The Gallery Place building in Washington, D.C. was visited by a cell phone linked to the home and work addresses of Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was identified as a potential assassin.
The visit was reported by the Heritage Oversight Project on July 22. Following the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump at a fairground in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, the Oversight Project, which is part of the Heritage Foundation, initiated a geo-location investigation.
Crooks, aged 20, was shot and killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper after he opened fire on Trump and the crowd at approximately 6:11 p.m. ET.
Experts noted that only a well-timed turn of Trump’s head prevented him from being instantly killed by a rifle round fired from about 130 yards away.
The shooting resulted in the death of retired fire chief Corey Comperatore from Sarver, Pennsylvania, and caused serious injuries to David Dutch from New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and James Copenhaver from Moon Township, Pennsylvania.
“We began this investigation on the night of the shooting,” an Oversight Project spokesman told Blaze News. “We’ve been working 24/7 since then.”
The leaders of the Oversight Project expressed their hope that experts in geo-location searches and criminal investigations would come forward to assist with their investigation.
They initiated the probe out of concern that the work of federal law enforcement agencies such as the FBI and Secret Service may lack transparency and thoroughness.
According to the Oversight investigators, they utilized Crooks’ home and work addresses to locate cell phones that were associated with both locations, then tracked the paths of travel for each phone by triangulation.
They employed commercially available phone-identification numbers typically used for targeted advertising.
The investigators found that a phone linked to Crooks’ work address at a nursing home in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, traveled to the Gallery Place complex in Downtown Washington, D.C. on June 26, 2023.
The phone emitted seven or eight “pings” from that location on the same day.
Gallery Place is an 11-story mixed-use building situated over the Chinatown Metro station, which includes retail stores, restaurants, and offices of the FBI on its upper floors, as noted by former FBI special agent Kyle Seraphin in an interview with Blaze News.
“It is the closest [location] off-site that I’m aware of to the Washington Field Office,” Seraphin said. “Agents are assigned to Washington Field, but they work out of Gallery Place.”
The Oversight Project investigators stated that the phone linked to the ID number likely belonged to an individual who visited Crooks at his workplace, rather than being Crooks’ own phone.
They explained that geo-location technology utilizes a distinct ID assigned to each cell phone and scans for typical locations frequented by the phone and its user.
“Every device has an ad ID. It’s kind of like a Social Security number for your cell phone,” said a spokesman for the Oversight Project. “It’s unique and it identifies the phone. You can’t erase it. You can refresh and get a new one, but you only have one ID per phone.”
Investigators discovered nine devices linked to Crooks’ home and work addresses in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, with two of them believed to belong to Crooks himself.
Following Crooks’ death by a counter-sniper on July 13, a cell phone was found beneath his body.
Through geo-location data, investigators determined that one of the devices associated with Crooks had traveled from Bethel Park to Butler, approximately 55 miles away, on two occasions – July 4 and July 8, 2024. The device became inactive on July 12.
Additionally, the device was traced to a Home Depot in Butler where it was reported that Crooks had purchased a 5.5-foot double ladder shortly after 9:30 a.m. on the day of the shooting. However, investigators do not believe that Crooks used the ladder to access the roof north of the fairground.
Investigators speculated that Crooks may have made multiple trips to gather information about the Butler site ahead of the July 13 Trump rally at the Butler Farm Show Inc. fairgrounds.
Additionally, a separate device associated with Crooks traveled from Pittsburgh to Logan International Airport in Boston on March 1, and then proceeded to a hotel in Plymouth Harbor, Mass.
The same device returned to Pittsburgh on March 4. Furthermore, a phone linked to Crooks was reported to have visited the Allegheny Arms & Gun Works in Bethel Park on August 30, 2023.
The devices connected to Crooks’ home and work addresses were also found to have visited various locations in Bethel Park, including the YMCA, a building housing a karate school and a laundromat, a garden center, a golf course, and a Planet Fitness facility.
“We are willing to cooperate with legitimate investigations and share further information,” Oversight Project Director Mike Howell wrote on X.
“For the protection of whistleblowers and our investigation, we will not be sharing further information with the congressional task force due to the connective tissue between that entity and FBI, USSS and other entities,” Howell wrote.
The Oversight Project report is expected to intensify the ongoing public debate surrounding how a 20-year-old individual with limited firearms experience managed to enter the AGR manufacturing complex north of the fairground, ascend to a rooftop with a clear view of the podium, and fire multiple rifle rounds at a former president before being fatally shot.
The frustration over the lack of information provided by the FBI and Secret Service culminated in a collective outpouring of criticism directed at Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle during a July 22 hearing on Capitol Hill.
Appointed by President Joe Biden in September 2022, Cheatle spent most of the lengthy four-hour hearing either redirecting questions to the FBI or admitting that she did not possess the necessary answers.
Both Democratic and Republican representatives posed pointed inquiries, with many committee members calling for Cheatle’s resignation.
Tensions flared during the hearing, with Rep. Nancy Mace expressing frustration by telling the Secret Service director that she believed he was being dishonest.
Cheatle, under questioning from Rep. Lauren Boebert, admitted to knowing the number of shell casings found near Crooks on the roof of Building 6 but declined to disclose it to Congress, insisting that committee members should seek that information from the FBI.
“I find this rather maddening,” Boebert said, “especially knowing that you do have answers from the FBI, who you have been passing the buck to this entire hearing, not answering a congressional hearing, members of Congress while you are under oath and under a subpoena.”
Rep. Russell Fry (R-South Carolina) said Washington, D.C., is “the only town in America that you can be so bad at your job that you actually get a promotion or don’t get fired.”
After listing a litany of questions Cheatle did not answer, Fry said: “I echo the bipartisan calls of this committee and all across this country that you should resign, or maybe when the president wakes up from his nap he can fire you.”
