Did the would-be assassin who fired at former President Donald Trump use the roof of a building owned by investment firm BlackRock? No, that's not true: According to Pennsylvania property records, that building is owned by a different company, American Glass Research. No credible news organization reported otherwise, and BlackRock denied the claim in an email to Lead Stories.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok where it was posted on July 20, 2024, under the title:
POV: when the dots connect themselves..
The man in the video said:
Whoa, you're telling me that the same company that owns the building that the person who was just laying down and took some shots off at someone to attempt to take their life very recently... Not only did that dude work for that company in the past, but that building he was on was owned by them.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jul 23 16:05:50 2024 UTC)
When a modified version of this reel was posted on Facebook (archived here), the bottom banner linked the claim to a specific entity: investment firm BlackRock (archived here).
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Jul 23 16:08:22 2024 UTC)
The shooting occurred at the July 13, 2024 Trump rally on the grounds of the Butler Farm Show (archived here).
Pennsylvania's Butler County property records, however, show that the building in question -- whose appearance, as seen on Google Maps (archived here), matches photos previously published, for example, by the Washington Post (archived here) and maps published by CBS (archived here) -- belongs to a different company: American Glass Research (archived here), which is a subsidiary of AGR International.
Given that the last recorded sale on file took place almost a quarter of a century before the assassination attempt -- on January 1, 2000, public records offer no proof that BlackRock directly acquired the property before the shooting.
News organizations, including Reuters (archived here), the AP (archived here), the New York Times (archived here) and Fox News (archived here), reported that the building was owned by American Glass Research or AGR International.
Responding to an inquiry from Lead Stories via email on July 23, 2024, a BlackRock spokesperson refuted the claim:
This is completely false. BlackRock Inc. does not own the building, nor have our real estate funds invested in the building.
Contrary to a statement in the viral post on TikTok that is the focus of this fact check, the 20-year-old shooter named Thomas Matthew Crooks did not work for BlackRock. He briefly appeared (archived here) in a 2022 BlackRock ad featuring a teacher from Bethel Park High School. Crooks was unpaid and still in high school. Following the attack on Trump, the company pulled the video from circulation and issued a statement condemning "political violence of any kind."
At the time of the shooting, Crooks worked at a nursing home as a dietary aide (archived here).
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims about the shooting at the Trump rally can be found here. Stories on claims concerning the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
