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In November, the FBI closed its investigation of the attempt by Thomas Crooks to kill President Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. But Judicial Watch has not stopped looking for answers. What exactly happened in Butler in July 2024 before, during, and after shots were fired? A full picture of the Butler shooting is critical to understanding the attempt on the president’s life—and perhaps preventing future assassination attempts.
Last month, we obtained 48 pages of heavily redacted documents from the FBI in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The documents provide context to the Butler shooting story. One document is an interview of the first medic to reach Crooks on the rooftop. She pronounced him dead and noted that a SWAT team officer “checked the shooter’s right pocket and discovered a gray remote device with numerical push buttons and an antenna.” Other documents sketch FBI actions in the days after the shooting.
Judicial Watch has been relentless in pursuit of facts in the Butler case. We obtained numerous documents from local and state sources.
One request resulted in the production of bodycam footage from the Butler Police Department on the day of the assassination attempt.
Another request produced two photographs of shooter Thomas Crooks and included law enforcement emails about “sniper elements” deployed to protect the president. The sniper elements will “provide overwatch for the rally and would work in conjunction with the secret service counter-sniper unit,” noted a senior law-enforcement source.
In another legal action, Judicial Watch fought vigorously for the disclosure of a tape of  a 911 call made by Crooks’ father. The tape “is another piece of the puzzle in the Butler assassination attempt on President Trump,” noted JW President Tom Fitton.
In July 2025, after the FBI ignored our FOIA request for all records related to Thomas Crooks, we sued in federal court. “No more delays and excuses,” Tom said. “The FBI should release what it has on the man who tried to kill President Trump.”
Nine months later, in April 2026, the FBI released 37 heavily redacted pages that noted local law enforcement warnings about an “unknown male acting suspiciously.” The documents arrived five months after the FBI closed its investigation and were the first records to be released by the bureau about the assassination attempt.
The FBI tells JW they are holding approximately 75,000 pages of documents related to the Butler shooting and reviewing only a few hundred a month for release. Why the delay?
“The American people deserve full transparency about Thomas Crooks, his contacts, and why key details about the case remain hidden,” notes JW’s Fitton. Our federal lawsuit against the FBI continues.
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Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Tips: mmorrison@judicialwatch.org
Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: jfarrell@judicialwatch.org
 
The post Case Closed? Judicial Watch Investigates Butler Assassination Attempt appeared first on Judicial Watch.

Janeese Lewis George, the Democratic Socialists of America activist who is poised to become the next mayor of Washington, D.C., told DSA leaders last year that she regretted voting in favor of a 2022 resolution condemning antisemitism.
During an interview with leaders of the Metro D.C. DSA chapter in November 2025, Lewis George said she no longer supported the resolution because, she argued, it conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. In April 2022, as a member of the D.C. city council, Lewis George had sponsored and voted in favor of the resolution, which adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, passed with a unanimous 13-0 vote, and was widely praised as a step to bolster the safety of D.C.’s Jewish community.

The interview, revealed for the first time by the Washington Free Beacon, was part of a series of internal interviews the DSA chapter conducted with candidates running for city government as it mulled whom to endorse ahead of the 2026 election. The DSA eventually endorsed Lewis George two months after the interview and canvassed aggressively for her during the primary. After she won the Democratic nomination on June 18, making her the deep-blue city’s presumptive next mayor, the DSA declared that “socialism wins in D.C.”
It represents the latest example of Lewis George appearing to adopt a hardline stance against Israel in an effort to court the DSA’s support. The socialist group’s chapters across the country have been linked to a number of antisemitic incidents nationwide and are openly hostile to Israel, advancing anti-Zionist and divestment campaigns. In March, Lewis George was forced to issue a statement saying she opposed antisemitism after Jewish Insider reported that she pledged in a DSA questionnaire never to attend events promoting Zionism or travel on political junkets to Israel.
Lewis George, though, has not addressed her comments walking back support for the 2022 antisemitism resolution.
“If this vote came up today, I would not vote for it,” Lewis George said during the November interview after Kurtis Hagans, the chairman of the Metro D.C. DSA, pressed her on her past support for the resolution. “I firmly believe that anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel is not antisemitism. I think that it’s so important for us in this moment to be clear on that and to stand firm in that. And that’s where my values are and that’s what I believe strongly.”
The 2022 resolution mentions Israel three times. First, it states that accusing Israel of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust is an “especially hurtful example of antisemitism.” Second, it states that drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis and holding Jews responsible for the actions of the State of Israel are both antisemitic actions. And, third, it states that accusing Jews of being more loyal to Israel than to the interests of their own nation “echoes antisemitic tropes of dual loyalty.”
Furthermore, the resolution adopts the IHRA definition of antisemitism, something with which DSA leaders appeared particularly concerned during their interview with Lewis George. The IHRA defines antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews,” and lists examples such as inciting violence against Jews, denying or minimizing the Holocaust, and holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s actions.
The IHRA definition, though, explicitly states that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
Lewis George’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
More than 30 countries, and dozens of municipalities in the United States, have adopted the definition. President Donald Trump adopted it in a 2019 executive order, and the Biden administration recognized it as “the most prominent definition of antisemitism.”
The Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, among other organizations, all supported the 2022 resolution.
“The resolution demonstrates a firm commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, which is particularly essential at a time when acts of antisemitism are on the rise at home and abroad,” the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations said at the time.
In addition to her comments on the resolution, Lewis George told the Metro D.C. DSA leaders that, if elected mayor, she will “fight against unjust repression of pro-Palestinian activists” and support legislation divesting public funds from Israeli companies, including Cellebrite, an Israeli firm that provides software to the Metropolitan Police Department that aids criminal investigations.
The post Socialist Poised To Be DC’s Next Mayor Says She Now Regrets Backing Resolution Condemning Antisemitism, Unearthed DSA Recording Shows appeared first on .

Julia Ainsley & Bridget Bowman, NBC Dan J. Sullivan, a former teacher, is mounting an effort to unseat Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, who has been in office since 2015.

What comes next for the right?

PBS made an classic Democrat programming choice to mark the 250th anniversary weekend: A half-hour “PBS News Special” on a famous populist rocker and songwriter turned blunt leftist political activist: “Bruce Springsteen: Finding America in Song.”

Airing from the new Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at Monmouth University in his home state of New Jersey, the show featured a sit-down interview by PBS News Hour host Geoff Bennett with the 76-year-old “Boss” himself, with a little music history and a big dose of politics to mark our country’s 250th birthday.

After a fawning tour of the museum, which hosts Springsteen archival material like handwritten lyrics along with a borrowed collection of musical Americana (including “Indigenous” and “Gender” exhibits), Bennett teed Springsteen up to warn viewers the country was in “a very dangerous moment” under President Trump. No challenging questions were offered, certainly nothing about left-wing hypocrisy regarding this artist-of-the-people’s sky-high concert ticket prices.

They hyped his “critical patriotism,” which seems to align neatly with Democrat partisanship. He wasn’t a “critical patriot” when Biden came in. He starred in a media-celebrated Super Bowl commercial urging America to meet “in the middle” — with Biden? 

Geoff Bennett: For Springsteen, being connected to his times has often meant examining the tension between America’s ideals and its realities….from songs like “Youngstown,” a lament for the hollowing out of industrial America, to “American Skin (41 Shots),” his meditation on the 1999 police killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed immigrant in New York City.

[Springsteen concert clip]: “You can get killed just for living / In your American skin”

Bennett: He’s also been one of the country’s most politically engaged musicians, lending his voice to Democratic candidates for decades, performing at campaign rallies and Get Out the Vote events. You said before that loving your country means telling the truth about it. How has that guided your work?

Springsteen: Well, I believe in critical patriotism. I believe that’s the definition of a patriot, you know, that you love your country so much that you are willing to look at it clearly, recognize its faults, encourage it to be a better place, and believe that you carry in your heart the country that is waiting.

Bennett: In recent years, the politics that long informed Springsteen’s work has become more explicit. In January, after federal immigration authorities in Minnesota killed two U.S. citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, Springsteen responded with a song.

Hint: It was no “Born to Run.”

Springsteen: So, in this case, I wrote a protest song [“Streets of Minneapolis”]. I thought, “Gee, maybe this is a little broad,” you know? But then I had my buddy Tom Morello, from Rage Against the Machine, and he says, “No, no, no,” he says, Bruce, nuance is great, but, sometimes, you gotta kick ’em in the teeth.” And so, that was a moment when you had to kick ’em in the teeth.

Springsteen’s lyricism was never subtle, but lines like “King Trump’s private army from the DHS” are truly hamfisted.

Bruce Springsteen talked to PBS on the nation’s 250th birthday: “…we’re in a very dangerous moment, you know?…our democracy is threatened. The Constitution is threatened. We have an administration that…is a ship of fools,…a very, very, very dangerous time for America.” pic.twitter.com/gFEM39cH5e
— Clay Waters 🇮🇱 (@claywaters44) July 5, 2026
Bennett made the 250th anniversary link explicit.

Bennett: “What’s fundamentally different, in your view, about this current moment, as we are about to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday?”

Springsteen: Yeah, bad timing. [Laughs] You know. I think we’re in a very dangerous moment, you know? Obviously, our democracy is threatened. The Constitution is threatened. We have an administration that, in my humble opinion, is a ship of fools, you know. It’s a very, very, very dangerous time for America. There have been other dangerous times. I was old enough to live through the ’60s, and I remember the assassinations of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy. You know, so it’s not like these are the first difficult times America’s been through. We had the Civil War….

Bennett: You play for audiences across the political spectrum. People who love your music might not share your politics.

Springsteen: Right.

Bennett: How does that strike you?

Springsteen graciously allowed it was fine for non-lefties to pay hundreds of dollars for tickets to his concerts as well.

Springsteen: That’s what I like. That’s fine. I like a big tent….

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department released over 1,000 hours of body-worn camera footage in 1,630 videos from the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol event. The videos were released because of an April 2026 court ruling in a DC Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. The videos are available via the Judicial Watch website here and http://www.judicialwatch.org/january6bodycam.
Judicial Watch filed the DC FOIA lawsuit in June 2024 after the DC Police denied an August 2021 request for all body-worn camera footage recorded by police officers responding to the January 6, 2021, events at and around the U.S. Capitol (Judicial Watch v. District of Columbia (No. 2024-CAB-003453)).
Earlier this year, a local DC court dealt a major blow to government secrecy by ruling that the DC Police could not broadly blur and censor the footage. Rejecting DC Police’s claim that it could withhold faces and voices of everyone except law enforcement—and its assertion that producing the footage would cost more than $1.5 million—the court held that any privacy interests were minimal and outweighed by the overwhelming public interest in disclosure. The ruling cleared the way for this release of bodycam footage that documents one of the most consequential events in recent American history.
“The release of these previously secret DC Police January 6 bodycam videos are the result of a hard-fought victory for transparency by Judicial Watch,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Judicial Watch encourages citizens, law enforcement, Congress and media to carefully review these videos so they can see more of the truth about January 6.”
Judicial Watch has conducted a massive, independent investigation into the events of January 6. 
In April 2026, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to obtain records related to possible improper targeting of January 6, 2021, Capitol protesters, their supporters, and related nonprofits
In August 2025, Judicial Watch announced that the U.S. Air Force would finally provide full military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran who was shot and killed inside the U.S. Capitol by then-Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on January 6, 2021. Babbitt was the only official January 6 homicide victim. The Biden administration had previously denied Babbitt and her family these honors in retaliation for being at the U.S. Capitol that day. This decision came on the heels of a massive, nearly $5 million Trump administration settlement to her family for wrongful death and other claims against the U.S. Government.
In July 2025, Judicial Watch sued the U.S. Department of Justice for records on accelerated January 6 prosecutions after Donald Trump was elected president in November 2024. The Biden administration, anticipating President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to issue pardons for January 6, 2021, defendants, is believed to have accelerated prosecutions in the final months of Biden’s term.
In March 2024, Judicial Watch received Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) records from the Department of Justice in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that show the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deployed personnel to Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021.
October 2023, Judicial Watch received the declaration of James W. Joyce, senior counsel in the Office of the General Counsel for the Capitol Police, in which he describes emails among senior officials of the United States Capitol Police (USCP) in January 2021 that show warnings of possible January 6 protests that could lead to serious disruptions at the U.S. Capitol.
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The post Judicial Watch Victory: DC Police Produces 1,627 January 6 Bodycam Videos appeared first on Judicial Watch.

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The post DC Metropolitan Police Department Bodycam Footage from January 6, 2021 appeared first on Judicial Watch.