Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump seemingly used Gab, a controversial social media platform favored by the alt-right, to post messages "in support of President Biden," the platform's founder said, the New York Post reported.
Gab CEO Andrew Torba said that he found on Wednesday that Crooks "might have had an account on our platform" after receiving "an emergency disclosure request from a law enforcement agency." The account @epicmicrowave, which the CEO stressed he has been "unable to confirm" as belonging to Crooks, "posted on the site a total of nine times," Torba tweeted 30 minutes after receiving the request from law enforcement.
Crooks Used Gab to Post about Biden
"While the account made very few posts on the site, the majority of them were in support of President Biden," the CEO said.
"A number of posts in particular expressed support for President Biden's COVID lockdowns, border policies and executive orders."
Torba shared screenshots of pro-Biden comments made by the account, with the handle blacked out.
In one post, the user mocked someone sharing an election projection, writing in February 2021, "Didn't you also think Biden would lose in a landslide? Yeah, I would not be very confident in your election predictions."
In another thread, the user defended Biden's border policies by citing a study comparing crime statistics among undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and American citizens in Texas.
"Biden executive orders don't incentivize human trafficking as human traffickers aren't interested in citizenships, likewise the majority of illegal immigrants are not criminals and in fact some studies (such as the one linked below) show lower rates of crime committed by these individuals," the poster wrote.
"It is also unclear if the extensive path to citizenship is in fact effective at routing out potential bad actors hence why there is a review of that system," the user added.
Bombshell Revelations
Torba said he was "disclosing this information at significant personal and business risk, the outlet reported. "If the past is any guide, defying the D.C. consensus by publishing the first definitive evidence that the shooter was a Biden supporter — something Democrats and their media allies have tried to cover up and deny at every turn — has a high probability of resulting in significant political and media backlash," he wrote.
"We have saved the account data pending receipt of a search warrant," he stated.
Crooks, 20, fired an AR-15 rifle at Trump's campaign rally in Butler, PA, on July 13, grazing the former president's ear and killing a rally attendee before being shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.
Authorities have not yet detailed a motive for the attack, which has sparked strong bipartisan criticism of the Secret Service's failures in protecting the presidential candidate.
