The suspected shooter in the attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump had researched the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 a few days earlier. On July 6, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks asked on the Google machine how far the suspected assassin at the time, Lee Harvey Oswald, was stationed from the president, said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a congressional hearing on Wednesday.
Kennedy was shot dead on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, while traveling in an open limousine. The assassination attempt on Trump was carried out on July 13 during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. However, the shooter only slightly injured the ex-president’s ear. Crooks had positioned himself on a roof with a semi-automatic rifle just 150 meters away from Trump.
One man in the crowd was killed in the attack in Butler, and two other participants in the rally were seriously injured. Crooks, in turn, was killed by a Secret Service sniper less than 30 seconds after he fired the shots.
Wray told the House Judiciary Committee in Washington that the 20-year-old had done a lot of research on “public figures” on the Internet. About a week before the attack, his focus was strongly on Trump and the rally in Butler.
There is still no “clear picture” of the perpetrator’s motive, and this is “one of the central questions” of the investigation. According to the FBI chief, there is still no evidence that Crooks could have had accomplices.
Wray also reported that the 20-year-old had flown a drone over the campaign event grounds around two hours before Trump’s speech. US media had already reported this in recent days. According to Wray, the drone was found in the 20-year-old’s car, as were two “relatively simple” explosive devices.
Crooks had a remote control on the roof to detonate the explosives from there, Wray said. However, it does not look as if the remote detonation worked. “But that does not mean that the explosives were not dangerous,” the FBI chief added.
The Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting current and former presidents, has been under massive pressure since the assassination attempt. Secret Service chief Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday. She had previously admitted that the assassination attempt on Trump was the “most significant operational failure of the Secret Service in decades.”
The 78-year-old right-wing populist was nominated by his Republican Party as a candidate for the presidential election in November in the week following the attempted assassination.
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