Hello Chris, let me start by saying how very much I appreciate your initiative with this Citizens Investigation and your methodology in general. I also appreciate your invitation and encouragement to challenge each others ideas. Since you have featured today all the similarly dressed gentlemen wandering around the AGR buildings, I think it is time to revisit an earlier conclusion of yours. What I am going to do here is review all the reasons you and others have given for rejecting the idea that the dead shooter on the roof was Maxwell Yearick rather than Thomas Crooks, and then introduce some other evidence that I have not yet heard you discuss.
In your video of July 19th (https://peakprosperity.com/crooks-unbelievable-path-to-the-roof/), you began your analysis of the shooter’s identity at minute 40:39. At 41:56 you put up the photo taken by sniper Greg Nicol on the day of the rally and state: “I think we have to agree this is the shooter because of the same tee-shirt, same glasses, same scruffy facial hair …” Upon reflection, I think you will agree that this statement, as such, is a non sequitur. While the shooter did have each of those three superficial things, this is far from proof of identity.
However, the individual photographed by Nicol does indeed closely resemble Thomas Crooks, as seen from the front in his high school yearbook photo that you showed, and the resemblance is even stronger in views of Crooks from the side (broad forehead, protruding chin, etc.).
So I have no doubt that Crooks was present at the Trump rally and did dress like the dead shooter, but that does not mean he was the dead shooter. As you have just stressed, there were a lot of people that day dressed quite similarly and perhaps intentionally so in order to cause maximum confusion.
In your video you next compared the right ear of Crooks with the right ear of the shooter and concluded that the small bump(s) on the rim are “distinctive” and on this basis you say you are “very, very confident” that the shooter is Crooks. Here I would remark that such bumps are called “auricular tubercles” and are perhaps not as rare or distinctive as you might think:
https://www.imaios.com/en/e-anatomy/anatomical-structure/auricular-tubercle-1536888416
In any case, to your credit, you did admit that the hair of Crooks and the shooter are not such a great match, and you also cited an eye-witness who estimated the age of the shooter to be between 30 and 40, which is good match for Yearick’s 37 (but not for Crook’s 20). However, for some unspoken reason you completely dismissed the obvious difference between their two right ears, namely, the prominent scar on Yearick’s earlobe that many have identified as a sutured ear gauge hole. In the photo of Yearick that you chose (wearing a cap), his ears are not visible, but there are many other photos of him with ear gauges.
Similarly, Gary Melton at Paramount Tactical dismissed the idea that this scar was a repaired gauge hole because the ones he had seen were more vertical rather than horizontal (Trump Assassination Attempt - Is Maxwell Yearick The Real or 2nd Shooter?). But that just means he didn’t look hard enough:
Most comically, Reuters “fact check” (https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/convicted-anti-trump-protester-falsely-identified-shooter-2024-07-15/) dismissed the possibility that Yearick could be the shooter because “the photo of Yearick shared online does not resemble the suspect identified by authorities”!
The relevant question, of course, is not how closely Yearick and Crooks resemble each other, but rather which one most closely resembles the shooter. If Reuters were being honest they would have linked to this picture:
If you forget everything else you think you know and look not just at the ears but look but at the whole visage, especially the relative width of the foreheads, I think you will admit that shooter more closely resembles Yearick than it does Crooks. (Bear in mind that Yearick’s photo is a mugshot from April 2016 at age 29 when he was arrested in Pittsburgh for his misbehavior at a Trump rally: https://www.wtae.com/article/pittsburgh-donald-trump-protesters-sentenced-to-jail-time/9261199.)
There is also another close match between the shooter and Yearick. Below the shooter’s right ear are two small dark splotches, which might just be blood, but which also just happen to match the location of a (double) mole on Yearick (circled). Gary Melton dismissed this because he could only see one mole on Yearick, but the photo is poor enough that there could also be two. (Curiously, this photo of Yearick seems to be pretty well scrubbed from the internet. If anyone has a higher resolution version, please send it in.)
Moving beyond the face, it is important to note that Yearick had a prominent tattoo on his left arm (and as far as I can tell, Crooks did not have any tattoos; x.com).
Did the shooter have the same tattoo? This is an interesting question. Clear photos of his left arm do not seem to be available. Here is a long distance photo (from
https://www.reddit.com/r/airsoftcirclejerk/comments/1e2u577/r8_the_fit/) that seems to show a dark area on his left arm.
Some close-range body cam shots also show his left arm, but where there might be a tattoo, I find strange pixilated areas when I enlarge them. Why would that be? I would appreciate it someone familiar with photoshop tampering detection would examine these closely.
Thus, the most obvious physical difference between Crooks and Yearick appears to be the absence or presence of this tattoo. A clear, un-re-touched photo of the shooter’s left arm would quickly clear up this issue. And if indeed it was Crooks, there would be no reason not to clearly show his left arm!
So much for the direct photographic evidence. Let me now review how the authorities claim they eventually identified the shooter as Crooks. ABC News reported that initially FBI agent Rojek said that because he did not have any ID on him, they were using DNA and biometric data (like tattoos?) ('Loner' and 'nice': Complex portrait of gunman in Trump assassination attempt emerges - ABC News):
Officials had said during that press conference [on the evening of July 13th] that they were using the suspect’s DNA to confirm his identity, because the suspect had not been carrying anything that would have identified him.
“It’s a matter of doing biometric confirmations,” Rojek said. “So, there was no identification on the individual, for example, so we’re looking at photographs right now and we’re trying to run his DNA and get biometric confirmation.”
I remember hearing Yearick’s name on unofficial channels already within 24 hours of the rally. The day after the new conference, however, the FBI announced that they had identified the shooter as Crooks by tracing the serial number of the shooter’s gun to Crooks’ father. But the possibility that someone else might have been using this gun is never discussed! Thus the gun registration still falls far short of a positive identification of the shooter. What happened to the DNA test they were trying to run? And once they had associated the gun with Crooks’ family, the FBI should have taken DNA samples from the home or the family to confirm the connection. Did they? Can we now trust their results? Why were they in such a hurry to cremate the body? Did the family positively identify it beforehand, or were just brow-beaten to sign off on the cremation?
Another obvious way that the shooter could have been identified by the authorities – once they had linked him to specific vehicles - was by running a registration check on the vehicles. Why haven’t we heard anything about that? Well, firstly there is the awkward fact that the “lone gunman” has been linked to two vehicles. The link between the shooter and the white van parked on Lawrence Ave. was apparently established by a canine unit (Police K9 unit led cops to Thomas Crooks's explosive-laden van as video footage shows them searching and then towing would-be Trump assassin's vehicle away | Daily Mail Online). And then there is the second awkward fact that this van had an Arizona license plate (no one seems to have gotten the plate number) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSuN41_y3OA, minute 1:37). This van leads straight back to Yearick, whose parents live in Arizona and whose father, Roger Yearick, had a white 1999 GMC Safari van registered to him before he died in 2018 (x.com, x.com).
The shooter has also been linked to a Hyundai Sonata, but I don’t believe we’ve been told how they made this link (Bought a ladder and...: What shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks did before Donald Trump assassination attempt | Today News), perhaps because the dogs did not find a connection to the shooter (Yearick) and because the Sonata actually belonged to Crooks, who was indeed also at the rally. Under the circumstances, I would trust the dogs more than the FBI!
The theory that the dead shooter was actually Yearick would certainly be demolished if he were now to turn up alive somewhere. This possibility is apparently why Gary Melton is so afraid of us pursuing this line of thinking, but I don’t believe I am indulging in any wild speculation by following this trail of evidence. The fact is that despite being at the center of a swirling controversy for more than a month, Yearick has not come forward, his social media accounts have been wiped, and his family has apparently filed a missing person report in Arizona (https://www.caclubindia.com/assets/maxwell-yearick/) (however, I have not been able to confirm this filing). In addition, no one has come forward with a proof of life for Yearick in order to collect the $1,000 reward that has been offered for such proof (x.com).
If it is true that the shooter was Yearick, then of course the big mystery is what happened to Crooks?! Crooks was photographed by Nicol around 5:14 pm and then “lost sight of” (https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/services/files/4E6577F1-8AD2-4CB9-9FC7-5896C27A9647 and New Police Transcripts Show Stunning Trump Assassination Attempt Security Failures). Then again Nicol – our most reliable witness! – reports at 5:32 pm that Crooks was “looking at his phone and using a rangefinder,” and at 6:05 that he was moving “northeast towards Sheetz [convenience store] with a backpack.” As far as I understand, this is the first time his backback is mentioned, and none of the photos of Crooks show him with a backpack. We don’t really know what Crooks did between 5:32 and 6:05, or even if the 6:05 sighting really was Crooks. In other words, there was plenty of time for Crooks to leave the AGR area, or alternatively, to duck into one of the supposedly unoccupied AGR buildings and meet up with Yearick and/or other co-conspirators, and then for the more experienced Yearick to appear on the scene with a backpack and begin scaling the roof. At this point we just don’t know. But, one way or another, I suspect that both Crooks and Yearick died that day.
One last thing to bear in mind with all of this is that if the assassination attempt had been successful, the FBI might well have gone ahead and identified the shooter as Yearick – the Antifa member – precisely in order to incite maximum outrage and perhaps even civil war. When the assassination failed, however, it had to scramble and chose to conceal Yearick’s identity.
Thank you for your attention.
***Updated to correct source of block quote from ABC.
