Former President Donald Trump.
Credit: The New York Times
Washington: Former President Donald Trump has agreed to be interviewed by the FBI as part of its investigation into the motives of the 20-year-old man who tried to assassinate him during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, bureau officials and Trump said Monday.
“We want to get his perspective on what he observed, like any other witness,” Kevin Rojek, the head of the bureau’s Pittsburgh field office, said on a call with reporters. “It is a standard victim interview, like we would do.”
Trump said on Fox News that the interview would take place Thursday.
The former president’s supporters had sharply criticised FBI Director Christopher Wray for telling a House committee last week that investigators had not definitively determined the cause of the minor injury to the former president’s ear. By week’s end, the FBI offered its most definitive explanation yet, saying that a bullet or a fragment of one had struck him, a statement that the agency reiterated Monday.
The FBI also provided the most comprehensive — if incomplete — portrait to date of the shooter, Thomas Crooks, portraying him as a friendless loner who carefully concealed from his parents more than two dozen online purchases of weaponry and explosives using aliases. His motives, officials said, remain unknown despite interviews with hundreds of people, an analysis of his electronic devices and memory cards, and the cooperation of his parents.
Crooks, whom investigators described as “highly intelligent,” seemed less interested in partisan politics than political violence.
He recently gathered information on other assassination attempts. He also entered the words “how far away was Oswald from Kennedy” into a search engine.
Crooks also made searches related to “power plants, mass shooting events, information on improvised explosive devices.”
His interest in firearms intensified in late 2023, investigators determined. Around that time, his father, who more than a decade ago bought the AR-15-type rifle used in the attack, transferred ownership of the weapon to him, officials said.
Crooks, who worked in the kitchen of an assisted care facility near the modest house he shared with his parents, used numerous encrypted email services to cloak his identity while making purchases. He used 83 separate sites, social media apps and platforms, including several gaming platforms.
His parents told the FBI that they were not alarmed when hazardous materials and gun components were shipped to the house because their son had a long-standing interest in science.