WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump has agreed to speak with the FBI for what the bureau described as a “standard victim interview” to discuss the assassination attempt against him at his rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month, an FBI official said Monday on a call. with journalists. .
Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh box office, told reporters that the office contacted Trump and he agreed to the interview. It is known when this will take place.
“We need to know what he observed,” he said. This is an interview with a popular victim. “
The FBI investigated the shooting at a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 and conducted 450 interviews. As part of its efforts to identify the cause of the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, the bureau has data on 86 companies. , adding gaming and social media platforms, as well as messaging apps, Rojek said.
The criminals opened fire on the crowd with an AR-style rifle, wounding Trump and two others and killing an aide. He was killed by a Secret Service sniper and the federal government continues to investigate the shooter and his movements prior to the attack. The FBI has not yet discovered a reason and believes Crooks acted alone, without an associate or co-conspirator, officials reiterated Monday.
FBI Director Chris Wray told lawmakers last week that while there is still no “clear picture” of the shooter’s motivations, investigators have focused on Trump and the pickup in Butler around July 6. The FBI analyzed a computer connected to Crooks and discovered that a Google search for “how far Oswald was from Kennedy” was, a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The day it was done The Internet search, July 6, was the same day the scammers registered. to attend the Trump rally, Wray said.
Officers also recovered a total of three “relatively rudimentary” explosive devices, Wray said. Two were in Crooks’ vehicle and one was in his residence. The FBI leader told the House Judiciary Committee that the shooter had a transmitter that would have allowed him to detect remotely. detonate explosives in his car, the bomb receivers were turned off.
The FBI told reporters that in addition to investigating Kennedy’s assassination, Crooks was also seeking data on power plants, improvised explosive devices, mass shootings and the attempted assassination of the Slovak prime minister in May.
Rojek presented the chronology of Crooks’ movements in the months and days leading up to the assassination attempt. He said that in the first part of 2024, the shooter made six online purchases of precursor chemicals, which can be used to make homemade explosives. On July 11, two days before the rally, Crooks went to the event site in Butler and spent about 20 minutes conducting “early surveillance” of the area, Rojek said. He then went to a local diversity shooting range on July 12 and trained with what the FBI believes was the same firearm used in the attack.
On July 13, the day of the assassination attempt, Crooks bought 50 rounds of ammunition and went to the site of the demonstration a few hours before the occasion began, Rojek said. The shooter spent more than an hour in the domain before returning home, where he retrieved his rifle and told his parents he was headed to the range.
Once back at the rally site around 3:45 p. m. , Crooks flew a drone about two hundred yards for 11 minutes, which Wray told lawmakers last week and reiterated through Rojek. Local authorities identified Crooks as a suspicious user just before 5 p. m. and an officer took a picture of him, the FBI said. About 30 minutes later, police spotted him with a rangefinder and browsing news sites, according to Rojek.
The gunman was then seen wearing a backpack and walking near the construction site where he was going to shoot minutes before 6 p. m. Crooks investigators used the HVAC formula and the building’s pipes to get to the roof, and the FBI said his rifle had a folding stock.
6:08 p. m. police dash cam videoHe showed Crooks on the roof where he would fire eight shots, Rojek said. Local police encountered the shooter at 6:11 p. m. , according to the FBI, when a police officer threw him onto the roof. Crooks pointed his gun at the officer, who then fell to the ground, Rojek told reporters. Seconds later, the gunman opened fire on the crowd and killed.
The assassination attempt shocked the entire country and raised questions about how the thieves were able to climb onto the roof so close to where Trump was speaking. This led to scrutiny by the Secret Service, and Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned last week.
In addition to the FBI’s investigation, the Department of Homeland Security’s internal surveillance firm is investigating what happened and an independent review is also underway. Last week, the House voted unanimously to create a bipartisan task force to investigate the attack, and several congressional committees are conducting their own investigations.
Top federal officials have already visited the Capitol to brief lawmakers, and Wray and Cheatle testified publicly before two separate committees last week. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is expected to hear from Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe and FBI Deputy Director Ronald Rowe. Paul Abbate on Tuesday.