Would-be Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks searched for details about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, including how far Lee Harvey Oswald positioned himself from his target, according to July 24 testimony from FBI Director Christopher Wray.
After an FBI analysis of Mr. Crooks’s laptop, according to Mr. Wray, it was determined that the suspected gunman searched for how far Oswald was from President Kennedy during the 1963 assassination. Mr. Crooks carried out the Google search on July 6, the same day the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was announced, the FBI director told members of the House Judiciary Committee.
“On July 6, he did a Google search for ‘how far away was Oswald from Kennedy,’” Mr. Wray told the House panel.
FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday provided an update on the federal investigation into the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump at a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally earlier this month.
So far, the FBI has not identified a motive for suspected gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks’ actions. He was shot and killed immediately after opening fire on the rally, killing one rally-goer, injuring two others, and striking former President Trump in the right ear.
“We have recovered a drone that the shooter used,” he said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, adding that it was taken from his vehicle. Two hours before the rally shooting, Mr. Crooks was flying the drone “about 200 yards away” from the rally stage area, the FBI director said.
Local law enforcement had alerted the U.S. Secret Service to a suspicious individual before the shooting at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month, according to the head of the Pennsylvania State Police.
During questioning before the House Homeland Security on July 23, Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Col. Christopher Paris revealed new details about the security failure that led to the attempted assassination of former President Trump, which left one person dead and two injured.
Col. Paris said that “there was a text thread going” with the Butler County Emergency Services Unit, who had seen suspected gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks and reported him as a suspicious person before the incident.
The man who shot former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on July 13 had a detonation device, the state’s top police official said on July 23.
“We were aware of that very early on and that was a serious tactical consideration in the immediate aftermath as we worked that crime scene,” Col. Christopher Paris, commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police, told a U.S. House of Representatives hearing in Washington.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) had asked Col. Paris for confirmation that Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old shooter, had a detonation device and bombs in his car, which was parked near the rally.
Ten days after the failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, officials have not found a motive, while other details about the shooter, who was killed that day by a Secret Service sniper, remain unclear.
The shooter’s father, Matthew Brian Crooks, 53, was spotted leaving a store on Monday, telling Fox News that he won’t be releasing a statement on the shooting for the time being.
Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the U.S. Secret Service, resigned on July 23, one day after her testimony before Congress about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
“I take full responsibility for the security lapse,” she said in the email to Secret Service staff. “In light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your director.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas soon after said he was appointing Ronald Rowe, the service’s deputy director, to serve as acting director.