Trump agrees to interview as part of investigation into attempted assassination, FBI says

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump has agreed to be questioned by the FBI as part of the investigation into the attempted assassination attempt on him in Pennsylvania earlier this month. On Monday, a special agent revealed how the attacker gathered information on mass attacks and explosive devices before the shooting.

The much-anticipated interview with the 2024 Republican presidential candidate is part of the FBI’s standard protocol for talking to victims during a criminal investigation. The FBI said Friday that Trump was struck by a bullet or shrapnel during the July 13 assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“We want to get his perspective on what he saw,” said Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office. “This is a standard victim interview, the kind we would do with any other crime victim under any other circumstances.”

Based on about 450 interviews, the FBI has created a profile of the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, that reveals he was a “highly intelligent” but withdrawn 20-year-old whose primary social circle was his family and who maintained few friends or acquaintances throughout his life, Rojek said.

The FBI has not discovered a motive for attacking Trump, but investigators believe the shooting was the result of extensive planning, including the purchase in recent months of precursor chemicals that investigators say were used to create the explosives found in his car and home, and the use of a drone about 200 yards (180 meters) from the rally in the hours before the event.

Rojek added that Crooks had searched the internet for information about mass shootings, improvised explosive devices, power plants and a failed assassination attempt on populist Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in May.

The FBI said that on July 6, the day Crooks registered for the Trump rally, he typed into Google, “How far was Oswald from Kennedy?” A reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the gunman who killed President John F. Kennedy from a sniper’s perch in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Crooks’ parents were “exceptionally cooperative” with investigators, Rojek said, and extensive planning leading up to the shooting took place online. The parents said they had no knowledge of Crooks’ plans, and investigators have no reason to doubt them, the FBI said.