It’s an unanswerable question worthy of a novel by Graham Greene. Did Thomas Crooks die believing he had killed Donald Trump?
As the first shot hurtled past, Trump grabbed his ear, quickly saw blood on his hands and dropped to the ground. And in the 26 seconds between Crooks’ first shot aimed at the former president and the Secret Service taking aim and killing him, it’s conceivable that Crooks thought his mission accomplished.
A week after the attempted assassination and hundreds of interviews later, no motive for the shooting has yet emerged. Police computer and phone searches suggest Crooks may have simply been looking for a high profile target as he scrolled through news of President Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and former president Trump.
