A gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump researched President John F. Kennedy’s killing one week earlier, it emerged on Wednesday.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, searched Google for “How far was Oswald from Kennedy?”, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Judiciary Committee.
Wray said the agency does not have a “clear picture” Crooks’ motive but the online inquiry was “indicative” of his “state of mind” at that time.
He revealed new details about the suspect who targeted ex-president and Republican candidate Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday, July 13.
Crooks had taken a keen interest in public figures but had otherwise not left behind clear clues of an ideological motive.
The online search, recovered from a laptop used by him, is a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooter who killed Kennedy from a sniper’s perch in Dallas in November, 1963.
The revelation was part of a collection of new details offered by Wray about the shooting which turn the 2024 poll on its head.
The FBI’s investigation has thrust the bureau into a political maelstrom months before the presidential election, with lawmakers and the public pressing for details about what may have motivated Crooks in the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1981.
The agency has built out a detailed timeline of Crooks’ movements and online activity, but the precise motive - or why Trump was singled out - remains elusive despite being one of the “central questions”, Wray said.
“A lot of the usual repositories of information have not yielded, anything notable in terms of motive or ideology,” says Wray who admits agents are “digging hard”.
He did note that Crooks had grown interested in public officials. Apart from Trump, the would-be assassin also had photos on his phone of Democratic President Joe Biden and other prominent figures. By July 6 and in the days before the shooting, he appeared particularly consumed by Trump, the Republicans’ White House nominee.
Wray also said that Crooks, about two hours before the shooting, had flown a drone about 200 yards (180 meters) from the rally stage where Trump would later stand and used the device to livestream and watch footage.
The use of the drone so close the rally site just hours before Trump took the stage for the rally add to the questions about the security lapses preceding the event.
Wray pledged to lawmakers that the FBI would “leave no stone unturned” in its investigation.
“I have been saying for some time now that we are living in an elevated threat environment, and tragically the Butler County assassination attempt is another example - a particularly heinous and public one - of what I’ve been talking about,” Wray said.
