By Jeff Seldin
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 remained unanswered, analysis of a laptop connected to Thomas Matthew Crooks showed the would-be assassin seemed to be fixated on high-profile public figures and searched for information on the 1963 killing of then-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 and fired at least eight shots from an AR-style assault rifle, leaving Trump with a bloody ear while killing a rallygoer and injuring two others.
Crooks, who was killed by a U.S. Secret Service sniper, also carried a remote detonator for two explosive devices left in his car, though the FBI director said the receivers had not been activated and likely would not have gone off had he tried to activate them.
"What else he had in mind is something that I think is very much an open question," Wray told the House Judiciary Committee. “We'd love to have a road map that tells us exactly what he was thinking. We haven't found that yet."
What investigators have found, Wray said, is evidence that the shooter had developed a fascination with high-profile figures, using his mobile phone to get more information.
"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."
By July 6, however, that fascination had morphed into a fixation.
“In the period around July 6, leading up to July 13, he does seem to have become very focused on this particular rally and former President Trump,” Wray said. “But exactly what his thought process was in doing that, that's something that's still very much under investigation.”
Other searches of the shooter’s mobile phone and electronic devices have so far not provided any additional insight into Crooks’ mindset.
Wray said the investigation had failed to turn up any evidence of a political ideology or a manifesto, 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 appeared 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 had not been able to access all of the shooter’s social media accounts and that investigators might never get past some of the passwords and encryption.
U.S. lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, have repeatedly expressed outrage in the days since the 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 the “most significant operational failure … in decades.”
The FBI’s Wray on Wednesday took a different tack, assuring lawmakers that the bureau would “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 Judiciary Committee Chairman 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," the Republican lawmaker 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 from the stage where Trump was to speak, and that it appeared the drone livestreamed video.
However, the camera appeared 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 rear-view mirror of the scene behind him.”
Wray also said investigators had determined the shooter visited the rally site 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 were other questions that had 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 ladder, but that it was never brought to the scene of the shooting.
Wray said there was also still confusion about whether the shooter had placed the rifle on the roof before the shooting or had 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, noting that the first sighting by law enforcement officers of the shooter actually holding the gun came just seconds before the first shots rang out.
