Federal records show an unnamed donor covered the cost of cremating Thomas Matthew Crooks just days after he opened fire at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, raising fresh questions about who wanted the gunman's remains destroyed so quickly.

The detail surfaced in documents provided to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley as part of his ongoing inquiry into the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt against President Trump. A note buried at the end of a summary of an interview federal investigators conducted with the gunman's father, Matthew Crooks, states plainly that an "anonymous donor paid for cremation," the New York Post reported after reviewing the records.

The information about the donor appears to have come from a lawyer for the Crooks family, according to the document. The donor's identity, motive, and connection, if any, to the shooter or his relatives remain unknown.

That a stranger would step forward to pay for the cremation of a man who tried to kill a former president and current candidate is unusual enough on its own. That it happened while the FBI still held the body, and before congressional investigators had a chance to conduct an independent examination, makes it far more troubling.

FBI released the body in just ten days

Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana, a Republican member of the bipartisan congressional task force investigating security failures surrounding the Butler rally, first revealed the rapid cremation publicly in August 2024. In a letter to the task force, Higgins described what he found when he tried to examine Crooks' remains on August 5, 2024, roughly three weeks after the shooting:

"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)."

By the time Higgins arrived, the body was already gone. The FBI had turned it over to the Crooks family less than two weeks after the assassination attempt, meaning the remains were released on or around July 23, 2024.

Higgins was reportedly furious. For a shooting that left one rallygoer dead and two others wounded, and nearly killed a former president, ten days is an extraordinarily short window to hold the gunman's body. In complex criminal and national security cases, remains are typically preserved far longer to allow for independent forensic review.

The widow of the rallygoer killed that day in Butler has publicly called the assassination attempt "an inside job," reflecting a deep skepticism among many Americans about whether the full truth of that day has been told.

Crooks' father told investigators he was "unemployed"

The federal records offer a possible explanation for why the family needed outside help covering funeral costs. An addendum to the interview summary noted that Matthew Crooks was "retired" and that his wife was on leave from work at the time. In other portions of the records, the elder Crooks described himself as "unemployed" when the shooting occurred.

The Post attempted to reach Matthew Crooks for comment but was unsuccessful.

Separately, Fox News reported that newly released FBI documents painted Crooks as deeply isolated. His father told agents that Thomas had "never identified anyone as a friend throughout middle school and high school." The documents also revealed that the younger Crooks used the alias "Bob Dole" to receive suspicious packages at the family home, timing deliveries for when his father was away at work.

The picture that emerges, a friendless young man ordering unknown items under a fake name, whose motive for the shooting remains officially undetermined, only deepens the mystery surrounding the case. And the anonymous cremation payment adds yet another unanswered question to a file already thick with them.

Grassley's inquiry and the questions nobody has answered

Chairman Grassley's investigation has produced a trove of federal documents related to the first assassination attempt. But the records reviewed so far have created more questions than answers.

Who paid for the cremation, and why? Did the Crooks family know the donor's identity? Was the family's attorney the sole source of the anonymous-donor detail, or did federal investigators independently verify the payment? None of these questions have been publicly resolved.

The FBI has not publicly addressed its decision to release the body so quickly, a choice that effectively eliminated the possibility of any future independent autopsy or forensic examination by congressional investigators or outside experts. In a case where the gunman's motive remains unknown, that decision deserves more scrutiny than it has received.

Threats against President Trump have continued well beyond Butler. An armed man was charged after allegedly scouting Trump's Los Angeles golf club days before a presidential visit, and Iranian state media has gone so far as to broadcast content targeting members of the Trump family with explicit threats. The pattern makes the unresolved questions from Butler all the more urgent.

The bipartisan congressional task force investigating security failures around the shooting received Higgins' letter detailing the premature release of the body. What the task force has done with that information, and whether it has pursued the anonymous donor's identity, remains unclear from the available records.

A body destroyed before Congress could examine it

Strip away the politics and the timeline speaks for itself. On July 13, a gunman fired on a former president at a public rally. Ten days later, the FBI released his body. An unnamed person paid to have it cremated. And when a sitting congressman showed up three weeks after the shooting to conduct his own examination, there was nothing left to examine.

The concerns raised by lawmakers like Higgins and Grassley are not conspiratorial. They are procedural. In any high-profile investigation, let alone one involving an assassination attempt against a president, preserving physical evidence is standard practice. Releasing a body for cremation before Congress has completed its review is, at minimum, a serious lapse in judgment. At worst, it forecloses a line of inquiry that can never be reopened.

The broader questions about the Secret Service's conduct and the federal government's handling of threats against President Trump have only grown since Butler. Every unanswered question, from the security failures that allowed Crooks onto that rooftop to the anonymous check that turned his remains to ash, erodes public confidence in the agencies tasked with protecting the nation's leaders.

When someone tries to assassinate a president, the public deserves a complete accounting. An anonymous donor and a cremation furnace made sure that accounting will forever be incomplete.