Late on Wednesday, Fox News Senior White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich reported that a group of senators were briefed on would-be assassin Thomas Crooks' social media postings on a gaming platform called Steam. Along with the reported post, which is ominous in hindsight but probably wouldn't have set off many alarms before his attempt, the senators were given some information about Crooks that is decidedly odd.

🚨NEWS: Fox has learned that Senators were told in the all-member briefing today that Thomas Crooks wrote on a gaming platform called ‘Steam’, “July 13 will be my premiere, watch as it unfolds”

When investigators reviewed the laptop, they found a few searches in July of: Trump,…

— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) July 18, 2024

The Steam post in question stated simply: “July 13 will be my premiere, watch as it unfolds.” That, before the attempt, could be taken to mean almost anything, although hindsight gives it a completely different tone. But it's the paraphernalia found on and around Crooks, as well as at his home, that is decidedly strange.

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The items found were also described to the senators:

Suspect has two cell phones, primary phone was recovered from the scene along with a remote transmitter (detonator). Secondary cell phone was found at the home, it had only 27 contacts and the FBI is in the process of tracking down and interviewing those people.

One wonders about the level of electronic wizardry it would take one to fabricate a detonator; those don't seem like something you can pick up at Home Depot. But it's the secondary phone that's interesting. Is it an anonymous "burner phone?" Who are the 27 contacts? It seems unlikely that a 20-year-old man would have a secondary phone like this unless he had communications he was trying to conceal from his family and possibly from law enforcement.

A fair amount of preparation went into this attempt. Crooks, as Jacqui Heinrich also notes, didn't appear to be discussing any particular political ideology in what there is of his communication. That's odd in and of itself. All we know is that he was apparently registered as a Republican and that he had made a modest donation to one far-left activist group.

Investigators have found no evidence of a particular ideology, which the FBI believes is notable, and nobody in interviews reported Crooks discussing politics.

"Notable," indeed. Disaffected loner or not, one just doesn't decide to try to assassinate a former President of the United States on a lark. Some planning went into this, and the explosives and detonator — the precise nature of which has still not been released (were the explosives improvised? Dynamite? TNT?) indicate weeks of preparation. That kind of planning and preparation doesn't happen in a vacuum; something had to be motivating this young man, and since his attempt was on a political figure, it seems logical that he had a political motive.

It's enough to make one wonder if we, the American people, will ever find out exactly what happened on July 13th.