The CIA has issued a statement denying that the agency used mind control programming on the 20-year-old shooter who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump earlier this month.

In a bizarre public statement, the CIA insisted that it did not use MKULTRA brainwashing techniques on Thomas Matthew Crooks to shoot the former president.

“These claims are utterly false, absurd, and damaging,” a CIA official told Wired last week. “The CIA had no relationship whatsoever with Thomas Crooks. Regarding MKULTRA, the CIA’s program was shut down more than 40 years ago, and declassified information about the program is publicly available on CIA.gov.”

Infowars.com reports: After disparaging Trump supporters as “some of the dumbest people on the planet,” Gizmodo’s Matt Novak acknowledged that sometimes conspiracy theories surrounding these kinds of historic incidents “turn out to be true.”

Questions about the incident began swirling online in the days and weeks after the attempted assassination of Trump as the Secret Service’s security lapses and Crooks’ background came more into focus.

For example, how was the 20-year-old loner able to fly a drone to stake out the rally prior to Trump’s speech, sneak a rifle and explosives onto the grounds, climb a roof and position himself for a clear shot at Trump from 130 yards away without the slightest awareness from the Secret Service?

Soon enough, scrutiny turned to the intelligence community given its suspected role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and coverup, and #ManchurianCandidate and #MKULTRA began trending on social media.

Despite the fact the CIA’s entire brand is lying to and misleading the American people, the intelligence agency can certainly be trusted at its word at face value, right?

Notably, the CIA itself isn’t immune to conspiracy theories, such as former analyst Gail Helt, who claimed Trump staged his own assassination attempt to “stay out of prison.”

The FBI still has not determined Crooks’ motive for trying to kill Trump.