Trump gunman saw rally as ‘target of opportunity’, FBI official says
Shooter made ‘detailed effort’ to attack major event before deciding to target Donald Tump at a Pennsylvania rally, FBI says.
Chris Powell
Trump gunman saw rally as ‘target of opportunity’, FBI official says
The gunman who tried to kill former United States President Donald Trump had mounted a “sustained, detailed effort” to attack a major gathering of some sort before deciding to target the Republican presidential candidate at a Pennsylvania rally in July, FBI officials say.
FBI officials said Thomas Crooks, 20, searched more than 60 times for information about Trump and his then-rival, Democratic President Joe Biden, before registering for the Trump rally in early July.
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“We saw … a sustained, detailed effort to plan an attack on some events, meaning he looked at any number of events or targets,” Kevin Rojek, the FBI’s top official in western Pennsylvania, said in a telephone briefing to reporters on Wednesday.
Rojek said Crooks became “hyper-focused” on the Trump rally when it was announced “and looked at it as a target of opportunity”.
Rojek said the FBI has not yet been able to determine what motivated Crooks to try to assassinate Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
Crooks’s computer activity showed he was interested in a mix of ideologies but did not show definitively that he was motivated by a particular left-leaning or right-leaning point of view, Rojek said.
FBI officials said they had not found any evidence indicating that Crooks had worked with other people or had been directed by a foreign power.
