The Heritage Foundation, the same group behind Project 2025, has begun investigating some suspicious activity related to Thomas Matthew Crooks, Trump’s would-be assassin, using readily available cell-phone tracking technology. The initiative falls within the Oversight Project division.
“This is not just law enforcement or government agencies that do this. … When you walk into a boot store in Nashville, they’re going to track you, and then you start getting these ads,” explains investigative journalist and Blaze Media correspondent Steve Baker, noting that this kind of technology is referred to as “ad-ID.”
“Every single one of our cell phones have essentially what is the … equivalency to your social security number, and so once they identify that phone, then they can pretty much track that phone wherever it goes,” Baker explains.
While being tracked rubs a lot of people the wrong way, the technology may prove helpful in discovering more information about Crooks, who had no detectable motivation for his actions, according to reports from federal investigators.
“Here is the gist of what [the Oversight Project] has discovered through their own tracking,” says Baker.
“They were able to ping and identify about nine different phones at the home of the shooter.” Next, “They were able to identify which of those phones were then going to … where he works at the nursing home.”
Once “the right ID” had been identified, the team was able to track wherever Crooks went.
“What they discovered was that this kid was basically doing recon at [the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally] site on July 4th and July 8th” and then “turned his phone off after the 12th, or at least shut down all of the apps on his phone, so he couldn’t be tracked on the day itself,” Baker says.
But it gets even better.
“In the process of looking at all of these phones that visited [Crooks’] home and visited the nursing home where he worked, they found a phone that actually pinged seven-eight times in D.C. at a building called a Gallery Place, which has a very large footprint of FBI offices and where source meetings and interviews regularly take place.”
“Obviously, there are many, many non-nefarious reasons why somebody would be at that building in D.C.,” Baker admits, “but it is very curious.”
“Do they feel as if they’ve mined everything when it comes to looking at the comings and goings with cell phone data?” asks Blaze Media Editor in Chief Matthew Peterson.
To hear Baker’s answer and more about the Oversight Project’s investigation, watch the clip above.
