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A Pennsylvania man who survived gunshot wounds during President Trump's Butler campaign rally two years ago has died, sources confirmed. James 'Jim' Copenhaver, 76, died on Wednesday after surviving the terrifying rally that saw Trump shot in the ear on July 13, 2024. Copenhaver endured permanent 'life-altering' injuries after he was shot twice at the infamous rally; once in his left arm and again in his abdomen. The native of Moon Township, around 20 minutes from Pittsburgh, was in critical condition at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh before he was left numb from his knee to his hip. Joseph Feldman,...

07.12.2025 Grassley Report Concludes Secret Service Failure to Share Threat Information Allowed for Preventable Tragedy in Butler, Identifies Path Forward for Agency ImprovementsSecret Service received threat intel 10 days before Butler rally; Major gaps in internal policies and procedures contributed to massive security breakdownBUTLER COUNTY, IOWA – U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today released a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report compiled at his request in the wake of the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024.The Grassley-requested report states senior-level U.S. Secret Service (USSS) officials received classified intelligence...

The FBI has now released its eighth tranche of files on Thomas Matthew Crooks — the 20-year-old who came within an inch of killing Donald Trump in Butler, Penn. Like the earlier drops, this one is 181 pages of interview summaries, invoices, evidence logs, and internal communications from FBI Pittsburgh. It’s heavily redacted, and 95 pages are withheld outright. In June I went through the fifth tranche, and found that the redactions said more than the visible text. What survives the redactors is still stranger than most of what you’ve heard about this case on television. Here’s what stood out...

An “anonymous donor” paid for the cremation of President Trump’s would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks, just days after the deadly Butler, Pa., rally shooting, according to federal records reviewed by The Post. The revelation was included in a trove of documents provided to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), as part of his ongoing inquiry into the first Trump assassination attempt. “Anonymous donor paid for cremation,” reads a note at the end of a summary of an interview the gunman’s father, Matthew, conducted with federal investigators. The information appears to have been gleaned from a lawyer for the family, according...

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the day President Trump came within inches of being assassinated in Butler, Pennsylvania. And all this time later, the official story looks even worse, thanks to a new report that was just released. READ MORE: Italian guy finishes his gelato cone before taking down a crazy foreigner blocking traffic… A new inspector general report says the Secret Service missed more than 100 radio transmissions from local law enforcement about the suspicious man who would later be identified as Thomas Crooks. One hundred. Pure insanity. The report says that local authorities were warning about a...

Secret Service Missed 102 Warnings Before Butler Assassination Attempt on Trump, DHS Report Finds Inspector general says agents missed 102 warnings that could have prevented the attack on President Trump. BIG LEAGUE POLITICS JUL 03, 2026 A new Department of Homeland Security inspector general report concludes that the U.S. Secret Service failed to act on dozens of warning signs before the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump at his July 13, 2024, campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The report, released Thursday by the DHS Office of Inspector General, details a cascade of communication failures, security lapses, and planning deficiencies that...

The wreckage of a plane crash burns in a field in Butler, Mo, Sunday, June 14, 2026. (Mid America News Review via AP Photo ) KANSAS CITY — Eleven skydivers and the pilot were killed Sunday morning in a plane crash at Butler Memorial Airport in Butler, Missouri. The Bates County Coroner’s Office released the victims’ names Tuesday, two days after the accident, noting some were experienced skydivers. Individuals: Kurt John Roy: 69 years old, Windber, PA Michael R. Shanahan: 54 years old, Kansas City, MO David Hershberger: 54 years old, Liberty, MO Sai Karthik Varma Datla: 24 years old,...

The two men who were wounded in a shooting during then-presidential candidate Donald Trump's 2024 rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds are suing the United States. James Copenhaver and David Dutch were shot during the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13, 2024, in Butler County, Pennsylvania. Their attorneys filed federal lawsuits against the United States for their "life altering physical and emotional injuries," claiming those injuries were a direct result of negligence on the part of the United States Secret Service. Dutch was shot in the stomach, while Copenhaver was shot twice. The complaints said, "The assassination attempt...

Kerry Sheron, the 69-year-old owner of the ‘Trump house’ in Southern California, has died after being brutally beaten by a Navy veteran. Sheron, an Army veteran, was violently assaulted by 32-year-old Thomas Caleb Butler in an unprovoked attack on May 20 outside of Sheron’s home. Kerry Sheron decorated his Escondido home with Trump banners and American flags. The Trump-supporting Army veteran died Sunday night just days after he was hospitalized in critical condition. Butler was previously charged with attempted murder, elder abuse, making criminal threats and battery. His charges will be upgraded after Sheron died from his injuries. Deputy District...

A neo-Nazi who may have interacted with would-be Donald Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks online revealed himself to be Bjorn Leif Hjelmerud of Norway, The Daily Mail reported. Hjelmerud admitted to being in contact with a “Tom Crooks” YouTube account believed by some to be the 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania, shooter who nearly took the president’s life, the outlet reported citing a text exchange with Hjelmerud. A member of the white supremacist Nordic Resistance Movement, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, Hjelmerud egged on violent comments from “Tom Crooks” about overthrowing the government in a 2020 YouTube comments section. “If a gun and...

A new poll revealed that a stunning number of Democrats believe the 2024 assassination attempt on President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, was staged. Among respondents who identified as Democrats, 42% said they believed that the Butler attempt by would-be assassin Thomas Crooks was fake, according to a YouGov poll. Thirty-four percent believed the recent attempt by suspect Cole Allen at the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) dinner was also staged. Twenty-six percent said the same of Ryan Routh’s attempt at Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach in September 2024. Notably, the poll found that nearly a quarter...

A Southwest Airlines flight attendant prayed for President Trump’s assassination on social media after a gunman breached security at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Michele Carpino made the perverse plea on her Facebook page just minutes after news broke that would-be assassin Cole Allen stormed the annual black-tie Washington press bash last Saturday. “Oh please sweet baby Jesus,” Carpino wrote in a since-deleted Facebook post, Libs of TikTok reported. “WE NEED BETTER ASSASSIN’S! [sic],” she commented after Allen was thwarted by Secret Service agents. Carpino has a history of posting disturbing anti-Trump screeds on social media. “One day we will...

In a shift from the past, more accused violent assailants have striking academic records. ‘We’re seeing a new breed of individual.’ An Ivy League grad. An aspiring engineer who scored 1530 out of 1600 on his SAT. A 4.0 high-school student with a prestigious college scholarship. And now, a Caltech grad.

Helen Comperatore, the widow of Corey Comperatore, who was shot and killed at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, by a bullet intended for President Trump last July, has no love lost for the Secret Service. “I think the Secret Service is garbage,” she told The Post. “All I’ve wanted this entire time was to sit down with the men who screwed up that day and find out why. Why? Why at that rally? Why at that one in Butler?” she asked incredulously. “...Why were you such a mess in Butler? Were you told to be a mess?"... The agency’s...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it forced the release of 27 heavily redacted pages from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that show that would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks was reportedly involved in an altercation with a group of people and making “hateful comments” directed at President Trump at the Butler, PA, rally site before the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt....

A man accused of hiring a hitman to take out US politicians, including President Donald Trump, says he was pressured by Iran's elite ​Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to devise the plot. A man accused of plotting to kill US President Donald Trump and other top politicians told the court on Wednesday he was pressured by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to organise their assassinations. Pakistan national Asif Raza Merchant, 47, was charged in September 2024 with seeking to hire a hitman to assassinate unidentified US politicians. He pleaded not guilty to the charges. The IRGC — Iran's elite...

Former Minnesota governor and WWE superstar Jesse Ventura believes that President Donald Trump faked the assassination attempt he faced in the summer of 2024.Conspiracy theories about the failed attempt on then-candidate Trump's life in Butler, Pennsylvania abounded from the moment the shot was fired, which left only a nick in the now-President's ear.Speaking on Piers Morgan Uncensored, Ventura - who previously hosted the TruTV series 'Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura' - uttered his belief that Trump faked the shooting in order to portray himself as a hero.

The Secret Service agent who was in charge of developing and executing the failed security plan for the 2024 rally where President Trump was nearly killed has been suspended and is under internal agency investigation for allegedly improperly reporting her relationship with and eventual marriage to a foreign national, several sources told RealClearPolitics.This suspension is the third one in a year and a half for the agent, Myosoty “Miyo” Perez, who served as the “site agent” for the Butler campaign rally where a would-be assassin shot Trump’s ear, killed retired firefighter Corey Comperatore, and seriously injured two others in the...

Israel has eliminated Rahman Makadam, head of the IRGC Special Operations Department, who was behind the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump. Israel has eliminated Rahman Makadam, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Special Operations Department, according to a report by Channel 12. Makadam was reportedly responsible for the assassination attempt on Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The report added that Trump was informed in recent hours by Israeli officials of Makadam’s killing.

Fox News national correspondent Alexis McAdams reports on the Butler shooting case as former Deputy Asst. Attorney General John Yoo reacts to a new report on Thomas Crooks’ online activity. (Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) New details emerging about the man who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. The White House says Americans need to know what happened, and so does the president. There are so many questions out there. And I mean, you know, did he act alone, et cetera? And it's, you know, it's over a year, it's 16 months now....