Washington — The shooter who Former President Donald Trump Almost Assassinated At a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, FBI Director Christopher Wray conducted a chilling Google search about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy a week before the shooting. told lawmakers at a hearing Wednesday.
Speaking before the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Wray said the FBI was still trying to determine the motive of Thomas Crooks, 20, who fired at least eight shots that killed one attendee and wounded Mr. Trump and two others. Mr. Wray said investigators had access to some of Mr. Crooks’ electronic devices, including his cellphone, but that “usual sources of information have not revealed anything significant in terms of motive or ideology.”
One search on a laptop linked to Crooks stood out, however. On July 6, a week before Trump’s rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania, Crooks searched for “how far was Oswald from Kennedy?”
The research referred to Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin who shot Kennedy from a perch on the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository in Dallas in 1963. The Warren Commission determined that Oswald was 265.3 feet from Kennedy when he fired the fatal shot.
“This is research that is obviously significant in terms of his mindset,” Wray said. “This is the same day he appears to have signed up for the Butler rally.”
Wray said Crooks appeared to have become “very focused on” Trump and the Butler rally around that time.
Crooks was on a rooftop about 400 feet from Trump when he fired the shots that hit Trump in the ear and struck rallygoers. He used an AR-style rifle and fired at least eight shots, Wray confirmed during Wednesday’s hearing.
