You won't believe the progressive puppeteers behind the Ferguson protesters

The progressive playbook pretty much demands that the left fund activists and radicals and pass it off as good old grassroots organizing. So are you surprised to find out that Islamists, Communists, and anti-American activists are all uniting in Ferguson? And - shock of shocks - George Soros himself has funded groups in Ferguson through his Open Society Foundation. John Cardillo joined Glenn at the chalkboard to lay out all the connections no one else is reporting.

Watch a highlight of this segment below or sign up and watch the full thing on TheBlaze TV.

Glenn: All right, I want to reintroduce you to John Cardillo. He is a Blaze contributor, investigative blogger at JohnCardillo.com, President of PsyID, and we have had him on the show. You’ve been on the show several times, John, and I wanted to talk to you, because we reached out to you because what PsyID does is you look at…you can crunch the numbers on the Internet. You can look at Facebook and Twitter and everything else, and you can find original sources of things. You can find where the fires are burning and who started the fire.

John: Right. That’s a good way to put it, yes.

Glenn: Okay, so my question was radical Islamists, anti-Israel people, Communists, Socialists, will work together to destabilize Europe and the Western world, so now we’re looking at Ferguson. That fits into the Western world, and I wanted to know where is this push coming from, this anti-police push? Because I don’t believe that it’s actually ground, grassroots. So, I asked you to go in and look, who is starting the fire, and boy—

John: It’s interesting, isn’t it?

Glenn: It is.

John: Well, you’re right. It’s the Islamists. It’s the Communists. It’s the anti-Americans, and it’s funded by a guy we all know, George Soros.

Glenn: What a surprise.

John: To the tune of $33 million that we can find.

Glenn: Okay. So, tell me, take me through the chalkboard and show me what you found.

John: Okay, let’s walk through it.

Glenn: You started with the two main guys.

John: Started with two main guys, so the two main guys we started with was a guy named DeRay McKesson and a guy named Shaun King.

Glenn: Can I start here? #BlackLivesMatter and #HandsUpDontShoot, those are the two things that everybody knows.

John: Everyone knows them, two most predominant hashtags, used quite often by both of these guys. DeRay McKesson is an interesting guy, well-educated guy, Bowdoin graduate. He’s more of what I call third-generation social justice warrior. Let’s call him SJWIII.

Glenn: Okay.

John: So, he’s really vocal on social media, and he’s out there coordinating, conversing with all the usual suspects, now, most often with the sympathetic media, and I picked these four people in particular, Wesley Lowery, Charles Blow, Melissa Harris-Perry, Michael Eric Dyson. They have been about the most forward vocal when it comes to the Ferguson protests, the New York City protests, etc. So, let’s say they are fanning these flames down here. This guy, Shaun King, has become an absolute pro at using GoFundMe and Internet fundraising for the families. Unfortunately, there have been a lot of questions about where the money goes after he raises this money.

Glenn: Okay.

John: There have been some questions about certain families about Haiti earthquake relief all around Shaun King’s Internet fundraising efforts. One lawyer consistently comes out and defends him, but I haven’t seen a real audit done on any of this money, so it’s sort of a he said, she said at this point.

Glenn: Okay.

John: So, as you start digging a little deeper into these guys, some interesting things start to happen. I’m going to pop up to the top and show you how this all sort of connects. As all this stuff came to a head back in November, of all groups, SEIU, and I know you’ve spent a lot of time—

Glenn: I know them quite well.

John: You know them real well. SEIU sends out a press release encouraging everybody…now, I want to back up. You know how all these groups say we’re independent, we don’t work in concert with one another?

Glenn: Yes.

John: SEIU sends out a press release telling everybody to go to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network’s Get Out the Vote rally in Ferguson, Missouri. They even go so far as to link to NAN, the National Action Network, in the press release. So, the press release goes down. Who speaks at the National Action Network conference? Sure, Al Sharpton’s people do, but so does the son of Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam.

Glenn: Wow.

John: In fact, he’s one of the keynote speakers. Let’s go back a little bit again. I find DeRay McKesson Tweeting at the beginning of this with this guy who has been in the news recently. This guy is a guy named John C. Muhammad.

Glenn: This is the guy who’s like in the government, the local government, right?

John: Yes, little town called Upland Park, Missouri, five miles from Ferguson, yeah, 4.8 miles from Ferguson. He called himself a city manager, city administrator. Today I saw him called a city clerk. It really doesn’t matter, because what’s really important about this guy is this guy alleged that it was a false flag, that the KKK shot the police officers in Ferguson.

Glenn: Right.

John: What’s even more interesting about this guy, and here’s where nuance becomes important, he Tweets in concert with Jeff City, @JeffCity NOI, in other words, at Jefferson City, Missouri, Nation of Islam’s official account. That in of itself, coincidental? Well, maybe, maybe not. He’s in the area. We know he’s a member of the Nation of Islam because he promotes a foundation founded by Elijah Muhammad. What became very interesting to me is when I started analyzing speeches Farrakhan recently made, one particularly inflammatory speech, Farrakhan was talking about teaching children how to throw Molotov cocktails at the police.

Glenn: I had heard that speech.

John: You heard that speech? Okay, in that speech, Farrakhan refers to Ferguson mistakenly as Jefferson, which put a light bulb off in my head that the Jeff City chapter of the Nation of Islam coordinating with this guy, why would he make the mistake unless he’s getting reports from that chapter on the unrest in Ferguson? So, now when you start to put all of this together, what starts to shake out becomes pretty scary, because it’s very well-organized in a truly professional political sense. You’ve got the National Action Network which has been incredibly effective as a political and PR wing, typically engaging in shakedown and smear.

Glenn: Uh huh.

John: You’ve got Nation of Islam which appears to be acting as the muscle, because they’re also bringing in elements of the new Black Panther party. You know, Malik Shabazz was one of their guys, Black Panther guy.

Glenn: Right.

John: And you’ve got the SEIU handling all the organization.

Glenn: Holy cow.

John: So, they find the people to get on the buses, National Action Network. They put the muscle to protect the people on the buses, and they actually find the buses and get them from point A to point B. So, now you’ve got a very concerted effort. You’ve got the social justice warriors on social media getting this message out exponentially further than these guys ever could’ve done on their own. Well, something really interesting happened.

Glenn: Okay, let me take a break because I want to hear the something interesting happens. Then I want you to take me to how do you know the 33 million from Soros and then the pro-Palestinian, because that is really playing a very big role. We’ll do that when we come back.

[BREAK]

Glenn: All right, let’s pick it right back up where you were. You said the interesting thing.

John: So, interesting and really quick, in December after that Get Out the Vote little meeting when these guys all spoke, there’s a rally in D.C. DeRay McKesson and his grassroots crew go there thinking they’re going to speak alongside everybody. Well, Al Sharpton says, “Not so fast. You’ve got to pay for VIP access,” because he’s getting a little bit more popular. Sharpton actually called security on these guys on the McKesson 3.0.

Glenn: That’s what’s happening.

John: And literally turns the mic off on the ones that are able to make it to the stage. So, there’s an interesting little rift now developing. Jesse Jackson is sort of hanging out the middle with the Rainbow Push Coalition. He’s…let’s call him a COO type for all of this right now.

Glenn The elder statesman of radicals.

John: Exactly, the elder statesman. Now, we know Soros is funding this because of his tax returns. We can find through two of his foundations. It’s the Open Societies Foundation and Drug Policy Alliance. We can see 33 million going into those that directly trickle down to this.

Glenn: Have you checked anything on Tides Foundation?

John: Not yet.

Glenn: Okay, can you look into that?

John: Certainly.

Glenn: Because the Tides Foundation I bet you has millions. Can you imagine if the Tea Party would have ever, ever, total would have received $33 million, what it could have done? That’s enormous amounts of money.

John: But remember, Glenn, this is 33 million we know of from the hundreds of millions that have come in.

Glenn: From the one guy.

John: From one guy.

Glenn: Yeah.

John: I mean, Tides is on the list. I just couldn’t get to it. The voluminous information, by the time I had to get here to Dallas, I just couldn’t push through it all.

Glenn: Okay.

John: Okay, so now here again for the sinister angle of it all, so we know all these players, all pretty bad guys in their own right. Enter the pro-Palestinian group. Now, you’ve got a journalist, Rania Khalek.

Glenn: From where?

John: She’s just a pro-Palestinian journalist about the world.

Glenn: Okay, freelancer.

John: Yeah, exactly, freelancer. This guy, Bassem Masri, who’s another just sort of agitator, civil unrest kind of guy, pro-Palestinian, and Method Man from the Wu-Tang Clan, which I did not realize had a song back, way back when they were popular called PLO Style.

Glenn: Oh yeah.

John: Yeah, and so she believes that the shots were actually aimed at the protesters, that this is all nonsense.

Glenn: Last week’s shots.

John: Last week’s shots, that those cops were hit by accident. He, like this guy, Muhammad, believes that it was false flag, believes that white supremacists or the KKK shot the cops to blame the protesters. Method Man says, “Too bad, cops. You reap what you sow.” All three of them tie back and say but this is just like the poor Palestinians, meaning all that aggression from those evil Israelis.

Glenn: Zionist evil, Jewish plot.

John: Zionist evil, Jewish plot, and they’re behind this. In reality, what appears to be happening, my law enforcement sources, intelligence sources, feel it’s information and intelligence sharing. They’re learning from what’s going on in Gaza and other places how to create more unrest here, and these guys are learning from them how to take tactics used in the Middle East and bring them to Ferguson.

Glenn: John, how hard was this to find?

John: Not hard to find, a little bit labor-intensive, but it’s out there. It’s out there.

Glenn: Okay, so come on back and have a seat. You have anything else?

John: No.

Glenn: Okay, come on back and have a seat. So, why isn’t anybody doing this?

John: Because they’re afraid to tell the story. They don’t want to tell it. It’s not politically correct. It doesn’t fit the narrative. It’s not a story that they want getting out. You’ve got New York Times and MSNBC on that board. They don’t want to tell that story.

Glenn: And the Washington Post.

John: And the Washington Post, I’m sorry, yes. They don’t want to show that their people are complicit in fanning those little flames down there.

Glenn: Okay, when I was out in Silicon Valley last week, they talked to me about how the world organizations are getting flatter and flatter and flatter. They said it’s really about the connections and how many people you can connect to. That’s what this is. That’s what SEIU, that’s why NAN and SEIU are so important, because they have all of those union people, okay?

John: Thousands and thousands and thousands.

Glenn: So, help me out. What should the average person do? Because the best way, I mean, especially with the way Facebook runs their algorithms. I’ve got people 3 million people on my Facebook page, but I can post this, and maybe only 350,000 of them will actually see this. Even though they like my page, they don’t see everything that I’ve done. So, what I’ve been trying to figure out is how do we get the information out more? How do we spread…those people who like my page, how do they get this information out and how do others make fatter connections?

John: I love Twitter as a tool for that. It’s hitting a broader audience in real time, and it’s hitting it with more frequency. You can constantly get this information out. TheBlaze Twitter is great. I pick up a lot of my news from TheBlaze Twitter, and I can pick up the evolution of a story throughout the day on TheBlaze Twitter. So, I think that’s an outstanding tool. I’m out there. People like myself, people like you, we’re out there Tweeting this all day long, and I think this is where the blogger army comes into play. When you’ve got thousands and thousands of like-minded bloggers each getting those few thousand people that hit their blogs, well, those few thousands turn into tens of millions eventually and if they’ve got a central repository of information like TheBlaze where they can get like-minded information and intelligence.

Glenn: So, for instance, we’re doing The Root special this week, and this week it’s on the armies of Armageddon. It covers kind of what we talked about at the beginning. Or this, I’d like you to go into another studio. We’re just going to take an iPhone and just have you do this yourself. We’ll put it up on our YouTube page, and I’ll Facebook it and everything else, Tweet it out tonight. Is there anything that our audience should do? When they see an important thing, is there anything they should do with those besides like them?

John: Tweet them, save them, Tweet them at you, Tweet them at TheBlaze, Tweet them at the people they know will spread that information, because when I see people out there doing something that they shouldn’t, @FBI, @CIA. Well, they’re not reading that. If you see something that is terror-centric or criminal-centric, make that phone call if you believe it really is, but if it’s something that’s just inflammatory and might imply civil unrest and there’s no imminent criminal threat, get it to a like-minded media personality. Currently you’re the only guy right now.

Glenn: Well, @Breitbart or @Drudge or @FOXNews, @Rush.

John: But FOX hasn’t run this as much as they should, and I’m a little disappointed in the way they’ve…Megyn Kelly’s done a great job.

Glenn: Megyn is really good.

John: Yeah, but some of the others haven’t. Michelle Malkin has done an awesome job.

Glenn: It’s the usual suspects. I mean, it really is the same group of people. Any indication of where this is going next? Any indication that this is gathering steam with anybody who’s real and not in this?

John: Well yeah, I mean, my fear based on the evolution that we’ve seen is that it is not a long leap for ISIS to get involved in this. I mean, you know this. You’ve covered Farrakhan over the years. How many billions did he take from Libya, directly and indirectly? He’s not going to be shy to take money from whoever is backing ISIS and help them get here. One threat…I know we’re short on time, and one thing I tell everyone to watch, prison converts to Islam.

Glenn: Yes.

John: Watch them. They’re a threat.

Glenn: We’ve been talking about that.

John: They’re here. Don’t watch the southern border. Watch prison. Watch parolees, probationers. They hate authority. They hate me and you, and they hate the government. These are dangerous guys to begin with.

Glenn: Okay, will you do me a favor, will you go back and look for the connections on that? I’ll do a whole show with you and also on Tides Foundation.

John: Absolutely.

How did Trump's would-be assassin get past Secret Service?

PATRICK T. FALLON / Contributor | Getty Images

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday was targeted in an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. It occurred just after 6:10 p.m. while Trump was delivering his speech.

Here are the details of the “official” story. The shooter was Thomas Matthew Crooks. He was 20 years old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. He used an AR-15 rifle and managed to reach the rooftop of a nearby building unnoticed. The Secret Service's counter-response team responded swiftly, according to "the facts," killing Crooks and preventing further harm.

Did it though? That’s what the official story says, so far, but calling this a mere lapse in security by Secret Service doesn't add up. There are some glaring questions that need to be answered.

If Trump had been killed on Saturday, we would be in a civil war today. We would have seen for the first time the president's brains splattered on live television, and because of the details of this, I have a hard time thinking it wouldn't have been viewed as JFK 2.0.

How does someone sneak a rifle onto the rally grounds? How does someone even know that that building is there? How is it that Thomas Matthew Crooks was acting so weird and pacing in front of the metal detectors, and no one seemed to notice? People tried to follow him, but, oops, he got away.

How could the kid possibly even think that the highest ground at the venue wouldn't be watched? If I were Crooks, my first guess would be, "That’s the one place I shouldn't crawl up to with a rifle because there's most definitely going to be Secret Service there." Why wasn't anyone there? Why wasn't anyone watching it? Nobody except the shooter decided that the highest ground with the best view of the rally would be the greatest vulnerability to Trump’s safety.

Moreover, a handy ladder just happened to be there. Are we supposed to believe that nobody in the Secret Service, none of the drones, none of the things we pay millions of dollars for caught him? How did he get a ladder there? If the ladder was there, was it always there? Why was the ladder there? Secret Service welds manhole covers closed when a president drives down a road. How was there a ladder sitting around, ready to climb up to the highest ground at the venue, and the Secret Service failed to take it away?

There is plenty of video of eyewitnesses yelling that there was a guy with a rifle climbing up on a ladder to the roof for at least 120 seconds before the first shot was fired. Why were the police looking for him while Secret Service wasn't? Why did the sniper have him in his sights for over a minute before he took a shot? Why did a cop climb up the ladder to look around? When Thomas Matthew Cooks pointed a gun at him, he then ducked and came down off the ladder. Did he call anyone to warn that this young man had a rifle within range of the president?

How is it the Secret Service has a female bodyguard who doesn't even reach Trump's nipples? How was she going to guard the president's body with hers? How is it another female Secret Service agent pulled her gun out a good four minutes too late, then looked around, apparently not knowing what to do? She then couldn't even get the pistol back into the holster because she's a Melissa McCarthy body double. I don't think it's a good idea to have Melissa McCarthy guarding the president.

Here’s the critical question now: Who trusts the FBI with the shooter’s computer? Will his hard drive get filed with the Nashville manifesto? How is it that the Secret Service almost didn't have snipers at all but decided to supply them only one day before the rally because all the local resources were going to be put on Jill Biden? I want Jill Biden safe, of course. I want Jill Biden to have what the first lady should have for security, but you can’t hire a few extra guys to make sure our candidates are safe?

How is it that we have a Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheatle, whose experience is literally guarding two liters of Squirt and spicy Doritos? Did you know that's her background? She's in charge of the United States Secret Service, and her last job was as the head of security for Pepsi.

This is a game, and that's what makes this sick. This is a joke. There are people in our country who thought it was OK to post themselves screaming about the shooter’s incompetence: “How do you miss that shot?” Do you realize how close we came to another JFK? If the president hadn't turned his head at the exact moment he did, it would have gone into the center of his head, and we would be a different country today.

Now, Joe Biden is also saying that we shouldn't make assumptions about the motive of the shooter. Well, I think we can assume one thing: He wanted to kill the Republican presidential candidate. Can we agree on that at least? Can we assume that much?

How can the media even think of blaming Trump for the rhetoric when the Democrats and the media constantly call him literally worse than Hitler who must be stopped at all costs?

These questions need to be answered if we want to know the truth behind what could have been one of the most consequential days in U.S. history. Yet, the FBI has its hands clasped on all the sources that could point to the truth. There must be an independent investigation to get to the bottom of these glaring “mistakes.”

POLL: Do you think Trump is going to win the election?

Kevin Dietsch / Staff, Chip Somodevilla / Staff, Kevin Dietsch / Staff | Getty Image

It feels like all of the tension that has been building over the last four years has finally burst to the surface over the past month. Many predicted 2024 was going to be one of the most important and tumultuous elections in our lifetimes, but the last two weeks will go down in the history books. And it's not over yet.

The Democratic National Convention is in August, and while Kamala seems to be the likely candidate to replace Biden, anything could happen in Chicago. And if Biden is too old to campaign, isn't he too old to be president? Glenn doesn't think he'll make it as President through January, but who knows?

There is a lot of uncertainty that surrounds the current political landscape. Trump came out of the attempted assassination, and the RNC is looking stronger than ever, but who knows what tricks the Democrats have up their sleeves? Let us know your predictions in the poll below:

Is Trump going to win the election?

Did the assassination attempt increase Trump's chances at winning in November?

Did Trump's pick of J.D. Vance help his odds?

Did the Trump-Biden debate in June help Trump's chances?

Did Biden's resignation from the election hand Trump a victory in November? 

Do the Democrats have any chance of winning this election?

What is the Secret Service trying to hide about Trump's assassination attempt?

KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / Contributor, Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

This past weekend we were mere inches away from a radically different America than the one we have today. This was the first time a president had been wounded by a would-be assassin since 1981, and the horrific event has many people questioning the competency and motives of the supposedly elite agents trusted with the president's life.

The director of the Secret Service apparently knew about the assassin's rooftop before the shooting—and did nothing.

Kimberly Cheatle has come under intense scrutiny these last couple of weeks, as Secret Service director she is responsible for the president's well-being, along with all security operations onsite. In a recent interview with ABC, Cheatle admitted that she was aware of the building where the assassin made his mark on American history. She even said that she was mindful of the potential risk but decided against securing the site due to "safety concerns" with the slope of the roof. This statement has called her competence into question. Clearly, the rooftop wasn't that unsafe if the 20-year-old shooter managed to access it.

Glenn pointed out recently that Cheatle seems to be unqualified for the job. Her previous position was senior director in global security at America's second-favorite soda tycoon, PepsiCo. While guarding soda pop and potato chips sounds like an important job to some, it doesn't seem like a position that would qualify you to protect the life of America's most important and controversial people. Even considering her lack of appropriate experience, this seems like a major oversight that even a layperson would have seen. Can we really chalk this up to incompetence?

Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / Contributor | Getty Images

The Secret Service and DHS said they'd be transparent with the investigation...

Shortly after the attempted assassination, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees the Secret Service, launched an investigation into the shooting and the security protocols in place at the rally. The DHS promised full transparency during the investigation, but House Republicans don't feel that they've been living up to that promise. Republican members of the House Oversight Committee are frustrated with Director Cheatle after she seemingly dodged a meeting scheduled for Tuesday. This has resulted in calls for Cheatle to step down from her position.

Two FBI agents investigate the assassin's rooftop Jeff Swensen / Stringer | Getty Images

Why is the Secret Service being so elusive? Are they just trying to cover their blunder? We seem to be left with two unsettling options: either the government is even more incompetent than we'd ever believed, or there is more going on here than they want us to know.

Cheatle steps down

Following a horrendous testimony to the House Oversight Committee Director Cheatle finally stepped down from her position ten days after the assassination attempt. Cheatle failed to give any meaningful answer to the barrage of questions she faced from the committee. These questions, coming from both Republicans and Democrats, were often regarding basic information that Cheatle should have had hours after the shooting, yet Cheatle struggled with each and every one. Glenn pointed out that Director Cheatle's resignation should not signal the end of the investigation, the American people deserve to know what happened.

What we DO and DON'T know about Thomas Matthew Crooks

Jim Vondruska / Stringer | Getty Images

It has been over a week since 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks narrowly failed to assassinate President Trump while the president gave a speech at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennslyvania. Despite the ongoing investigations, we still know very little about the would-be assassin, which has left many wondering if the agencies involved are limiting the information that Congress and the public are receiving.

As Glenn has pointed out, there are still major questions about the shooter that are unanswered, and the American people are left at the whim of unreliable federal agencies. Here is everything we know—and everything we don't know—about Thomas Matthew Crooks:

Who was he?

What we know:Thomas Crooks lived in Bethel Parks, Pennsylvania, approximately an hour south of Butler. Crooks went to high school in Bethel Parks, where he would graduate in 2022. Teachers and classmates described him as a loner and as nerdy, but generally nice, friendly, and intelligent. Crooks tried out for the school rifle team but was rejected due to his poor aim, and reports indicate that Crooks was often bullied for his nerdy demeanor and for wearing camo hunting gear to school.

After high school, Crooks began work at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center as a dietary aide. In fact, he was scheduled to work on the day of the rally but requested the day off. He passed a background check to work at the facility and was reportedly an unproblematic employee. Crooks was also a member of a local gun club where he practiced shooting the day before the rally.

It was recently revealed that sometime before his attempted assassination, Crooks posted the following message on Steam, a popular computer application used for playing video games: "July 13 will be my premiere, watch as it unfolds." Aside from this, Crooks posted no warning or manifesto regarding his attack, and little other relevant information is known about him.

What we don't know:It is unclear what Crook's political affiliations or views were, or if he was aligned with any extremist organizations. Crooks was a registered Republican, and his classmates recall him defending conservative ideas and viewpoints in class. On the other hand, the Federal Election Commission has revealed he donated to a progressive PAC on the day Biden was inaugurated. He also reportedly wore a COVID mask to school much longer than was required.

Clearly, we are missing the full picture. Why would a Republican attempt to assassinate the Republican presidential nominee? What is to gain? And why would he donate to a progressive organization as a conservative? This doesn't add up, and so far the federal agencies investigating the attack have yet to reveal anything more.

What were his goals?

What we know: Obviously we know he was trying to assassinate President Trump—and came very close to succeeding, but beyond that, Crooks' goals are unknown. He left no manifesto or any sort of written motive behind, or if he did, the authorities haven't published it yet. We have frustratingly little to go off of.

What we don't know: As stated before, we don't know anything about the movies behind Crooks' heinous actions. We are left with disjointed pieces that make it difficult to paint a cohesive picture of this man. There is also the matter that he left explosives, ammo, and a bulletproof vest in his car. Why? Did he assume he was going to make it back to his car? Or were those supplies meant for an accomplice that never showed up?

The shocking lack of information on Crooks' motives makes it seem likely that we are not being let on to the whole truth.

Did he work alone?

What we know: Reportedly, Crooks was the only gunman on the site, and as of now, no other suspects have been identified. The rifle used during the assassination attempt was purchased and registered by Crooks' father. However, it is unlikely that the father was involved as he reported both his son and rifle missing the night of the assassination attempt. Crooks' former classmates described him as a "loner," which seems to corroborate the narrative that he worked alone.

What we don't know: We know how Crooks acquired his rifle, but what about the rest of his equipment? He reportedly had nearly a hundred extra rounds of ammunition, a bulletproof vest, and several homemade bombs in his car. Could these have been meant for a co-conspirator who didn't show? Did Crooks acquire all of this equipment himself, or did he have help?

There's also the matter of the message Crooks left on the video game platform Steam that served as his only warning of the attack. Who was the message for? Are there people out there who were aware of the attack before it occurred? Why didn't they alert authorities?

We know authorities have access to Crooks' laptop and cellphone that probably contain the answers to these pertinent questions. Why haven't we heard any clarity from the authorities? It seems we are again at the mercy of the federal bureaucracy, which begs one more question: Will we ever know the whole truth?