{"id":43252,"date":"2025-11-18T03:36:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T03:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/43252\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T03:36:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T03:36:11","slug":"thomas-crooks-used-they-them-pronouns-had-obsession-with-violence-and-muscle-mommies-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/43252\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Crooks used they\/them pronouns, had obsession with violence and ‘muscle mommies’: sources"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas Crooks used they\/them pronouns and posted threats of political violence and violent art on his secret social media accounts before he attempted to assassinate President Trump, according to sources who shared the suspected messages with The Post<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The loner sniper \u2014 who grazed Trump in the ear, killed a beloved firefighter and critically wounded two other Trump supporters \u2014 also apparently had a \u201cmuscle mommy\u201d fetish, and repeatedly searched for videos about female bodybuilders and muscular women.<\/p>\n

The Post\u2019s Miranda Devine reported on the newly unearthed online activity on Monday.<\/p>\n

Crooks had two possible accounts on DeviantArt, a site that hosts fan art and has become notorious for its community of furries \u2014 people who identify as anthropomorphized animal characters and\/or are sexually attracted to them.<\/p>\n

One of the DeviantArt accounts linked to Crooks shared just one post, a repost of a towering, muscular female bodybuilder and a slight man in his underwear.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s attempted assassin Thomas Crooks had an obsession with violence and used they\/them pronouns. Candace Owens \/ YouTube<\/p>\n

Multiple searches for muscular women and female bodybuilders were found on Crooks\u2019 supposed YouTube search history.<\/p>\n

The profile for the DeviantArt also lists pronouns as They\/Them \u2014 though it\u2019s not clear whether Crooks identified as transgender.<\/p>\n

A trawl of Crooks\u2019 digital footprint, dating back almost a decade before he tried to kill Trump on July 13, 2024, at an election rally in Butler, Pa., shows an increasing obsession with violence and increasingly radical comments and artwork that seemingly arose during COVID, according to the sources.<\/p>\n

The sources used publicly available research tools to link multiple email addresses to Crooks, and then found usernames associated with those emails on numerous sites, including YouTube, Snapchat, PayPal, Discord, Chess.com, Quora, and DeviantArt.<\/p>\n

The FBI has not confirmed the details of Crooks\u2019 possible social media accounts, and did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.<\/p>\n

Crooks was killed after trying to shoot Trump dead during a Butler, Pa. rally. James Copenhaver<\/p>\n

His early online presence \u2014 when he would have been in high school \u2014 was almost exclusively pro-Trump, while he also made a number of violently antisemitic comments and racist remarks about Hispanic immigrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always believed being patriotic was lining up a bunch of socialist Jews (like the ones that booed Trump) and blasting their useless brains out with an AR,\u201d a YouTube account featuring Crooks\u2019 full name posted in the comments under a clip of President Trump being booed during the 2019 World Series in Washington, DC, according to sources.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone of the trump hating democrats deserve to have their heads chopped of and put on steaks for the world to see what happens when you f\u2013k with America [sic],\u201d he said in one comment under an MSNBC clip from July 2019.<\/p>\n

He appeared to have an obsession with muscular women with scrawny men. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n

He also described in detail how he would use an assault rifle against a crowd of political opponents, frequently quoting the line, \u201cThe only true political power comes from the barrel of a gun,\u201d from Chinese communist dictator Mao Zedong.<\/p>\n

And Crooks made violent threats against Democratic members of \u201cThe Squad,\u201d the sources said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope a quick painful death to all the deplorable immigrants and anti-trump congresswoman who dont deserve anything this countru has given them [sic],\u201d he wrote in a July 20, 2019 post.<\/p>\n

But in 2020, amid the COVID pandemic, he appeared to make a 180-degree turn on his views on Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty sure people are just racist and Trump is one of them, there does not need to be a deep state for that,\u201d he said in a YouTube comment dated Feb. 26, 2020, according to sources.<\/p>\n

Another artwork appeared to feature a shooting against a backdrop of the trans flag colors. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n

Crooks also appeared to have an obsession with the coronavirus, and his disillusionment with Trump appeared to stem from what he saw as the Republican president\u2019s resistance to enacting social distancing mandates and bans on public gatherings.<\/p>\n

He claimed Trump was \u201ctoo slow and everything he\u2019s doing now should have been done,\u201d adding that \u201cthere wasn\u2019t any reasonable defense for Trump,\u201d in YouTube comments on successive days in April 2020.<\/p>\n

A DeviantArt account believed to be Crooks\u2019 featured they\/them pronouns. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n

It\u2019s around this time that he started posting violent artworks, according to sources.<\/p>\n

One piece titled \u201cHow he lost his eye,\u201d dated Jun. 10, 2023, and shared on DeviantArt, shows a figure clad in black executing another figure, in front of a blue and pink backdrop \u2014 matching the colors of the trans pride flag.<\/p>\n

Another artwork from the following month, titled \u201cKilling pedos,\u201d shows a figure holding a rifle after fatally shooting two individuals, one of whom is wearing blue and pink clothes.<\/p>\n

A third artwork from June 2023 shows a purple-headed figure with his head cracked open after being bashed with a metal pipe.<\/p>\n

Many of his artworks and comments revealed an obsession with violence and gore. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n

Thomas Crooks\u2019 supposed YouTube and Google searches also reveal a pattern of violence and an obsession with guns and famous assassinations.<\/p>\n

Between 2019 and 2020, he made searches for Lee Harvey Oswald\u2019s killer, Jack Ruby, the Oklahoma bombing, and the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, among other attacks.<\/p>\n

He also searched how to fire an AR-15 \u201cas fast as possible,\u201d as well as how to make a fertilizer bomb and a Molotov cocktail.<\/p>\n

Crooks also shared videos and pictures of himself with firearms.<\/p>\n

Crooks repeatedly looked for information related to body armor, high-velocity ammo, and riot control.<\/p>\n

In August 2020, he explicitly discussed on YouTube how to fight a government using \u201cterrorism style tactics,\u201d as his views became increasingly nihilistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIMO the only way to fight the gov is with terrorism style attacks, sneak a bomb into an essential building and set it off before anyone sees you, track down any important people\/politicians\/military leaders etc and try to assassinate them,\u201d he wrote, according to sources.<\/p>\n

He also noted that such an act would likely result in that person\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny sort of head-to-head fight is suicide, and even ambush\/surprise attacks likely aren\u2019t going to end well,\u201d he said in a YouTube comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thomas Crooks used they\/them pronouns and posted threats of political violence and violent art on his secret social…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[153,9,11,10,3909,24845,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-43252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-trump-rally-shooting","14":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}