News - Trump shooter used encrypted messaging accounts on multiple platforms overseas, says US lawmaker Mike Waltz

The gunman who nearly killed former President Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month used encrypted messaging accounts on multiple platforms based in Belgium, New Zealand and Germany, according to a House of Representatives member appointed to a congressional task force investigating the assassination attempt, Fox News reports. Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., a retired Green Beret appointed to the 13-member House bipartisan task force investigating the attempted assassination of Trump, told reporters about the accounts. One reporter asked Waltz what he and other members of the task force had learned during the investigation and about the encrypted messages on the shooter's cellphone. "We still haven’t learned a lot. We haven’t learned that much about those overseas accounts," he said, referring to accounts held by would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks. "We do know that they were in, if I get this correctly, Belgium, New Zealand and Germany.  "Why does a 19-year-old kid who is a health care aide need encrypted platforms not even based in the United States, but based abroad, where most terrorist organizations know it is harder for our law enforcement to get into? That’s a question I’ve had since day one." The representative then turned his attention to the FBI and Secret Service, bashing them for not saying a thing until they complete their investigations months from now. "They need to be releasing information as they come across it, because this wasn’t an isolated incident," Waltz said. "The threats are continually Iran’s threats."