OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
11:10 AM – Monday, July 15, 2024
BlackRock, a controversial investment firm that is known as the world’s largest asset manager, once featured 20-year-old gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks in a 2022 advertisement. However, the company has decided to pull the ad that features the gunman.
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Crooks opened fire at former President Donald Trump on Saturday, injuring his ear, which gashed blood on stage.
According to BlackRock, Crooks made an appearance in the advertisement alongside other underpaid teenagers who were students at Bethel Park High School.
“In 2022, we ran an ad featuring a teacher from Bethel Park High School, in which several unpaid students briefly appeared in the background, including Thomas Matthew Crooks,” the company said in a statement to Reuters.
In the 30-second BlackRock TV commercial, Crooks, who would go on to be a failed Trump assassin, can be seen conversing with his teacher in an honors and AP economics class.
According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High the same year that the advertisement first aired. There, he was one of twelve students to receive a National Math & Science Initiative Star Award.
The business also stated that even though the advertisement has been taken out of distribution, it can still be viewed by investigators and is now making the rounds on social media platforms.
BlackRock, which is scheduled to announce its second-quarter profits on Monday, denounced the shooting that took place with the former GOP president on Saturday, which resulted in one bystander dying and two others being badly injured.
“The assassination attempt on former President Trump is abhorrent,” the company said. “We’re thankful former President Trump wasn’t seriously injured, and thinking about all the innocent bystanders and victims of this awful act, especially the person who was killed.”
Crooks had fired from a rooftop outside the gathering, where former President Donald J. Trump was speaking, using an AR-15 that his father had previously bought him. Both parents of the shooter are licensed counselors, according to the New York Times. Additionally, explosive supplies were left in the car he drove to the event.
However, a lot of additional information about Crooks’s background and motive remains ambiguous. According to federal investigators, he was not under federal law enforcement’s notice and did not appear to have a history of mental health issues.
Despite searching his internet activity and attempting to get access to his phone, investigators had not yet discovered any evidence of his strong political opinions. His parents were registered as a Democrat and Libertarian, and although Crooks was a registered Republican, he had also made donations to leftist causes in 2021. Additionally, according to some reports, classmates of his claimed that he was anti-capitalist and had previously expressed disdain for Trump. Nevertheless, other classmates of his, like Sarah D’Angelo, who spoke with the Wall Street Journal, claimed otherwise and said that he was an “apolitical” loner type.
“He never outwardly spoke about his political views or how much he hated Trump or anything,” D’Angelo told the Wall Street Journal.
The deceased shooter’s political ideology is still being investigated, in order to find out a motive.
“Crooks had tried out for his high school’s junior varsity rifle team when he was a freshman, CBS reported, but classmate Jameson Myers said Crooks didn’t make the team and never tried out again,” TIME Magazine reported.
Even though Crooks did not have the skills to make the school’s rifle team, it was discovered that he later became a member of the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, a local firearms club with a 200-yard rifle range among its amenities. The club acknowledged Crooks’ membership in a statement to several outlets, denouncing the violence and expressing sympathy to the victims. However, the statement also said that the club was unable to share any further information while investigations were still ongoing.
Crooks was shot and killed by Secret Service counter snipers soon after he began shooting. His motive for the failed assassination attempt is still unknown. The incident is currently being probed by the FBI.
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