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Trump Allies Promote Conspiracy Theories About the Assassination Attempt

On Fox News, Rep. Ryan Zinke is the latest to point without evidence to a possible nefarious government “plot.”

Mark Follman

In the two-plus weeks since a gunman opened fire at Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, some details have emerged about the catastrophic security failure. The 20-year-old perpetrator, who wounded the former president and three people in the crowd, killing one, was on authorities’ radar for more than 90 minutes before he attacked. He eluded law enforcement agents at the rally site, eventually reaching an unsecured rooftop about 150 yards from where Trump spoke. He fired at least eight rounds from an AR-15 before being killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper.

Major questions remain about the disaster as three federal investigations move forward. In the meantime, Trump allies continue trying to exploit the assassination attempt politically, whether by raising unfounded conspiracy theories about the Biden administration or attacking FBI leaders, as Trump himself long has done.

Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana, a former Secretary of the Interior under Trump, suggested on Fox News on Monday that the security failure may have resulted from some sort of government plot. “We know there was incompetence,” he said, “but was this incompetence willful and knowing? Did you willingly and knowing [sic] put the president in a position by atrophying the security and allowing this to happen?” Zinke gave no evidence, but speculated emphatically, “that brings it from assassination attempt into the area of a plot—big difference between an attempt and a plot.”

Appearing on Fox News on Sunday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted the FBI over its investigation of the shooting. Fox host Maria Bartiromo set him up by insisting that FBI Director Christopher Wray had “tried to throw doubt” on Trump being shot when Wray testified before Congress last week that investigators were still determining whether the ex-president had been hit on his ear by a bullet or shrapnel. (The FBI soon clarified that it was either a bullet or a fragment of one.)

“I think these agencies have lost the trust of the American people,” DeSantis responded. “Go back to the Las Vegas shooter: We never learned a thing about him.” (Hundreds of pages of FBI documents and a lengthy investigative report on the case are publicly available.) He continued: “Now you have the FBI director casting doubt what we saw on TV live, that President Trump was shot in his ear. These agencies are failing the American people. They lack the credibility.”

Conspiracy theories from both the political right and left have run rampant since the horrific shooting on July 13. But while some Democratic voters have baselessly speculated that the violence was somehow staged to benefit Trump, few if any leaders on the left have gone there. (The closest was an aide to major Democratic donor Reid Hoffman who later apologized.)

Numerous high-profile Trump allies, however, immediately began accusing Democrats—without any evidence—of orchestrating the shooting. They included Congress members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Collins of Georgia, and Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric. Bartiromo also played host to Eric Trump when he claimed that Democrats “would stop at absolutely nothing” and had intended to have his father murdered: “I’ve said on this show before I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried something even worse, alluding to exactly what happened, and I was right.” (And it was on the radio show of a former Fox host, Megyn Kelly, where Don Jr. said Trump’s political foes were “now trying to kill him.”)

During the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which began just two days after the shooting, various speakers used Trump’s brush with death to declare his survival and candidacy nothing short of a divine miracle. The sweeping visual backdrop for Trump’s acceptance speech played to the theme of martyrdom, showcasing the iconic news photo of Trump bloodied and defiant in the moments after the attack.   

Threat assessment and law enforcement leaders told me after the assassination attempt that partisan exploitation of the bloodshed will fuel political violence—already a serious concern ahead of the election—by exacerbating “a really big plot point” for extremist groups.

On Monday, the FBI announced that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, had begun buying gun-related items and bomb-making materials more than a year before the attack. He took firearms training courses and did online research into mass shootings, assassination attempts, and various potential targets. He planned carefully and “made significant efforts to conceal his activities,” said Kevin Rojek, the FBI special agent in charge in Pittsburgh.

According to the Wall Street Journal, FBI investigators have interviewed more than 450 people, including dozens of Crooks’ coworkers, family members, and former classmates. The FBI reiterated that it has found no evidence indicating he was driven by partisanship or political ideology. As I reported five days after the attack, barring some extraordinary revelation to come, Crooks is more likely to fit a different pattern of motive, a murkier one shared by many of his predecessors.