The family of Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Crooks was among millions of voters profiled by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign
The owner of the rifle used to shoot at Donald Trump had been identified by the former president’s campaign as a strong republican, likely gun owner and “hunter”, as revealed today by Channel 4 News.
In 2016 the Trump campaign built a database profiling millions of voters in key battleground states – including the family of Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Crooks.
It found that both the parents of Thomas Crooks were very likely to be gun owners and shared other gun-related lifestyle indicators.
This database was first obtained and revealed by Channel 4 News in 2016.
The programme can now reveal the information was compiled as part of a secretive project aiming to identify millions of gun owners in America who could be targeted with pro-gun rights messages in the lead-up to the 2016 election campaign.
On Saturday Thomas Crooks, 20, attempted to murder former president Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
It has emerged that the AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle he used was legally purchased months earlier by his father Matthew, 53. The family is cooperating with the investigating authorities.
The FBI said it had also recovered explosive devices in the car used by Thomas Crooks which was parked near the scene and a second “suspicious device” in the family home.
There is no suggestion that any member of the Crooks family had knowledge of the assassination attempt by recent high school graduate Thomas Crooks or that they permitted the illegal use of weapons by him.
DATABASE
Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign database, obtained by Channel 4 News in 2020, lists the assailant’s parents Matthew, and his wife Mary, 53, as living at a residence in the borough of Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh.
They were among 6.7 million people in the swing state of Pennsylvania profiled for their likely ownership of firearms. Both scored highly, with Crook’s father Matthew given particularly high scores.
Data scientists can analyse relatively small original datasets to determine the characteristics that would make someone likely, for example, to be a gun owner. Using machine learning they can generate models that match those characteristics across the population, assigning individuals a likelihood score.
The gun-related profiles which appear in the 2016 Trump campaign database range between 0 – meaning no likelihood – and 1 – a certainty.
Matthew Crooks scored highly across a range of gun-related models including: 0.99 for the likelihood of returning a warranty card for a firearms purchase; 0.95 for the likelihood of pursuing hunting sports; and 0.94 for the likelihood of shopping at the hunting retailer
Overall, averaged across all three of these measures, out of more than 19,000 people in Bethel Park, Matthew Crooks was among the top 20 highest scoring individuals.
In total, the data technique was deployed in ten swing states – scoring a total of around 50 million individuals – to find voters who could be susceptible to political messages about gun-rights, a bedrock issue in all of Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns.
While the Crooks family were assigned scores derived from models, such models are not necessarily accurate and may not reflect the Crooks family’s actual views or gun ownership at that time.
Channel 4 News has approached the Trump campaign for comment.