WASHINGTON, July 25, (AP): The gunman in the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump is believed to have done a Google search one week before the shooting of "How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?” FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday, revealing new details about a suspect he said had taken a keen interest in public figures but had otherwise not left behind clear clues of an ideological motive.
The July 6 online search, recovered from a laptop the FBI says is tied to 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, is a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooter who killed President John F. Kennedy from a sniper's perch in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
"That's a search obviously that is significant in terms of his state of mind. That is the same day that it appears that he registered" for the Trump rally scheduled for July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, Wray told the House Judiciary Committee.
The FBI is investigating the shooting, which killed one rallygoer and seriously injured two others, as an act of domestic terrorism. The investigation has thrust the bureau into a political maelstrom months before the presidential election, with lawmakers and the public pressing for details about what may have motivated Crooks in the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.
The agency has built out a detailed timeline of Crooks' movements and online activity, but the precise motive - or why Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, was singled out - remains elusive, Wray said. The FBI’s assessment continues to be that Crooks, who was killed by a Secret Service counter sniper, acted alone.
"We do not know the motive. That is obviously one of the central questions in our investigation, and it's been very frustrating to us that a lot of the usual kind of low-hanging-fruit places that we would find that have not yielded significant clues about his motive,” Wray said.
But, he added, the bureau has seen indications that he was interested in public figures - officials said at a private briefing last week that besides Trump, Crooks also had photos on his phone of Democratic President Joe Biden and other prominent people.