Have investigators been unable to unlock the phone of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman in the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, as of January 6, 2025? No, that's not true: The FBI announced in July 2024 that they had successfully unlocked his phone. Using advanced forensic tools, their experts bypassed the phone's security and accessed messages, data and other information to help understand Crooks' motives and actions ahead of the incident.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on January 4, 2025. The post's caption said:
Remember, they still haven't cracked this kid's phone.
Yet they are falling over themselves to tell you all about the Vegas cybertruck bomber and giving a random influencer an all access pass to the home of the New Orleans attacker...
Weird...
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Jan 7 16:42:35 2024 UTC)
Google search
Using Google Lens, a reverse image search found that the image in the post shows alleged Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks. A screenshot of some of the search results appears below:
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Tue Jan 7 18:41:32 2024 UTC)
In addition to not naming Crooks, the post also provided no evidence to support its assertion that authorities have been unable to crack his phone following the July 13, 2024, attempt on Trump's life (archived here) in Butler, Pennsylvania. The opposite is true.
FBI
Two days following the incident, the FBI released a statement on July 15, 2024 (archived here), updating the details of the agency's investigation. It said:
FBI technical specialists successfully gained access to Thomas Matthew Crooks' phone, and they continue to analyze his electronic devices.
Read more
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to Thomas Matthew Crooks can be found here.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024, can be found here.
