch, “FBI Records Reveal Witness Account That SWAT Officer Recovered ‘Remote Device’ from Butler Shooter’s Pocket,” Judicial Watch, June 2026.
- Jim Hoft, “Judicial Watch: FBI Records Reveal Witness Account That SWAT Officer Recovered ‘Remote Device’ from Butler Shooter’s Pocket,” The Gateway Pundit, July 10, 2026.
- Matt Vespa, “Wait, That’s How Many Messages the Secret Service Missed Regarding Trump’s Would-be Assassin at Butler?” Townhall, July 14, 2026.
- “One Year After Trump Assassination Attempt, Butler Widow Demands Accountability from Secret Service,” Fox News, July 2025.
