Donald Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Crooks searched online ‘how far’ Lee Harvey Oswald was from John F. Kennedy when he shot him, the FBI director revealed in stunning testimony to Congress.
FBI Director Christopher Wray also told lawmakers the 20-year-old gunman flew a drone 200 yards from the stage just two hours before he opened fire in Butler, Pennsylvania, and had three explosives in his car.
The bombshell revelations from the bureau’s chief give more insight into Crooks’ preparation before he shot the former president, including his online research on the sniper that took out JFK in 1963.
Wray said Crooks had been ‘interested in public figures’ and ‘somewhere around July 6 or so he became very focused on former President Trump and his rally.’
The director said an analysis of Crooks’ laptop revealed he had searched on Google on July 6 ‘how far away was Oswald from Kennedy.’ It was the same day he registered to attend the Butler rally.
Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed former President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Crooks was flying a drone above the rally site two hours before the shooting and just 200 yards away from the stage, Wray has also revealed.
Wray made the bombshell revelation to Congress on Wednesday during a grilling by lawmakers on the investigation into the assassination attempt on the former president and the massive security failures.
Crooks shot Trump in the ear just 400 feet away from the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 from the roof of a nearby building just outside the security perimeter of the event.
Wray revealed that investigators found Crooks had a drone that he used to survey the scene hours before the event started, which was recovered from his car parked nearby.
He flew the drone around 4 p.m. over the area of the rally close to ‘200 yards’ from the stage to survey the scene. Trump took the stage around 6:03 p.m., over two hours later.
The FBI has also recovered three ‘explosive devices’ in possession of Crooks.
They were ‘relatively crude devices’ but had the ability ‘to be detonated remotely,’ Wray said.
The FBI director also revealed the weapon used had a ‘collapsible stock,’ which he said ‘could explain why it might’ve been less easy for people to observe.’
Wray could not say whether Crooks carried the gun up to the roof with him before he fired the shots or had stashed it there prior. He said the gunman did not use a ladder to get onto the roof but rather some sort of ‘vertical piping.’
He said Crooks and his family owned a combined 14 guns and Crooks had visited a shooting range one day before the rally. Crooks used an AR-style weapon that had been purchased legally by his father and sold to him in October 2023.
Wray said eight bullet cartridges had been recovered from the roof where Crooks fired off his shots toward the former president.
And he wouldn’t rule out that Crooks did not have any accomplices to the crime, saying it’s still being looked at by law enforcement.
As Wray faced questions about why the president was allowed on stage despite the ‘threat’ being identified 20 minutes before the shots were fired, Wray said, ‘we don’t know the answer to that.’
But he insisted his investigation was not focused on the security breach and the Secret Service failures.
‘Our investigation is focused on the shooter and all things related to his attack.’
Wray was peppered with veiled references to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) measures that some Republicans have taken to blaming the security breach on.
Wray insisted the physical fitness standards for getting in to the FBI ‘actually exceed’ what they’ve been in years past and insisted his agency does not factor in DEI when making hiring decisions.
His hearing comes days after the former Director of Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle was forced to resign after evading answering rounds of questioning by punting to the FBI in another congressional hearing earlier this week.
Wray promised his agency would leave ‘no stone unturned’ and emphasized that he wanted to provide all the information he had at this point of the ongoing investigation.
‘The shooter may be deceased but the FBI’s investigation is very much ongoing.’
He also made a reference to the warnings he has been giving Congress for years now about the threats of domestic terrorism.
The shooting is ‘another example, particularly heinous and very public one of what I have been talking about.’
Wray again warned about ‘passion and heated rhetoric turning into actual violence.’
‘We’ve seen it against public officials of all sorts, we’ve seen it against law enforcements the number of officers shot and killed in the line of duty is alarming.’
‘It’s almost every five days that a law enforcement officer is killed in the line of duty, that is an example of the kinds of ways passion and heated rhetoric can bubble over into violence.’
The Judiciary Committee hearing focused on both the shooting at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally and the ‘ongoing politicization’ of the FBI.
Questioning on a separate foiled Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump was also a subject of contention.
A bombshell report last week revealed the U.S. received intelligence of an Iranian assassination plot in the weeks before Trump was shot at the Pennsylvania rally.
Meanwhile, House Republicans are expected to set up a bipartisan task force to investigate the shooting in a vote this week.
The FBI and Secret Service revealed to lawmakers last week they spotted shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks as a person of interest a full 62 minutes before he fired a shot.
Twenty minutes passed between the time Secret Service agents spotted Crooks with a gun on the rooftop and he fired shots at the president.
In a staggering moment, Cheatle admitted on Monday her agents on the ground were warned between two and five times that there was a ‘suspicious person’ reported before Trump took the stage.
While Trump walked around with little more than a bloody ear, Crooks killed former fire chief Corey Comperatore, 50, and critically injured two other rally goers sitting close to where the former president was speaking last weekend before he was neutralized.
The security chief had faced mounting questions over why an agent was not stationed on the roof from where gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on the former president, and why Trump was allowed to take the stage even when a threat was detected.
She had also been ridiculed for suggesting her agency did not have a presence on the roof because it was ‘sloped.’
The 20-year-old shooter Crooks, was able to get within 160 yards of the stage where the former president was speaking when he opened fire. The building on which he stood was outside the security perimeter, despite clearly being within rifle shooting range.
And that was despite the FBI learning of a threat on Trump’s life from Iran leading to a bump in security for the former president in the days before the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Cheatle said she believed she was the ‘best person’ to lead the Secret Service at this time, but later acquiesced to the bipartisan demands for her resignation.
On the day of the rally, Trump walked out onto the stage at 6:02 p.m.
Then at around 6:12 p.m. Crooks’ first shots rang out.
Cheatle could not tell lawmakers how the shooter had gotten onto the roof.
At the time of the shooting, law enforcement agents were inside the building, 147 yards away from where Trump stood, but not on top of it.
‘That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof,’ she told ABC News in an interview Tuesday.
‘And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.’
What transpired instead was a security nightmare: Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to scale the building and secure his own position, while law enforcement struggled to locate him even amid pressing warnings from members of the Trump crowd. But there wasn’t sufficient time to act on the tips, she explained.
‘The shooter was actually identified as a potential person of suspicion,’ Cheatle said. ‘Unfortunately, with the rapid succession of how things unfolded, by the time that individual was eventually located, they were on the rooftop and were able to fire off at the former president.’
She was referencing claims by witnesses that they alerted law enforcement about the threat, but agents weren’t able to eliminate the threat in time. Officials have pointed to the initial responding officer, who lifted himself up on the roof only to lower himself back when the gunman turned his weapon at him.
Cheatle has taken blame for the fateful security breach, but has denied calls to step down.
‘The buck stops with me,’ she said.
‘It was unacceptable,’ she told ABC. ‘And it’s something that shouldn’t happen again.’
‘While we give overwhelming thanks to the individual Secret Service agents who did their jobs under immense pressure, this tragedy was preventable. The Secret Service has a zero fail mission, but it failed on July 13 and in the days leading up to the rally,’ Comer is also expected to say, as he will again call for Cheatle’s resignation.
Also coming into question on the call was the possible motive for Crooks to commit such an atrocity.
Officials did not confirm an operating motive and said that his rationale remains a mystery.
Authorities said that they have yet to find any ideological material that could shine light on why Crooks decided to shoot the former president.
But, they did reveal that Crooks operated several accounts on encrypted platforms that they are still working to gain access to.
Here’s a timeline of how that fateful July 11 went down:
1PM
The grounds to the event at Butler Farm Show opened at 1pm.
It began an hours-long build up that saw MAGA supporters immediately pour into the area to camp out.
Security swept the area and set up perimeters, however questions have been raised over how the gunman was able to secure a clear shot just 400ft from the stage.
5PM
An hour before Trump took the stage at approximately 5pm, former GOP Senate candidate Sean Parnell warmed up the crowd, bringing cheers as he slammed President Biden and his stuttering campaign.
With the sun still high on a bright day, Trump emerged to ‘God Bless the USA’ playing over the loudspeakers at 6:03pm, and remained waving and shaking his fist at the crowd for several minutes.
6:11PM
Trump brought out a large graphic with statistics on the migrant crisis at the southern border, and told the crowd at 6:11pm: ‘That chart’s a couple of months old…’
‘If you want to really see something that’s sad, take a look at what happened,’ Trump continued – before he abruptly grabbed the side of his head as several ‘pops’ filled the event space.
6:12PM
The 78-year-old dropped to the floor in an instant as five more shots rang overhead in quick succession, before four Secret Service agents raced to the stage and dove on top of the former president.
Stunning images showed Trump cowered on the floor as agents protected him, with blood dripping down his cheek.
Several more Secret Service agents continued to flood the stage, while four heavily armed officers lined the perimeter ordering attendees to ‘get down.’
The sniper, sat 400ft across from the rally on an exposed rooftop, fired another shot at the stage a second later while Trump fans streamed out of the bleachers.
Secret Service scrambled to take control of the pandemonium where three attendees were hit, one fatally, within a matter of seconds.
6:13PM
An emergency room doctor with blood spattered on his shirt later said he sprang into action to perform emergency CPR on one victim.
‘The guy had spun around was jammed between the benches and a head shot here. There’s lots of blood and he had brain matter,’ he told CBS News.
‘So I got him together so I got people there really helpful. I did CPR chest compressions as well.’
6:14PM
Microphones surrounding the stage picked up staggering detail of the urgent response, beginning with one ordering screaming people to ‘get down, get down, get down.’
At the same moment, snipers set up on a roof next to bleachers were seen firing back at the gunman, with Secret Service agents surrounding Trump heard on microphones confirming the moment he was brought down.
Despite the chaos flying around the scene, the rally appeared to hold its breath to see if Trump was hit.
In a move that sparked iconic images set to define his candidacy, Trump stood up and triumphantly held his fist in the air, pumping it at his supporters to raucous relief.
‘USA, USA, USA,’ the crowd chanted at the sight, with a blood-spattered Trump appearing to mouth the word ‘fight’ several times as Secret Service tried to hurry him away.
While getting up off the floor, an agent picked up a white cloth and held it to Trump’s bleeding ear, telling him to ‘hold that on your head, it’s bloody.’
‘Are we good?’ one male agent says, as another responds quickly: ‘Shooter down!’
‘Shooter’s down. Are we good to move?’ one says next. ‘We’re clear, we’re clear, we’re clear – let’s move.’
Trump repeatedly ordered the agents to ‘let me get my shoes’, to which one responds: ‘I got you sir, I got you.’
The gunman was killed by agents shortly after opening fire, as footage emerged online showing him appear to be shot in the head while crouched on the roof.
Crooks was seen laying lifeless on the rooftop in a later image, surrounded by law enforcement stood over him.
A number of camouflaged law enforcement officers emerged from the side of the stage, part of a huge law enforcement presence that flooded the area within minutes of the first shot was fired.
At 6:14pm, Trump was whisked into his motorcade by around dozen Secret Service agents, who formed a protective human shield around him.
Before he got into his SUV, Trump again raised his fist to signify triumphantly surviving the assassination attempt.