The gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump researched a member of the Royal family while planning his attack, the FBI has revealed.
Thomas Crooks, 20, had ‘scoped out’ the venue for the former president’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in the days leading up to his attempt at killing him.
During a briefing call between the FBI and members of the US Congress afterwards, agents revealed that interrogation of Crooks’ electronic devices unearthed Google searches for an unnamed royal.
The computer whizz had also carried out searches for the bureau’s director Christopher Wray and attorney-general Merrick Garland.
Agents also discovered images of public figures including Trump and Joe Biden, as well as a list of dates of Trump appearances and the Democratic National Convention, The Times reports.
It comes as the US Secret Service faces allegations of failing to protect Trump, who was lucky to survive when one of the gunman’s bullets grazed his ear as he turned his head.
In the congressional briefing Wednesday, FBI and Secret Service officials laid out a clearer timeline.
Crooks was identified as a potential threat a full hour before the shots were fired.
They saw him with the rangefinder roughly 40 minutes before the shooting, and then spotted him again looking through the rangefinder, about 20 minutes before the shooting.
‘We are speaking of a failure,’ Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN.
‘We are going to analyze through an independent review how that occurred, why it occurred, and make recommendations and findings to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
House Oversight Committee Republicans have subpoenaed Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle.
Speaker Mike Johnson said he would set up a task force to investigate, and some Republicans have called on Cheatle to resign.
Cheatle herself said the shooting was ‘unacceptable’, in an interview with ABC News. ‘And it’s something that shouldn’t happen again.’
On Wednesday, she was accosted by senators at the Republican National Convention demanding an explanation for the lapse.
Security has been stepped up for Trump and President Biden, and independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. also received a protective detail.
It will take weeks — if not months — to interview all the officers involved and determine exactly how Crooks was able to pull off the most serious attempt to kill a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.
The question of why he made that attempt is proving even more difficult to answer.
Crooks’ town, Bethel Park, is divided almost down America’s political middle. In the 2020 election, Trump eked out a 65-vote margin in the borough of about 33,000 people, results show.
The political split showed up in the Crooks household. Thomas was a registered Republican. His father is a Libertarian and his mother is a Democrat, voter registration records show. Both are social workers.
When Crooks was 17, he made a $15 donation to a political action committee earmarked for a Democratic turnout group, according to federal election data.
His school counselor Jim Knapp, who retired in 2022, said Crooks rarely came across his radar because he wasn’t a ‘needy type kid’.
Knapp occasionally checked on him at lunch because he was sitting alone. ‘I’d say, “Do you want to sit with somebody?” And he’d say, “No, I’m okay by myself”,’ Knapp recalled.
Former high-school classmate Max Rich said Crooks was shy and ‘never seemed like the type’ to commit such violence.
He left virtually no digital footprint. He spent time on Discord, a gaming platform, but the company said it found ‘no evidence that it was used to plan this incident, promote violence, or discuss his political views’.
Crooks was a member of the local Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, a gun club. He was wearing a shirt advertising ‘Demolition Ranch’, a YouTube channel for firearms enthusiasts, when he was killed.
After the shooting, Matt Carriker, a Texas veterinarian who runs the Demolition Ranch channel, posted a video on X saying he was ‘shocked and confused’ to learn that Crooks was wearing his channel’s merchandise.
‘We keep politics out of it,’ he said, adding that he did not know and had never met or communicated with Crooks.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
