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FBI investigating attack on Trump as possible domestic terrorism

Writer's picture: The San Juan Daily StarThe San Juan Daily Star


A bloodied Donald Trump is surrounded by Secret Service agents at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa, on Saturday, July, 13, 2024. The former president was rushed off stage at rally after sounds like shots; the former president was escorted into his motorcade at his rally in Butler, Pa., a rural town about an hour north of Pittsburgh. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

By Michael D. Shear and Maggie Astor


Senior FBI officials said Sunday that agents were investigating the shooting at a rally for former President Donald Trump as a possible domestic terrorism attack and assassination. They said the gunman’s phone, rifle and a possible “rudimentary” explosive device had been sent to the bureau’s lab in Quantico, Virginia.


Officials said that they had no reason to believe that the gunman was part of a larger plot involving other people, and that their top priority was determining the man’s motive.


The FBI said it had not uncovered evidence that the 20-year-old shooter had mental health issues, and confirmed that his father purchased the rifle. It was not clear if the father gave the son the weapon or if he took it without permission, officials told reporters.


Trump, who said he planned to travel to Milwaukee on Sunday afternoon for the Republican National Convention, vowed to remain “defiant in the face of wickedness.”


In brief remarks to the nation from the White House on Sunday, President Joe Biden called the assassination attempt “contrary to everything we stand for us as a nation, everything. It’s not who we are as a nation. It’s not American. And we cannot allow this to happen.”


The president said he would speak at greater length from the Oval Office on Sunday night. But he provided a few details about the federal response to the shooting.


Biden said he had demanded a national security review and promised to share the results with the American people. He also said he had directed the Secret Service to review security arrangements for the Republican convention.


Biden pledged that the Secret Service would give Trump “every resource capability and protective measure necessary to ensure his continued safety.”


“We must unite as one nation,” Biden said. “We must unite as one nation to demonstrate who we are.”


Federal law enforcement officials were working feverishly to understand how the gunman, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, had been able to get within firing range to injure Trump, kill one member of the audience and critically wound two others.


The spectator who was killed was Corey Comperatore, said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. He was 50, according to a post on Facebook by Comperatore’s sister. The two other victims, who remained hospitalized Sunday, were David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township, Pennsylvania.


Law enforcement officials found explosive materials in Crooks’ car and believe they may have found more at his residence, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation. An AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle was found next to Crooks’ body.


Early on Sunday, law enforcement officers closed down all roads leading toward his family’s home in Bethel Park, about an hour’s drive from the site of the rally. FBI officials said that his family was cooperating in the investigation.


Crooks was killed by a Secret Service sniper, according to a spokesperson for the agency, just before Trump was rushed off the stage with blood on his face and his fist raised in defiance. Trump later said on social media that a bullet had pierced his right ear. He was able to walk off his plane unaided when it landed in New Jersey hours later.


Biden received a briefing from homeland security and law enforcement officials as questions remained about potential security failures and the Secret Service’s preparations for the rally. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability said it would investigate the assassination attempt and had asked Kimberly A. Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service, to testify July 22.


The assassination attempt plunged the 2024 presidential race into shock and uncertainty. Trump was set to be formally nominated at the Republican National Convention, beginning in Milwaukee on Monday. His campaign and RNC officials said in a statement that the convention would proceed as planned, and Trump said early Sunday that he looked forward to speaking to the nation from Wisconsin.


Here’s what we know:


Oval Office address: Biden was to speak to the nation in an Oval Office address at 8 p.m. Sunday. He also still plans to sit for a previously scheduled interview with NBC’s Lester Holt on Monday.


The investigation: Law enforcement officials cautioned that the investigation was extremely fluid, and that they had yet to extract and analyze information from Crooks’ electronic devices for potential connections to other people.


The gunman: The shooter fired multiple times before he was killed by the Secret Service, officials said. The AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle recovered from the scene is a type that is common in mass shootings. A New York Times analysis of videos from the event suggests that the gunman fired eight shots from a small building a few hundred feet from the stage where Trump was speaking.


The response: The shooting recalled assassinations that roiled U.S. presidential campaigns in the 1960s and early 1970s. It prompted condemnations from Biden, other world leaders and politicians from both major U.S. political parties — along with a flood of unsubstantiated claims on social media. Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, issued a statement calling the shooter a “monster” and urging Americans to remember their commonalities, saying, “Beyond the red and the blue, we all come from families with the passion to fight for a better life together.”


Firsthand accounts: Times journalists were at the rally. A reporter and a photographer each described their experience. One image by the photographer, Doug Mills, appeared to capture a bullet streaking past Trump’s head.


Campaign security: Trump’s campaign managers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, sent a memo to staff members telling them to avoid their offices while they were being assessed for security. In the memo, which was viewed by the Times, they urged staff not to comment publicly on the shooting and said they “will not tolerate dangerous rhetoric on social media.”

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1 Comment


cesaralvarezmoreno
cesaralvarezmoreno
Jul 15, 2024

This is exactly what has been going on for centuries, the history of the United States is an uninterrupted cycle of killing. From the moment they got off the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock they made it their mission to conquer the land and kill anybody who got in their way. Then they decided to bring people from Africa as slaves and that went on for over two hundred years. During that time they continued killing the people of the First Nations, as well as found time to attack Canada and Mexico a few times. When workers started organizing into unions and demanded better pay and working conditions, they started killing them. Hanging them, shooting them, beating them to death;…

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