BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager, has pulled an ad that briefly featured Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old who shot and wounded former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
The company said Crooks was a student at Bethel Park High School and appeared in the 2022 ad with other unpaid teens.
“In 2022, we ran an ad featuring a teacher from Bethel Park High School, in which several unpaid students briefly appeared in the background, including Thomas Matthew Crooks,” the company said in a statement to Reuters Sunday, adding that the ad has been pulled.
The 30-second BlackRock TV ad features an AP and honors economics class that Crooks attended at the time, with the would-be Trump assassin speaking with his teacher.
Crooks graduated the same year the commercial aired from Bethel Park High, where he was one of a dozen students who received National Math & Science Initiative Star Awards, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
The company noted that while the ad has been removed from circulation, it is still available for investigators to review and is being circulated on social media.