Monday, 21 October 2024

FBI Says Trump Agreed To Interview On Rally Shooting


Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is rushed offstage during a rally on July 13, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania.(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Donald Trump agreed to participate in an interview for the FBI‘s investigation into the assassination attempt on the former president at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, the bureau said on Monday.

Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh Field Office, provided details on the inquiry into the July 13 shooting during a call with reporters.

“We want to get his perspective as to what he observed,” Rojek said of Trump, according to The Washington Post. “It is a standard interview we would do for any other victim of crime.”

Investigators have conducted about 450 interviews, including with the shooter’s parents, who have been “extremely cooperative” and denied having knowledge of their son’s plans, Rojek said, per AP.

Rojek also shared more findings on the gunman himself, identified as a 20-year-old man named Thomas Matthew Crooks, whom a Secret Service sniper shot and killed.

Crooks was “highly intelligent” and appeared to have a social circle “limited to his immediate family, as we believe, he had few friends and acquaintances throughout his life,” Rojek said, per CNN.

“While the FBI’s investigation may not yet have determined a motive,” Rojek said, the agency believes Crooks “made significant efforts to conceal his activities” and his actions “show careful planning.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray said last week that a laptop linked to Crooks revealed a Google search related to Lee Harvey Oswald and the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Crooks queried, “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?” on July 6, which appears to be the same day the shooter registered for Trump’s rally, Wray testified to Congress.

Rojek said on Monday that Crooks also conducted searches related to power plants, mass shootings, explosives, and the attempted assassination of Slovakia’s prime minister earlier this year.

Crooks used aliases and “foreign-based encrypted email accounts” to make online purchases related to firearms and “chemical precursors” to make explosives, the FBI said, according to TribLIVE.

The FBI released a statement on Friday confirming that Trump was struck in the ear by a bullet shot by Crooks at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle,” the bureau said.

The statement came after Wray suggested during his appearance before Congress last week that Trump might have been hit by shrapnel and not a bullet, as the former president had said.

Wray also talked about how Crooks appeared to have flown a drone to conduct reconnaissance, the FBI recovered three explosive devices, and the gunman used a collapsible stock for his rifle.

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned last week as she faced backlash over the security failure underlying the Trump rally shooting.

One rallygoer, 50-year-old fireman Corey Comperatore, was killed in the attack.

Two attendees who were wounded — 74-year-old James Copenhaver and 57-year-old David Dutch — have been released from the hospital in recent days, NBC News reported.

Trump announced last week that he plans to hold another rally in Butler to honor Comperatore and the two others who were injured.


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