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Days before he fired an AR-15-style rifle at Donald Trump, a 20-year-old gunman had Google searched the distance between former president John F Kennedy Jr and his assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
In testimony to a House Oversight Committee investigating the attack, FBI director Christopher Wray said law enforcement analysis of Thomas Matthew Crooks’s devices and digital footprint have not yielded “anything notable in terms of motive or ideology,” but “it does appear fairly clear that he was interested in public figures more broadly.”
“On July 6, he did a Google search for ‘How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?’ and so that’s a search that obviously is significant in terms of his state of mind,” Wray said on Wednesday.
Crooks registered to attend Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, that same day, Wray said.
The FBI director also reported that at least three explosive devices were recovered from Crooks’s home and car, and that Crooks’s gun was initially purchased by his father more than a decade ago, well before Crooks brought it from him. Crooks also likely tested the weapon at a shooting range the day before the attack.
The previously unreported details were disclosed to members of Congress as lawmakers press for answers about apparent security lapses and what fueled the attempted assassination of the former president.
“The attempted assassination of the former president was an attack on our democracy,” Wray said in his testimony. “I recognize the congressional and public interest in this case.”
The gunman — who fired several rounds during the rally on July 13, striking Trump’s right ear and killing one attendee and critically injuring at least two others — visited the rally site a week before the event and spent roughly 20 minutes at the scene.
He visited again, twice, on the day of the shooting, spending about 70 minutes at the fairgrounds in the morning and then returning in the afternoon to fly a drone for roughly 20 minutes approximately 200 yards from the staging area, Wray testified.
Law enforcement officials believe he flew a drone around 3:50pm and 4pm, roughly two hours before the shooting.
Before Trump took the stage, Crooks climbed to a nearby roof outside of the security perimeter. Secret Service snipers fatally shot Crooks after he fired several rounds moments into Trump’s remarks.
The rifle had a collapsible stock, which Wray said could have made it easier to conceal from anyone in the crowd.
FBI agents also recovered eight bullet cartridges from the roof, along with a “transmitter” for an explosive device. There were magazines and a bulletproof vest in his car, along with the drone and at least two explosive devices.
The explosive devices “are relatively — again, key word, relatively — crude devices … but they did have the ability to be detonated remotely,” Wray said.
“At the moment, it looks to us — again, ongoing review, and I can’t say that too many times — it looks like because of the on-off position on the receivers, that if he had tried to detonate those devices from the roof, it would not have worked. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous,” he said.
Law enforcement officials have conducted more than 400 interviews as part of the investigation, including interviews with Crooks’s parents. Wray said they were cooperative with agents.
“We have not identified any accomplices, co-conspirators or anything along those lines,” Wray said. “We have not seen anything so far that he acted with others.”
Wray testified to the committee two days after lawmakers grilled now-former Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle, who took “full responsibility for any security lapse” surrounding the shooting, which she called “the most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades.”
After widespread calls from members of both parties for her resignation, Cheatle stepped down the next morning.
Secret Service deputy director Ronald L Rowe Jr has stepped in as acting director.
