Mystery online figure who contacted Trump shooter Thomas Crooks is finally UNMASKED... and his messages raise chilling questions about Butler

By DANA KENNEDY, SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER Published: 16:55, 11 May 2026 | Updated: 16:56, 11 May 2026 The shadowy figure known as 'Willy Tepes' who made contact with wannabe Trump assassin Thomas Crooks is 55-year-old Norwegian neo-Nazi Bjorn Leif Hjelmerud, he confirmed exclusively to the Daily Mail. And in a heated message exchange with the Daily Mail, he revealed what he believes was behind Crooks' evil attempt. Hjelmerud, who the Daily Mail learned is married with children and lives in Spydeberg, an Oslo suburb, reached out to Crooks four years before the attempt on President Donald Trump's life at an event in Butler, Pennsylvania, after Crooks tagged Tepes in a YouTube comment section of a California gun control-related video. 'If a gun and a badge is all that is needed,' Hjelmerud told Crooks, 'then authority obviously comes from the barrel of a gun.  'We have more guns than they do ;) There is no way we can avoid a war at this point, so you better just get used to the idea.' Crooks's YouTube went dark shortly thereafter, and he was deemed to have no other social media presence. Hjelmerud, however, continued to freely post inflammatory, violent, often antisemitic messages on the Telegram app - as recently as last week - where he's contributed between 4,000 and 5,000 posts since 2021.  He called for 'drone swarms and assassins' and intentions to kill 'every single leader, politician, media personality and Jews.' The Daily Mail can reveal that the man behind the online alias 'Willy Tepes' is a married father, Norwegian neo-Nazi Bjorn Leif Hjelmerud (pictured left) Wannabe assassin Thomas Crooks interacted online with 'Willy Tepes' four years before the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in 2024 Dubbed the 'Osama bin Laden of the Nazi underworld,' the Norwegian even singled out Trump in one post, saying 'Thank you Mr Trump. Those words will be used to hang you!'  Hjelmerud is a proud member of the neo-Nazi group, Nordic Resistance Movement - and is reportedly missing two fingers on his right hand possibly due to his interest in weaponry.  Investigators and online researchers have questioned whether Crooks may have been influenced by the Norwegian's hate-spewing rhetoric on Telegram or some other app, though Hjelmerud disavowed any relationship with Crooks beyond brief comments between the two seen online. 'No,' he told the Daily Mail when asked if he and Crooks moved their online interaction to another, more untraceable app like Telegram after their communication in 2020. 'I believe it was a US intelligence operation using a patsy to boost Trump's popularity,' he said. 'Crooks was not censored but I was. YouTube does not allow calls for violence.' Hjelmerud also downplayed his contact with and knowledge of Crooks in his text messages with the Daily Mail, calling it a 'nothingburger.' 'The Jews have banned me from all their social media platforms, so I am effectively censored,' he wrote. 'But it does not matter as the world has collectively noticed what I have been pointing out. Have a nice day and death to Israel!'  Hjelmerud's admission comes as Helen Comperatore, the widow of Corey Comperatore, the firefighter killed at the Butler rally, and Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida) have said separately in recent days that they believe the Trump rally shooting was an 'inside job.' In a disturbing 2020 YouTube exchange in the comments section, 'Willy Tepes' told Crooks: 'If a gun and a badge is all that is needed, then authority obviously comes from the barrel of a gun'  On Telegram in February 2023, the Willy Tepes account confirmed his identity in a screenshot showing members of the Nordic Resistance Movement marching on the street  The NRM was designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department one month before Crooks shot Trump (pictured above are members of the NRM) He was on police radar at least as far back as 2022 when a Norwegian antifascist website identified him as a member of the NRM, a disseminator of Nazi propaganda, and said cops had at one point seized firearms that he had stored at home. NRM was designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department one month before Crooks shot Trump - and the official designation was published into the federal register on July 9, 2024, just days before the shooting. Crooks fired eight rounds from an AR-15 style rifle from a nearby roof at a Trump rally on July 13, 2024, wounding Trump in his right ear, killing a Trump fan in the audience, Corey Comperatore, and injuring two others. Many don't believe the official version of the incident, especially since the FBI originally said Crooks had almost no online digital footprint - and certainly did not disclose that Crooks exhibited violent, radical tendencies online. The FBI then had to walk that back in November 2025 when Tucker Carlson released a documentary 'Who is Thomas Crooks?' on November 14 with extensive and authenticated proof of Crooks' radical online presence - and revealed the existence of 'Willy Tepes' for the first time. Carlson said in the video that a source was able to retrieve Crooks' social media accounts from his Google drive account after many if not all of them had been wiped off YouTube. Right after Carlson's video went up, on the same day, FBI Director Kash Patel released a statement describing what he said was an extensive investigation into 'nearly 500,000 digital files' from '13 seized digital devices' as part of the Crooks case. The FBI also created what it called the 'FBI Rapid Response' on X in response to Carlson's video.  Hjelmerud freely shared inflammatory, violent, often antisemitic messages on the Telegram app  In one disturbing post, he expressed his hope for terrorists to 'target the government' 'or even the bankers'  The same account was seen leaving a 'death to Israel' comment in a channel  Hjelmerud, who is married with children and lives in Spydeberg, a suburb south of Oslo, admitted in a text message to the Daily Mail this week that he is indeed Willy Tepes In one of its first posts it wrote: 'This FBI has never said Thomas Crooks had no online footprint ever.' But a community note added to the post pointed out that during a Senate hearing shortly after the assassination attempt, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate did vaguely disclose a social media account believed to be associated with Crooks but went on to describe a 'general absence of other information to date from social media.' The FBI's handling of the case has been confusing from the start. On November 17, 2025, three days after Carlson's video aired, Patel, then FBI deputy director Dan Bongino and a senior FBI official sat down with Fox News to reiterate that Crooks acted alone - and issued an official FBI statement that appeared to be from their website but has only ever been available on the Fox News website. The FBI admitted that a Willy Tepes had mentioned Crooks in four YouTube comments but said that Crooks himself had never directly communicated with Tepes. That statement was disproven by the discovery of a YouTube video comment on August 5, 2020 showing Crooks responding to Tepes in a lengthy post that included this statement: 'IMO the only way to fight the gov is with terrorism style attacks, sneak a bomb into an essential building (and) set it off before anyone sees you, track down any important people/politicians/military leaders and try to assassinate them.' Three weeks ago, an online activist organization called Citizens Commission released a video called 'Who is Willy Tepes?' Crooks fired eight rounds at Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, grazing the president's ear and killing one audience member The Butler rally shooting left firefighter Corey Comperatore (right) dead and two others injured. His widow Helen (left) has recently that she believes the shooting was an 'inside job' It tracked Tepes' full digital footprint, infiltrated the extremist Telegram channels he was active in, and recovered thousands of his messages — many of which explicitly encouraged political violence, including assassinations. Citizens Commission used an online tracking tool, TGDB, to parse most of Tepes' roughly 5,000 Telegram messages in 83 different channels on the app - the first one dating back to May 16, 2021. 'What I don't understand is how this guy is still able to keep posting violent stuff if the investigation into Crooks was thorough,' said a spokesman for the group. 'How was this Tepes character missed? Or if they knew about him why did they omit it in speaking about the investigation?  'From everything we can tell, it appears Crooks talked about assassination attempts with a foreign terrorist in a YouTube comment section.' Comperatore's widow, Helen, made it clear this week that she does not believe the official account either. 'If you think that kid just got out of bed and went and shot the president and shot my husband you're batshit crazy,' she told the Daily Mail Monday. Comperatore said she believes that two people 'high up' at the federal level who were there during the Biden Administration and are still in their positions, are responsible in some way for the assassination attempt. 'I will find out what happened to him and I will continue focusing on this until the day I die.' No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.