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“Hello, my name is Thomas. I placed an order on your website on January 19. I have not received any updates of the order shipping out yet and I was wondering if you still have it and when I can expect it to come,” Crooks wrote to the seller, Hyperfuels, on Jan. 31, 2024.
He made the mistake of using his community college email address, which allowed investigators to track some of his digital footprint — a rare look into what CBS called “the dark side of this ambitious young student.”
But while CBS News focused on Crooks’ SAT score of 1530, his fondness for fall weather, and musings about nuclear policy, others are sounding the alarm over what could’ve been a catastrophic terror attack.
According to an estimate by The Western Journal, had Crooks managed to combine the nitromethane with ammonium nitrate — the same compound used in the Oklahoma City bombing — he could have created a vehicle-borne explosive device with a deadly blast radius. As little as 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate mixed with nitromethane would have been enough to destroy a small building.
That raises questions: What exactly was the FBI doing with this information? What investigations are still ongoing? And why has there been so little public follow-up on the most serious assassination attempt in decades?
Wally Zimolong, the attorney who obtained Crooks’ records through America First Legal, isn’t satisfied.
“I think it raises a lot of important questions. Were they investigating anyone else? Are they still investigating?” Zimolong said. “A year later we still don’t know enough.”
That’s putting it lightly. For context, this is the closest a would-be assassin has come to taking out a major U.S. political figure since the attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981. And yet, media coverage of Crooks’ motives, connections, and plans has been largely muted — bordering on apathetic.
Instead of investigative rigor, we get soft profiles highlighting that Crooks “waxed poetic about the fall weather and asked, ‘who doesn’t love the changing color of the leaves?’”
Incredible.
This isn’t just a failure of journalism — it’s a deliberate act of downplaying. Where once reporters like Dan Rather would pound the pavement for answers during the Watergate scandal, today’s legacy outlets appear more concerned with protecting narratives than pursuing truth.
CBS, the former home of Edward Murrow and Walter Cronkite, barely scratches the surface of this attempted political assassination. It’s as if they’re saying, “Well, what do you expect us to find?”
Here’s an idea: find out if that nitromethane ever shipped. Investigate who else Crooks may have been communicating with. Ask if there were accomplices or a broader plan. And most importantly — stop acting like this was a literary case study in dual personalities. This was an attempted terrorist act, plain and simple.
The American people deserve the full story. Not fall leaves. Not SAT scores. Just answers.
