The Heritage Foundation, the juggernaut right-wing think tank behind Project 2025, an ambitious uber-conservative policy platform to implement if former President Donald Trump is reelected this year, is on a crusade to solve the assassination attempt against him.
This week, it revealed it purchased location data from the address of Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks to pinpoint his travel.
And they've unearthed some very, very, very dubious ties to the FBI.
“We found the assassin’s connections through our in-depth analysis of mobile ad data to track movements of Crooks and his associates,” the think tank's Oversight Project wrote to open a thread they posted on Monday.
“To do this, we tracked devices that regularly visited both Crooks’s home and place of work and followed them.”
The thread highlights those devices—which could be tied to Crooks, his parents, or other people in the vicinity of his home—traveling to places Project Oversight says looks fishy.
Most concerning to them, one device went somewhere near FBI headquarters once.
"Someone who regularly visited Crooks home and work also visited a building in Washington, DC located in Gallery Place. This is in the same vicinity of an @FBI office on June 26, 2023," it wrote. “Who’s device is this?” it added darkly.
The map shared shows downtown Washington, D.C. with two blue circles, indicating they visited a building in Gallery Place between 7th Street Northwest and 6th Street Northwest on June 26, 2023.
The FBI main office is within a half mile of the dots. However, the location is right next to the Capital One Arena, where the Washinton Capitals and Wizards play.
Also on the block are numerous restaurants and chain eateries. One of the blue circles on Project Oversight’s map looks like it’s in the Gallery Place complex, which includes a Haagen Daaz and a Regal Cinema.
"Imagine doing this level of research but not bothering to note it appears this person just ate at Clyde's lol," joked one person on X.
The project also highlighted a device “linked to Crooks” visiting Plymouth, Massachusetts in early March, and a device “linked to Crook’s work” traveling from his home in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania to Butler, Pennsylvania two times on July 4 and July 8.
Crooks worked at a nursing home and rehab center in Bethel Park, about a 50-mile drive from Butler, where Crooks opened fire on the rally Trump was speaking at on July 13, killing one and seriously injuring two others. According to a map the Oversight Project posted, the device stopped off at a Home Depot in Butler, and all activity on the device ended on July 12.
The Oversight Project also linked a device they say is linked to Crooks to Allegheny Arms & Gun Works on Aug 30, 2023.
That was the gun store in Butler where Crooks bought 50 rounds of ammunition just hours before he opened fire on the rally, reported the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
A conspiratorial strain runs through a lot of the Oversight Project’s thread. They end it by saying that they wouldn’t be sharing the information congressional task force charged with investigating the assassination attempt because of the “connective tissue between that entity and FBI, USSS, and other entities.”
Plenty of posters picked up on that speculative angle.
“Democrats and FBI were in on it!” claimed @_BruceBane in one post.
“I strongly recommend bringing in total outsiders, such as a retired military inspector general, and providing them with the necessary authority to root out this corrupt branch of government,” suggested 8chan owner Jim Watkins. “Competent and loyal outsiders still exist and could effectively address these urgent issues.”
“They need to completely hand it off to Pennsylvania State Police,” proposed @Distress99. “Any federal agency would be absurd—these potential allegations create a clear conflict of interest.”
Other posters were baffled by just how the organization got access to the granular level of data needed to pinpoint what might be Crooks’ movements.
“How did you get access to this type of data?” asked @zephyr_wild, with plenty of posters lining up to explain that it comes from advertisers which businesses sell to other businesses.
“It's generic aggregated commercial tower data. It is used in targeted advertising and is pretty granular,” wrote @admiral_nemo. “It is likely ‘scrubbed’. Meaning, the devices are trackable... but identity of device holder is unknown.”
“This is why flashlight apps want your location and contacts and why you can't disable the stock weather app,” added @Jimerican2.
People present at the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot were tracked by similar advertising data, which included 100,000 locations pings distributed across thousands of smartphones. The New York Times described how ostensibly anonymized data can actually be cross-referenced across multiple databases using a unique identifier called a Mobile Ad ID. That ID can be matched with a wealth of other data in other, non-anonymous databases. These include information like first and last names, home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and even precise locations.
That level of tracking capability had some people impressed, but it also made them uneasy about the power that sort of data could have for think tanks like Heritage.
“The amount of information gathered by digital ADVERTISING is wild, looks to be what this OSINT account used to pull data,” posted @WeaponOutfitter in reaction to the Project Oversight thread.
Others were less sanguine about the capabilities on display.
“yo this is fucking terrifying. this data should not be accessible. what the fuck,” posted @daysnotlived succinctly.
“Feels like the real takeaway here is ‘The Heritage Foundation has unrestricted surveillance powers,” added @ebeggin1.
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