Newly surfaced video footage shows Thomas Matthew Crooks walking outside the grounds of the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, less than two hours before he opened fire on July 13.
The four-second clip shows Crooks, 20, walking past a row of tents promoting Trump products. The photographs were captured through Joe Tomko, owner of Iron Clad USA, a products company. Tomko said he sent the video to the FBI.
CBS News showed that the footage was captured outside the demonstration’s secure perimeter. The video’s timestamp indicates that it was filmed at 4:26 p. m. m. , an hour and forty-five minutes before Crooks opened fire.
The video places Crooks about 800 meters from the AGR construction, which he later used as a shooting position. A sniper from a local tactical team photographed Crooks outside the AGR building less than an hour after this video was filmed, around 5:14 p. m.
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate testified before Congress that the first sighting of Crooks by local authorities occurred around 4:26 p. m. Text messages released through Iowa Senator Chuck GrassleyArray showed that a local sniper messaged his colleagues about a suspicious user near the AGR construction around 4:26 p. m. However, this footage places Crooks elsewhere, approximately half a mile from the AGR construction, at the time.
It’s unclear if the suspect the sniper saw near the AGR construction was Crooks. CBS News has reached out to the FBI and local officials for clarification.
The video also offers a glimpse of Crooks’ movements between the time he flew a drone near the demonstration site and the time he photographed the AGR construction outdoors after 5 p. m.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before House lawmakers in July that the FBI believed Crooks had flown a drone about two hundred yards from the scene around 3:50 p. m. m. for about 11 minutes. “It appears that around 3:50 p. m. (4 p. m. ), in that window, on the day of the shooting, the shooter was flying the drone around the area,” Wray said.
Wray said police investigators discovered the drone in Crooks’ vehicle and the bureau believes he was watching video streamed from the device to scout the area.
The local sniper team reported seeing criminals walking around the AGR construction between 5:10 p. m. and 5:10 p. m. and 5:38 p. m. m. , before the police lost sight of him again. Shortly after 6 p. m. , as Trump began speaking, Crooks climbed onto the roof of the building and opened fire.