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Writer's pictureThe San Juan Daily Star

Trump agrees to be interviewed by FBI in its investigation into shooter



Former President Donald Trump reaches to touch his ear as he speaks at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, July, 13, 2024. Trump has agreed to be interviewed by the FBI as part of its investigation into the motives of the 20-year-old gunman, bureau officials said on July 29. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

By Glenn Thrush


Former President Donald Trump has agreed to be interviewed by the FBI as part of its investigation into the motives of the 20-year-old man who tried to assassinate him during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, bureau officials and Trump said Monday.


“We want to get his perspective on what he observed, like any other witness,” Kevin Rojek, the head of the bureau’s Pittsburgh field office, said on a call with reporters. “It is a standard victim interview, like we would do.”


Trump said on Fox News that the interview would take place Thursday.


The former president’s supporters had sharply criticized FBI Director Christopher Wray for telling a House committee last week that investigators had not definitively determined the cause of the minor injury to the former president’s ear. By week’s end, the FBI offered its most definitive explanation yet, saying that a bullet or a fragment of one had struck him, a statement that the agency reiterated Monday.


The FBI also provided the most comprehensive — if naggingly incomplete — portrait to date of the shooter, Thomas Crooks, portraying him as a friendless loner who carefully concealed from his parents more than two dozen online purchases of weaponry and explosives by using aliases. His motives, officials said, remain unknown despite interviews with hundreds of people, an analysis of his electronic devices and memory cards, and the cooperation of his parents.


Crooks, whom investigators described as “highly intelligent,” seemed less interested in partisan politics than political violence.


He recently gathered information on other assassination attempts, including the shooting of Robert Fico, the prime minister of Slovakia, in May. He also entered the words “how far away was Oswald from Kennedy” into a search engine.


Crooks also made searches related to “power plants, mass shooting events, information on improvised explosive devices.”


His interest in firearms intensified in late 2023, investigators determined. Around that time, his father, who more than a decade ago bought the AR-15-type rifle used in the attack, transferred ownership of the weapon to him, officials said.


Crooks, who worked in the kitchen of an assisted care facility near the modest house he shared with his parents, used numerous encrypted email services to cloak his identity while making purchases. He used 83 separate sites, social media apps and platforms, including several gaming platforms.


His parents told the FBI that they were not alarmed when hazardous materials and gun components were shipped to the house because their son had a long-standing interest in science.Even if he was connected online, he was curiously detached. Crooks’ interpersonal interactions appear to have been limited to his immediate family and a handful of friends with whom he lost contact after graduating high school. Investigators have yet to find any evidence that he engaged in any meaningful contact with fellow gamers, in contrast with many other assassins and mass shooters.


The FBI also reiterated the known timeline of the attack, some of which Wray disclosed in his testimony last week.


Crooks registered to attend the Trump rally on July 6 — three days after the former president’s visit was made public and a day before Crooks traveled to the site to first survey its layout.


He headed to the site around 11 a.m. on the day of the shooting, spent about an hour there and returned home. At about 1:30 p.m., he retrieved his gun and told his parents he was headed to the shooting range. He arrived in Butler, Pennsylvania, around 3:45 p.m. and flew a drone for 11 minutes outside the event’s perimeter, Rojek said.


Investigators found no memory card in the drone and have been unable to determine what Crooks filmed.


FBI officials said he was spotted on at least one occasion walking outside the security cordon carrying a backpack at 5:56 p.m.


Then, at 6:08 p.m. — just after Trump took the stage — a police dashcam recorded Crooks moving to the roof.


“He made it onto the roof and then traversed across multiple rooftops to get to his ultimate shooting position,” Rojek said.


About 25 to 30 seconds later, Crooks fired eight rounds, hitting Trump’s ear, killing a rally attendee and injuring two other people.


FBI officials said they were taking the unusual step of providing investigative details, even though their efforts were continuing, to combat conspiracy theories and misinformation.


They also said their investigation was not geared toward identifying or analyzing security failures by the Secret Service and local law enforcement that allowed Crooks to get within a few hundred yards of Trump to discharge a deadly volley with a clear line of sight.


The investigation, they said, has been entirely focused on determining whether Crooks was motivated by political animus — they have found no evidence to suggest that so far — and to determine whether he was part of a larger conspiracy. The FBI has not ruled out that possibility but has found that Crooks had few contacts outside his immediate family and did not even seem to interact much with co-workers or with other players on gaming platforms.


“We do still believe that he was a loner,” Rojek said.

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