Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old man identified as the gunman behind the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump at a campaign rally last week, doesn’t appear to have posted about the attack ahead of time on Valve’s PC gaming storefront, Steam, after all.
“July 13 will be my premiere, watch as it unfolds,” read a Steam post senators were told yesterday belonged to Crooks, according to a report by Fox News. CNN now reports that the FBI has “revised that assessment,” and no longer believes the comment came from an account that actually belonged to the gunman. It’s possible the investigation confused copycat accounts posting after the fact with one that actually belonged to Crooks.
Valve did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Crooks’ attempted assassination of Trump at an outdoor rally in Butler, PA on July 13 killed one attendee, put two more in critical condition, and left the 2024 presidential candidate with a bloodied ear. While the FBI investigation into the attack is still ongoing, The New York Times and others have reported that Crooks had used his phone to search for both Trump and President Joe Biden, as well as the location of the Democratic National Convention.
But so far, interviews with over 200 people as well as searches of Crooks’ home and car don’t seem to have revealed his political ideologies or what may have motivated the attack. The 20-year-old also seemingly had little in the way of an online footprint, with Discord stating that while he had an account on the gaming chat platform, he rarely used it and did not share anything about his political views or his planning of the attack on it.
In the wake of mass shootings and other high-profile political violence, copycat accounts using the name of the gunmen often spring up on Steam and other gaming platforms. Valve has been criticized in the past for not doing enough to moderate Steam, including neo-Nazi content and other hate speech on the platform, though there’s no indication that anything Crooks wrote on the site would have fit that description.
Update 7/18/2024 3:12 p.m. ET: Updated story with new reporting from CNN casting doubt on the Steam account belonging to Crooks.
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