washington — The 20-year-old man who tried to kill former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally earlier this month appeared to have set his sights on the attempted assassination at least a week before the incident.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers on Wednesday that while many questions remain unanswered, analysis of Thomas Matthew Crooks’ laptop showed the would-be assassin seemed to be fixated on high-profile public figures and searched for information on the 1963 killing of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald.
“On July 6, he did a Google search for – quote – ‘how far away was Oswald from Kennedy,’” Wray said.
“That’s obviously significant in terms of his state of mind,” Wray added. “That is the same day that he registered for the Butler rally.”
Seven days later, on July 13, Crooks climbed onto a roof overlooking the campaign rally in western Pennsylvania, firing eight shots from an AR-style assault rifle, leaving Trump with a bloody ear, while killing a rallygoer and injuring two others.
The FBI director also told lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee that Crooks used his mobile phone to search for information on high-profile figures.
“The shooter appears to have done a lot of searches of public figures in general … news articles and things like that,” Wray said, adding that images of high-profile officials and politicians found on the shooter’s phone were linked to the articles.
“This does not appear to be some sort of target list,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason to it so far other than that these are all prominent public people.”
Other searches of the shooter’s mobile phone and electronic devices, however, have so far not provided any insight into Crooks’ mindset.
Wray said the investigation has failed to turn up any evidence of a political ideology or a manifesto that could explain why Crooks targeted the former president.
Nor have investigators come across any indication that the shooter had help or that he alerted anyone else to his plans.
“So far, we have not found any evidence of any accomplices or co-conspirators, foreign or domestic,” Wray said, adding the investigation appears to confirm accounts that Crooks was a loner.
“His list of contacts, for example, is very short compared to what you would normally see from most people. It doesn’t appear to be a whole lot of interaction between him, face-to-face or digital with a lot of people,” he said.
Still, Wray cautioned that the FBI has not been able to access all of the shooter’s social media accounts and that investigators ultimately may never get past some of the passwords and encryption.
U.S. lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, have repeatedly expressed outrage in the days and weeks since the July 13 shooting, leading to Tuesday’s resignation of the director of the U.S. Secret Service, the agency responsible for providing security to current and former presidents and their families.
The now former director, Kimberly Cheatle, drew additional ire from lawmakers the day before she resigned, repeatedly refusing to answer questions about the attempted assassination while calling the event, “most significant operational failure … in decades.”
The FBI’s Wray on Wednesday took a different tact, assuring lawmakers that the bureau will “leave no stone unturned” in its investigation, while committing to provide as much information as possible.
“We need to know what happened play-by-play, moment-by-moment, second-by-second,” said the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Republican Representative Jim Jordan.
“A significant portion of the country has a healthy skepticism regarding the FBI’s ability to conduct a fair, honest, open and transparent investigation,” he said, accusing the law enforcement agency of what he described as multiple failures over the past several years.
During the more than three hours of testimony, the FBI’s Wray confirmed reports that the shooter had flown a drone at the site of campaign rally about two hours before the event got underway.
He said the flight path took the drone over an area about 180 meters (200 yards) from the stage where former President Trump was to speak, and that it appears the drone livestreamed video.
However, the camera appears to have been pointing away from the podium.
“We think it would have shown him what would have been behind him [on the roof],” Wray said. “Like, it’s almost like giving him a rearview mirror of the scene behind him.”
Wray also said the investigators have determined the shooter visited the site of the rally at least three times.
The first visit, which came a week before the shooting, lasted 20 minutes. A second visit, which lasted 70 minutes, took place the morning of the shooting. And the final visit was the afternoon of the shooting, when Crooks arrived and waited to carry out the attempted assassination.
Yet for all that investigators think they know after digging into the shooter’s social media and communications, and after more than 400 interviews, Wray said there are other questions that have yet to be answered.
One of those questions is how Crooks got up on the roof of the building overlooking the rally.
Investigators found a receipt showing he had bought a 1.5-meter-tall (5 feet) ladder, but that it was never brought to the scene of the shooting.
Wray said there is also still some confusion over whether the shooter had managed to place the rifle on the roof before the shooting or whether he carried it up with him right before he started firing.
“The weapon had a collapsible stock which might explain why it was less easy to observe,” Wray said.
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