FACT-CHECK: Butler, PA Sheriff’s Dept. Exchanged Emails With Thomas Crooks BEFORE Assassination Attempt?

Ok this is a big one!

Posts are going viral on X today and yesterday claiming that Judicial Watch obtained documents that prove the Butler, PA Sheriff’s Department was exchanging emails with the would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks, prior to the July 13th assassination attemp.

Absolutely wild stuff!

See here for example:

Ummmmm…. Why would the Butler, PA Sheriff's Dept. be exchanging emails (plural) with the assassin… BEFORE the day of the assassination attempt? https://t.co/6rFVEeCDjr

— AwakenedOutlaw⚒️ (@AwakenedOutlaw) June 5, 2026

Screenshot here:

More here:

Butler was an inside job https://t.co/JbY9alNUiS

— Steve Ferguson (@lsferguson) June 6, 2026

And upon first glance, that’s exactly what it looks like.

And let’s be honest, this is far from the first “weird detail” we’ve had about Crooks.

There’s literally nothing weird about Thomas Matthew Crooks emailing a deputy from Butler, PA before the assassination attempt. It’s not weird that he practiced shooting at the same range Homeland Security used. It’s not weird that the local police and Secret Service spotted…

— Shane Cashman (@ShaneCashman) June 6, 2026

But huge credit to my friend MJTruth who dug deep and revealed that’s actually not the case here.

Check out this excellent work:

So I just read through this thing and it appears Judicial Watch dropped the Ball and owes this FBI an apology … bigly

This FD-302 form page is what Judicial Watch used to claim that Thomas Crooks emailed local law enforcement before the assassination attempt.

In it, a college… https://t.co/B8ZQ7xPVRj pic.twitter.com/VMVBJsdQX6

— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) June 7, 2026

So I just read through this thing and it appears Judicial Watch dropped the Ball and owes this FBI an apology … bigly

This FD-302 form page is what Judicial Watch used to claim that Thomas Crooks emailed local law enforcement before the assassination attempt.

In it, a college instructor (someone who taught or oversaw Crooks in an academic program) is being interviewed by the FBI.

The instructor mentions they only had two email exchanges with Crooks — and both were about normal course work (syllabus stuff, assignments, etc.).

There is zero mention of any police officer, deputy, sheriff’s office, or law enforcement contact in that interview.

Judicial Watch had also included a separate cover sheet in the same file that listed “interviews of 5 Deputies” from Butler County — but that sheet is just paperwork. It doesn’t contain any emails or quotes from Crooks at all.

Basically, because everything was blacked out with privacy redactions, Judicial Watch (and a lot of people who read the headline) assumed the person emailing Crooks was a deputy. They weren’t. It was just a college instructor talking about class stuff.

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Basically, Judicial Watch turned a boring, routine interview with one of Crooks’ college instructors into a dramatic “he emailed the cops!” fake headline.

The FBI in this case is correct..

He also found this additional nugget:

There was actually a new interesting detail in the FOIA Judicial Watch obtained that previously wasn’t known about Thomas Crooks..

On the roof where Crooks was killed, officers found in his right pocket “a gray remote device with numerical push buttons and an antenna” along… https://t.co/PzgTvBHo8R pic.twitter.com/QHOEzaRjVc

— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) June 7, 2026

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There was actually a new interesting detail in the FOIA Judicial Watch obtained that previously wasn’t known about Thomas Crooks..

On the roof where Crooks was killed, officers found in his right pocket “a gray remote device with numerical push buttons and an antenna” along with his cell phone. Bomb techs (EOD) immediately checked it out and a canine had a “hit” on the building beneath them, so they evacuated the roof.

That specific description of a great remote device with an antenna hadn’t been public before, but the FBI hasn’t said what the device actually was or if it mattered.

So big credit to MJ on this one.

We always bring you the truth here, and now you have it.

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