Headline : The Thomas Crooks Conspiracy Theories Aren’t Going Anywhere

Read more from the original article on here at www.wired.com.

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A would-be presidential assassin with no clear motive, shot dead at the scene; accounts from witnesses who’d warned police to no avail; video taken from a bewildering variety of angles. Minutes after Thomas Crooks came within an inch of killing Donald Trump, it was already clear what would happen next, and in the subsequent days a number of conspiracy theories indeed emerged, each more baroque than the last.

Tracing just one shows how easily and rapidly they proliferate. Famed hedge fund manager Bill Ackman wrote in a since-deleted X post, for example, that an anti-vaccine influencer’s video purporting to show that there were two shooters made "a powerful case." Another anti-vaccine influencer, meanwhile, produced a chart tracing the paths of bullets from four shooters, and a third, affiliated with Alex Jones, asserted that his audio analysis showed there were three. (None offered a compelling explanation of how an entire team of assassins botched the job.)

While there’s no consensus among popular conspiracists on how many shooters there were and whether law enforcement agencies on the scene passively allowed or actively abetted the crime, they do seem to broadly agree it was an inside job carried out at the behest of the deep state. (The FBI says its ongoing investigation has turned up no reason to think Crooks had accomplices.) Who the specific culprits are supposed to be remains unclear. The Heritage Foundation, the think tank currently best known for its role in coordinating Project 2025, used cell phone location data to intimate the FBI was involved, while everyone from QAnon influencers to Ackman has invoked fictional CIA assassin Jason Bourne when not pointing the finger at the actual, real-life CIA. (“These claims are utterly false, absurd, and damaging,” a CIA spokesperson tells WIRED. “The CIA had no relationship whatsoever with Thomas Crooks.”)

It seems clear that we’re witnessing the birth of new and durable conspiratorial prism to put on the shelf alongside the moon landing and the assassination of JFK. The question, especially given the evident interest of powerful figures and institutions like Ackman and Heritage, is whether that much matters.

Read more from the original article on here at www.wired.com.

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