Trump shooter used gaming site that features presidential assassination game
Would-be Trump assassin posted a foreboding comment on the gaming platform Steam before opening fire at a Pennsylvania rally Saturday.
Trump shooter Thomas Crooks posted an ominous comment that appeared to foreshadow his attack on the former president on the gaming platform Steam – which features an assassination game.
Crooks, 20, wrote in a post earlier this month, "July 13 will be my premiere, watch as it unfolds."
The chilling details were disclosed late Wednesday to senators in an all-member briefing.
Investigators also said they discovered internet searches on his laptop for Trump, President Biden, the Democratic National Convention and the July 13 Trump rally.
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The Steam platform offers more than 100,000 games, including the assassination game Mr. President!, but there is no evidence Crooks played it.
The game's protagonist, Dick "Rock-Hard" Johnson – "the best bodyguard money can buy" – is sworn to protect "the most hated presidential candidate of all time Ronald Rump," the game's description reads.
"Liberal media has rigged the election and tarnished his glowing public image, now they are trying to end his life. You need to leap, flip, fling, role and many other verbs to get in between Rump and certain death," the summary continues.
In the game, Johnson has to defend against more than 50 "challenging" assassination attempts as he shadows Rump around the world.
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Retired FBI agent and behavior analyst expert Jim Clemente told Fox News Digital that politics didn’t motivate Crooks.
"It was the supposed fame of doing something outrageous and infamous," the expert said. "He was trying to make himself look and feel bigger than how he viewed his life as insignificant."
FBI investigators appear to have come to a similar conclusion. In Wednesday’s Senate briefing, it was disclosed that the FBI found no evidence of a particular ideology and no one interviewed reported Crooks discussing politics.
He had two cellphones – a primary phone recovered from the scene and a secondary one retrieved from his home. The primary device had only 27 contacts and the FBI is in the process of interviewing each of them.
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Immediately after Crooks opened fire Saturday at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Steam users began noting the Mr. President! game’s sudden real world parallels in a forum.
"Too real for my liking," wrote one gamer. "Predicted events, huge," wrote another.
"Lol, ok, it actually happened," yet another chimed in. One player expressed surprise that the game hadn’t been removed from the platform five days after the attempted assassination.
A spokesperson for Valve, Steam's parent company, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
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Crooks had a very limited online footprint, but had an account on the encrypted social media platform Discord and on Steam, according to authorities.
In Saturday’s attack, Crooks grazed the former president’s ear, killed volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore and seriously wounded two other bystanders before snipers took him out.
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The Secret Service was warned of a suspicious person at the rally 19 minutes before Crooks opened fire. A chorus of critics are calling for the resignation of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle.