The FBI early Sunday identified the person who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pa.
“The FBI has identified Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the subject involved in the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump on July 13, in Butler, Pennsylvania,” the FBI said in a statement, Fox News reported.
“This remains an active and ongoing investigation, and anyone with information that may assist with the investigation is encouraged to submit photos or videos online at FBI.gov/butler or call 1-800-CALL-FBI.”
Before the FBI announcement, Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens said the attacker opened fire roughly 10 to 15 minutes after Trump took the stage at the Butler Farm Show Grounds in Pennsylvania, grazing his ear before Secret Service agents surrounded the former president and escorted him off the stage.
One victim died at the scene and two more are critically wounded, Bivens added.
“Law enforcement acted heroically,” he said, noting that they worked “quickly” to “neutralize the threat.”
Law enforcement said they are still investigating a motive.
Bivens also declined to specify what weapon the shooter used, though eyewitnesses have described seeing a man crawling across a roof holding a rifle.
The FBI also deflected questions from reporters about security measures taken by the U.S. Secret Service to secure the area before the rally began. Bivens said the shooter fired from a rooftop outside of that perimeter but declined to give more specifics.
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In a sweeping indictment that tears into an underworld of Chinese narco infiltration of North American cities — including the smuggling of impoverished Chinese nationals across the Mexican border to work as drug debt slaves in illegal drug houses — seven Chinese nationals living in Massachusetts stand accused of running a sprawling, multimillion-dollar marijuana trafficking and money laundering network across New England.
The backdrop of the human smuggling allegations stretches back to 2020, as an unprecedented wave of illegal Chinese migrants surged across the U.S. border with Mexico — a surge that peaked in 2024 under the Biden administration before the White House reversed course. This explosive migration trend became a flashpoint in heated U.S. election debates, fueling concerns over border security and transnational organized crime.
Six of the accused, including alleged ringleader Jianxiong Chen of Braintree, were arrested this week in coordinated FBI raids across Massachusetts. The border exploitation schemes match exactly with decades-long human smuggling and Chinese Triad criminal pipelines into America reported by The Bureau last summer, based on leaked intelligence documents filed by a Canadian immigration official in 1993. A seventh suspect in the new U.S. indictment, Yanrong Zhu, remains a fugitive and is believed to be moving between Greenfield, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, New York.
The case paints a striking portrait of China-based criminal organizations operating behind the quiet facades of upscale American suburban properties. Prosecutors allege the defendants owned or partnered with a network of sophisticated indoor grow houses hidden inside single-family residences in Massachusetts, Maine, and beyond, producing kilogram-scale shipments of marijuana. According to court documents, the marijuana was sold in bulk to distributors across the Northeast, and the profits — amounting to millions — were funneled into luxury real estate, cars, jewelry, and further expansion of their illicit operations.
“During a search of [ringleader Chen’s] home in October 2024, over $270,000 in cash was allegedly recovered from the house and from a Porsche in the driveway,” the indictment alleges, “as well as several Chinese passports and other identification documents inside a safe.”
According to the indictment, Chen’s cell phone data confirmed his personal role in orchestrating smuggling logistics and controlling workers. Additional searches of homes where co-defendants lived yielded over 109 kilograms of marijuana, nearly $200,000 in cash, and luxury items including a $65,000 gold Rolex with the price tag still attached.
A photo from the indictment, humorously but damningly, shows alleged ring member Hongbin Wu, 35, wearing a green “money laundering” T-shirt printed with an image of a hot iron pressing U.S. dollar bills on an ironing board — a snapshot that encapsulates the brazenness of the alleged scheme.
Key to FBI allegations of stunning sophistication tying together Chinese narcos along the U.S. East Coast with bases in mainland China is a document allegedly shared among the conspirators.
“The grow house operators maintained contact with each other through a list of marijuana cultivators and distributors from or with ties to China in the region called the ‘East Coast Contact List,’” the indictment alleges.
Investigators say the conspiracy reveals a human smuggling component directly tied to China’s underground migration and debt bondage networks, mirroring exactly the historic intelligence from Canadian and U.S. Homeland Security documents reported by The Bureau last summer.
The alleged leader, 39-year-old Jianxiong Chen, is charged with paying to smuggle Chinese nationals across the Mexican border, then forcing them to work in grow houses while withholding their passports until they repaid enormous smuggling debts.
“Data extracted from Chen’s cell phone allegedly revealed that he helped smuggle Chinese nationals into the United States — putting the aliens to work at one of the grow houses he controlled,” U.S. filings say.
“This case pulls back the curtain on a sprawling criminal enterprise that exploited our immigration system and our communities for personal gain,” said U.S. Attorney Leah Foley. “These defendants allegedly turned quiet homes across the Northeast into hubs for a criminal enterprise — building a multi-million-dollar black-market operation off the backs of an illegal workforce and using our neighborhoods as cover.”
The arrests come amid a surge of Chinese migrants entering the U.S. through Mexico, part of a pattern previously exposed in Canadian diplomatic and intelligence reporting. In 1993, a confidential Canadian government study, “Passports of Convenience,” warned that Chinese government officials, in collusion with Triads and corrupt Latin American partners, were driving a multi-billion-dollar human smuggling business. That report predicted that tens of thousands of migrants from coastal Fujian province would flood North America, empowered by Beijing’s tacit support and organized crime’s global reach.
It also warned that mass migration from China in the 1990s came during a time of political upheaval, a trend that has apparently re-emerged while President Xi Jinping’s economic and political guidance has been increasingly questioned among mainland citizens, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic crisis and lockdowns inside China.
The 1993 report, obtained and analyzed exclusively by The Bureau, described how the Triads — particularly those connected with Chinese Communist networks in Fujian — would leverage human smuggling to extend their influence into American cities. The migrants, often saddled with debts of $50,000 or more, became trapped in forced labor, prostitution, or drug networks, coerced to repay their passage fees.
“Alien smuggling is closely linked to narcotics smuggling; many of the persons smuggled in have to resort to prostitution or drug dealing to pay the smugglers,” the 1993 Canadian immigration report says.
Citing legal filings in one U.S. Homeland Security case, it says a Triad member who reportedly smuggled 150 Fujianese migrants into New York stated that if fees aren’t paid “the victims are often tortured until the money is paid.”
Supporting these early warnings, a 1995 U.S. Department of Justice report echoed the Canadian findings, stating that “up to 100,000 Chinese aliens are smuggled into the United States each year,” with 85 percent originating from Fujian. The DOJ report also cited allegations of “negotiations between the Sun Yee On Triad and the Mainland Chinese Government,” suggesting that smuggling and criminal infiltration were tolerated — if not orchestrated — to extend China’s economic and political influence abroad.
That report added American investigators and immigration officials concluded it was nearly impossible to counter waves of illegal immigration from China with deportation orders, and the government should focus on “the larger menace working its way into U.S. cities: Chinese transnational criminal organizations.”
“To combat the growing threat of Asian organized crime in the West,” it says, “law enforcement officials must tackle this new global problem through an understanding of the Triad system and the nature of its threat to Western countries.”
In New England, the Braintree indictment shows how those old predictions have not only materialized but scaled up.
These networks operate by embedding Chinese nationals into illicit industries in North America, from black-market cannabis cultivation to high-end money laundering. Once inside, they channel profits back through complex underground banking channels that tie the North American drug economy to China’s export-driven cash flows and, ultimately, to powerful actors in Beijing.
In recent years, Maine has emerged as a strategic hotspot for illicit Chinese-controlled marijuana operations. As The Bureau has reported, the state’s vast rural areas, lax local oversight, and proximity to East Coast urban markets have made it a favored location for covert grow houses.
The Environmental Protection Agency under Administrator Lee Zeldin has released new online resources addressing public concerns about geoengineering and contrails. Zeldin stated the EPA is committed to transparency, publishing everything it knows about these controversial topics.
Key Details:
New EPA Pages: Explain the science of contrails and debunk “chemtrail” claims, while outlining potential risks of solar geoengineering.
Zeldin’s Statement: “Americans have legitimate questions… they deserve straight answers,” noting EPA’s concerns about geoengineering health and environmental risks.
Legislative Context: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene plans to introduce a bill banning atmospheric chemical dispersals for weather modification purposes.
The Trump EPA is committed to total transparency. I tasked my team @EPA to compile everything we know about contrails and geoengineering to release to you now publicly. I want you to know EVERYTHING I know about these topics, and without ANY exception! https://t.co/izKBz0lFvrpic.twitter.com/FkOCgBm3K9
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday launched two detailed online resources aiming to give Americans what Administrator Lee Zeldin described as “total transparency” on contrails and geoengineering. In a video message, Zeldin said the pages were designed for “anyone who’s ever looked up to the streaks in the sky and asked, ‘What the heck is going on?’”
The EPA’s contrail page clarifies that condensation trails are a normal byproduct of jet aircraft exhaust, akin to car exhaust being visible on a cold day. The agency directly addressed claims that these are “chemtrails” — alleged intentional chemical releases for nefarious purposes like population control or weather modification — stating there is no evidence the federal government has ever used contrails to geoengineer or alter weather.
However, the agency acknowledged the reality of solar geoengineering research, particularly stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), which aims to reflect sunlight to cool the planet. Zeldin noted that enthusiasm for such experiments has “set off alarm bells” within President Trump’s EPA, as the practice could deplete the ozone layer, damage crops, alter weather patterns, and create acid rain.
Currently, only one private U.S. company, Make Sunsets, has experimented with SAI and marine cloud brightening, though these remain in early research phases. Meanwhile, traditional weather modification, such as cloud seeding, has been conducted at state or local levels to alleviate droughts, not to control climate or populations.
The EPA also highlighted past U.S. government weather modification projects, including Operation Popeye during the Vietnam War, which attempted to extend the monsoon season to disrupt enemy supply lines. Some states, like Florida and Tennessee, have since passed laws banning geoengineering or weather modification without explicit approval.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) recently pledged to introduce federal legislation criminalizing any injection or dispersal of chemicals into the atmosphere to alter weather or climate. Zeldin concluded that the EPA shares Americans’ concerns over geoengineering’s risks and emphasized that this marks the first time the agency has proactively addressed such public fears in this way.
