Crazed speculation or genuine mystery? As Trump shooting conspiracy theories run riot, eight key questions are put under the microscope by TOM LEONARD

It seems staggering that it could happen in 2024 — a would-be assassin’s bullet ­coming so close to Donald Trump’s head that it took off part of his right ear.

The U.S. came within an inch, literally, of being plunged into the sort of political chaos and violence that would make the turbulence of recent years look utterly insignificant.

Many Americans struggle to believe that this was simply a terrible cock-up on the part of the U.S. Secret Service and local police who were tasked with protecting the ex-president.

Especially given that the would-be assassin was no trained professional but a skinny 20-year-old kitchen assistant —Thomas Crooks — who was turned away from his high school rifle club for being a ‘comically bad’ shot.

As new details continue to emerge about the shocking security failure at the fateful Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, at the weekend, ­myriad questions have been raised.

Some strike at the heart of the controversy and others appear to be just bizarre conspiracy theories. The latter tend to fall into two camps, either Left-wing claims that the botched shooting was ‘staged’ to boost Trump’s popularity or Right-wing claims that the Secret Service knew it was coming and didn’t act to stop it.

Such wild speculation — fanned, of course, by social media — is the product of relentlessly suspicious minds in a ­ferociously polarised country. But key questions remain unanswered among the jumble of speculation and rumour . . .

WHAT WAS THE GUNMAN’S MOTIVE?

Investigators say they are still ­struggling to understand why Thomas Crooks would want to kill the former president. Politics is the obvious answer and yet Crooks’ precise political views seem difficult to gauge.

He was a registered Republican Party member but, in 2021, he made a $15 donation to a ­Left-wing group. However, ­investigators have yet to find any evidence that he held strong ­political positions.

Crooks graduated in 2022 from a high school where he was described as very much a ‘loner’ who was a victim of teasing and bullying but also as ‘nice’ and ‘incredibly intelligent’.

Fellow pupils and teachers have said they definitely saw him as politically conservative but only moderately so. While it’s no secret that many traditional and more moderate Republicans loathe Trump, Crooks hardly fits the ­picture of the political zealot ready to embrace violence.

Nor does he quite fit the stereotype of the embittered high-school misfit with a simmering hatred of the world. While a classmate says he was teased about his poor hygiene and body odour and tried not to draw attention to himself, the FBI says he had no known ­history of mental illness.

Nor did he leave behind any ­evidence of violent rhetoric on social media or a hatred-spewing ‘manifesto’ as rampaging gunmen nowadays so frequently do. Instead, Crooks was virtually invisible online, apparently having no ­public account on either ­Facebook or Instagram.

WHY COULD HE GET SO CLOSE TO TRUMP?

This core question, that has ­puzzled so many security experts, became even more pertinent after it emerged that the gunman had actually scaled a warehouse owned by the American Glass Research company that was being used as a ‘watch post’ by one of the police anti-sniper units ­covering the event.

Thomas Crooks opened fire right under (or more accurately, over) the noses of trained snipers peering out of the building’s ­windows looking for threats.

And, shockingly, although the unguarded roof of this commercial building offered a clear line of sight to the stage — no more than 150 yards away — where Trump was standing, it was outside the security perimeter set up by the Secret Service.

Consequently, the gunman didn’t need to pass through any security checks, including metal detectors, to reach his vantage point. How he got so close with an assault-style rifle remains another mystery.

HOW WAS HE NOT STOPPED BY POLICE?

Police themselves warned of Crooks’ suspicious behaviour near the gunman’s eventual shooting position at least three times.

A Beaver County officer — a member of one of three different local forces patrolling the area — was part of an anti-sniping team stationed inside the building that Crooks later scaled.

The officer watched him outside as Crooks looked up at the roof and then left, news network CBS reported. He then returned, sat down and looked at his phone, at which point one of the snipers even took a photo of him.

When Crooks took out a rangefinder, used by hunters to assess the distance to a target, the sniper radioed his command post.

Crooks then disappeared once more and returned, this time ­carrying a backpack. The snipers radioed in with this latest­ information, adding that he was walking towards the back of their building.

Police believe he might have used an air conditioning unit to get on to the roof. Fatally, the snipers themselves never tried to engage Crooks.

Experts were dumbfounded that none of the three officers was stationed on the roof, which would have offered a far better vantage point to observe the rally. The trio reportedly hadn’t been given a spotter, which is standard procedure, due to a manpower shortage.

Embattled Secret Service chief Kimberly Cheatle unconvincingly claimed yesterday that nobody had been positioned on the roof for safety reasons because it was ‘sloped . . . at its highest point’.

WHY DID WARNINGS COME TOO LATE?

Bystanders have said they warned police of the man with a gun on the warehouse roof ­several minutes before the shooting and couldn’t fathom why Trump was allowed to continue his speech.

Video footage taken by people close to the perimeter seems to corroborate this, although earlier phone warnings to the police didn’t mention the man had a gun. But according to various sources, law enforcement personnel also spotted the gunman on the roof nearly 30 minutes before the first shots were fired.

One of them reportedly saw Crooks at 5.45pm (Trump wasn’t shot until 6.11pm on Saturday).

One officer did manage to get up to the roof from the outside, peering up over the edge only to see the gunman aiming his rifle at him.

Unable to use his own gun as he was holding the roof with both hands, say superiors, he ducked down. Crooks then turned and started shooting at Trump.

WAS SOMETHING IN TRUMP’S HAND?

According to some fanciful social media interpretations of photos of the moment when shots were fired, Trump was holding a yellow object in the hand he used to touch his bloody ear.

They have even claimed it was a gel pack containing fake blood — routinely used in films and TV — that Trump burst the moment he grabbed his ear.

To be clear, there is no evidence to back up such an outlandish conspiracy theory.

DID ONLOOKER BEHAVE STRANGELY?

Online speculation has swirled about the behaviour of an ­unidentified woman sitting in the seats reserved for core Trump supporters behind his podium.

As others around her recoil in horror and either cower in their seats or attempt to flee, the woman — wearing a white top, dark glasses and a black Trump baseball cap — momentarily sinks low but then calmly pulls out her mobile phone and starts filming the drama as Secret Service agents bundle the ex-president to the floor.

One post on X asking people to ‘pay close attention to the woman in the black hat’ has been viewed some 20 million times.

‘Gunshots ring out and her first instinct is to very, very calmly pull out her phone and film the whole spectacle. Does that seem like normal behaviour to you?’ asks another user.

Her conduct is certainly at odds with those around her and ­suggests little concern for ­personal safety.

Yet is it so odd nowadays, some have countered, for people to reach for their phones during a crisis?

These sceptics have insisted her behaviour is more a sad reflection of the modern compulsion to film violence than ­evidence of any prior knowledge of the shooting.

DID SECRET SERVICE KNOW ABOUT IT?

Some insist that several videos of the shooting show police and Secret Service agents — whose first duty, of course, is to protect serving and ex-presidents — ­acting as if they knew bullets would soon be flying.

A two-man police anti-sniping team, armed with rifles and ­positioned on a rooftop near the stage, can be seen peering through powerful ‘spotter scopes’ in the direction of the gunman for around 40 seconds before he opens fire and they fire back.

Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of the FBI, told the Mail earlier this week that they might have assumed the assassin was a police sniper, part of their security team.

Down on the ground, sceptics have focused on footage of a Secret Service agent walking around in a somewhat crouched stance as he ushers people away from the ex-president just ­seconds before the first shots ring out.

Others have countered that he’s doing just what an agent would be expected to do and there’s nothing suspicious here.

Some of the evidence that’s been produced to suggest the incident was staged is itself fake. An image rapidly circulated on social media showed a picture of two agents who ran to guard Trump with smiles on their faces.

An influential anti-Trump ­commentator, who has almost 250,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter), shared the image, saying: ‘Everyone here seems to be having a good time, laughing and smiling for the cameras.’

However, the picture was ­later debunked as a digitally manipulated version of an ­Associated Press photo.

So-called ‘BlueAnon’ conspiracy theories — levelled by Left-­wingers — have clearly been thick on the ground this time, compounding the confusion spread by similarly paranoid or just ­trouble-making Trumpites.­

According to research group Institute for Strategic Dialogue, references to false assassination narratives amassed more than 100 million views on X in just 24 hours.

WHY DID TRUMP FRET ABOUT HIS SHOES?

The drama on the rally stage after the shooting briefly veered into farce when Trump could be heard complaining that he wasn’t going to be hustled away until he’d recovered his shoes.

He later explained that he’d been thrown to the ground with such force by his bodyguards that they’d come off.

But why, at a moment when there could have been more ­gunmen around and his life was still in danger, was he so worried about footwear?

Hollywood screenwriter Randi Mayem Singer speculated —somewhat mischievously — that Trump wears two to three-inch lifts to make him look taller.

According to Singer, that explains why the shoes fell off so easily and why he ‘didn’t want the humiliation of people seeing his trick shoes’.