Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old Pennsylvanian who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump in July, was in the process of designing a bomb in the months leading up to the shooting.
Crooks, 20, killed two and shot Trump in the ear at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024.
As part of the FBI investigation into Crooks - who top officials Kash Patel and Dan Bongino have said was not part of a foreign plot - has revealed views inside the mind of the would-be assassin.
At the time, Crooks was working on applications to a four-year college from community college to get a degree in engineering.
However, using an encrypted email account, he also ordered over two gallons of nitromethane from online retailer Hyperfuels, CBS News reported.
An email obtained shows Crooks, 12 days after his order, wondering why it hadn't shipped.
'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,' he wrote on January 31, 2024 at 7:44am.
The feds were able to access his email because he sent it from an account tied to Community College of Allegheny County where he attended.
However, of the hundreds of emails from his college account that have been viewed, very little else reveals much about the shooting but does give a look at the life Crooks was living.
One missive shows Crooks emailing his professor asking if he can only bring two or three adults to a presentation that asked him to bring five.
'I do not have access to any other adults' aside from his parents and his sister,' he writes.
Otherwise, Crooks is painted as an A-level student who professes his enjoyment for the fall season and stayed in contact with his professors.
'It's sad that he had so much promise and he chose to do this. It's just very difficult to understand where it came from,' Patricia Thompson, one of his professors, said.
Online theories swirled that Crooks was part of a large foreign-influenced plot to take out the Republican before the 2024 presidential election, which he went on to win.
Crooks was on top of a nearby building a few hundred feet from where Trump was speaking that day, crouched down with an AR-15 rifle.
He was able to fire eight rounds in Trump's direction less than 150 yards from where the former president was speaking.
As part of the FBI investigation into Crooks - who top officials Kash Patel and Dan Bongino have said was not part of a foreign plot - has revealed views inside the mind of the would-be assassin.
Online theories swirled that Crooks was part of a large foreign-influenced plot to take out the Republican before the 2024 presidential election, which he went on to win.
Crooks was killed by counter snipers who took him out before he was able to reap more damage at the Trump rally.
A series of failures by the U.S. Secret Service ultimately allowed would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks to successfully land a shot in Donald Trump's right ear, a new report reveals.
One troubling finding from the bipartisan Senate investigation was how technical issues downed Secret Service drones during the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The agent responsible for overseeing the Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) called a toll free 888 tech support hotline 'to start troubleshooting with the company.' There were no backups.
It took several hours to get the drones back up and running - and the agent responsible for the drone operations only had three months of experience with the equipment.
The report released on Wednesday concluded that the failures ahead of the rally were 'foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day.'