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

Congressman Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, listens as U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testifies before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump during a campaign event in Pennsylvania, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, July 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)

WASHINGTON (AP) — 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. A special agent said Monday that the attacker had researched 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 criminal investigations. The FBI said Friday that Trump was struck in the ear by a bullet or shrapnel during the attempted assassination attempt on July 13 at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

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

Based on more than 450 interviews, the FBI has created a profile of the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, that reveals that he is “very inteligent” but a loner in his 20s whose primary social circle was family and who maintained few friends or acquaintances throughout his life, Rojek said. Even on online gaming platforms Crooks frequented, his interactions with peers appeared to be minimal, the FBI said.

His parents were “extremely cooperative” with the investigation, Rojek said. They said they had no prior knowledge of the shooting, a statement the FBI finds credible.

The FBI has not discovered a motive for targeting Trump, but investigators believe the shooting was the result of extensive planning, including the purchase of precursor chemicals under a false name in recent months 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 in an apparent act of surveillance.

According to the FBI, the day before the shooting, Crooks visited a local shooting range and practiced firing the weapon that would be used in the attack.

After the shooting, authorities found two explosive devices in Crooks’ car and a third in his room in the house. The devices recovered from the car—consisting of ammunition boxes filled with explosives with wires, receivers, and ignition devices—could have detonated but did not because the receivers were in “off” position, Rojek said. It is unclear how much damage they could do.

The FBI said Crooks showed an online interest in prominent public figures, seeking information about individuals including President Joe Biden. In addition, Rojek said Crooks sought information about mass shootings, improvised explosive devices, power plants and an assassination attempt on populist Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in May.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress last week that on July 6, the day Crooks registered for the Trump rally, he typed into Google: “How far was Oswald from Kennedy?” This is 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.

Meanwhile, new details have emerged about the law enforcement safety failures leading up to the shooting, with Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, releasing text messages from members of the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit that showed local officers communicating with each other about a suspicious-looking man who turned out to be Crooks lurking more than an hour before the shooting.

“The child learns around the building we are in. AGR, I think” One of the officers wrote to other countersnipers, also sending them a photograph of Crooks. “I saw him with a rangefinder looking toward the scene. FYI. If you want to notify the SS snipers to watch out. I lost sight of him.”

AGR is a reference to the complex of buildings that make up AGR International Inc., a supplier of automation equipment to the glass and plastic packaging industries. Crooks climbed onto the roof of one of the buildings in the complex and fired eight shots at the rally scene with an AR-style rifle that his father had legally purchased years earlier.

Trump said he was “shot by a bullet that penetrated the upper part of my right ear” and emerged several days later with a bandage around his ear. One rallygoer, Corey Comperatore, was killed and two others were wounded. Crooks was shot by a Secret Service countersniper.

In an interview with ABC News, the Beaver County officer who raised the alarm said that after sending the text message: “I assumed someone would come talk to this person or find out what was going on.”

Another officer told ABC News the group was supposed to have a face-to-face meeting with Secret Service anti-snipers upon their arrival, but that never happened.

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