Donald Trump may not have been hit by a bullet at rally, FBI director says
The FBI’s director has made an explosive claim about the day a would-be assassin took aim at former president Donald Trump.
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The injury inflicted on Donald Trump’s ear during an assassination attempt at a campaign rally may not have been caused by a bullet, the FBI says.
FBI Director Christopher Wray made the stunning claim while addressing the US House Judiciary Committee saying the bureau is unsure whether Mr Trump was shot directly in the ear.
“With respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it was a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” he said, while talking about security failures at the July 13 Pennsylvania rally.
“So it is conceivable, as I sit here right now, I don’t know whether that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, could have also landed somewhere else.”
It comes as the former US president has decided to use one of the most iconic images of the incident on the cover of his latest book, Save America, due out September 3.
The dramatic news picture, taken by the Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci, captured a bloodied Mr Trump pumping his fist and shouting “fight, fight, fight” moments after the shooting by 20-year-old Thomas Crooks.
Other images from the day will be include din the book, Mr Trump’s third since leaving the White House in January 2021.
SHOOTER USED ALT-RIGHT SOCIAL ACCOUNT
Crooks appears to have used the controversial all-right favoured social media platform Gab to spread messages “in support of President Biden,” according to the platform’s founder.
Gab CEO Andrew Torba said he learned that Crooks “may have had an account on our platform” after getting “an emergency disclosure request from a law enforcement agency.”
The account @epicmicrowave — which the CEO stressed he has been “unable to confirm” was definitely Crooks’ — “posted on the site nine (9) times total,” Mr Torba tweeted just 30 minutes after getting the law enforcement request.
“While the account made very few posts on the site, the majority of them were in support of President Biden,” said Mr Torba.
“A number of posts in particular expressed support for President Biden’s Covid lockdowns, border policies and executive orders.”
SHOCK FOOTAGE REVEALS SHOOTER FIRED EIGHT SHOTS
The gunman who attempted to assassinate former US President Donald Trump fired eight shots at the Republican nominee before Secret Service snipers shot him dead, new video footage has shown.
Thomas Crooks opened fire at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania on July 13 from a rooftop just 120 metres away from the stage where the former president was speaking. Trump was shot in the ear, one onlooker was killed and another was wounded.
New footage of the incident has revealed the shooter shot bullets from his automatic rifle into the crowd in under six seconds before snipers fired two shots, including the one that killed him.
Witnesses near the low building where the 20-year-old had positioned himself on the roof were screaming and running as the rapid fire shots rang out, the video obtained by Fox News showed.
Crooks then pointed his gun towards the crowd just seconds before the second sniper shot, witness Jon Malis, who captured the video, has claimed.
Malis, a military veteran, also revealed all the people who watched by the building were not “vetted” and did not go through metal detectors – despite having a clear view of Trump – because they were outside the rally site.
Malis told Fox News that onlookers noticed Crooks scaling the building “about two minutes before the shooting started”.
He recalled how some bystanders noted how he was “climbing up here” and “crawling around”, but said that “we just kind of ignored it because we thought it was some person trying to get a better view”.
However, the crowd’s response quickly changed after Crooks was spotted with a gun just moments before he fired at Trump.
“Let’s get out of here,” one witness yelled as the crowd rushed through the field, Malis’s video showed. Another yelled: “He’s got a gun on the roof.”
The footage shows dozens of people screaming and running as eight shots, fired in just under six seconds, ring out.
Two final gunshots are then heard. The first counter shot, which insiders said came from a local sniper, was fired roughly 5.5 seconds after Crooks opened fire.
He then stopped firing, which audio analysts claim indicates he had been struck. The Secret Service sniper’s shot came 10 seconds later, CBS News reported.
Crooks was killed by Secret Service agents. The motive for the shooting remains unclear.
“Right before he was shot by Secret Service, he had rolled over, got up”’ Malis said.
“I have a picture of him with his rifle up and his rifle turned towards me and the other guys that were standing behind the tree – and at that second Secret Service shot him.”
Mals also voiced concerns over the lack of security at the event site, telling Fox News: “One of the first things I noticed when we walked up, none of us have been vetted. We’re all along the fence. We all have view of the stage. We can see Trump.”
SHOOTER SEARCHED FOR JFK DETAILS
It has also emerged that Crooks searched for details about Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of President John F. Kennedy before he opened fire on the former president at a rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month, FBI director Christopher Wray has revealed.
“We’ve just in the last couple of days found that from our review … analysis of a laptop that the investigation ties to the shooter reveals that on July 6, he did a Google search for ‘How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?’” Christopher Wray told a congressional hearing in Washington DC on Wednesday local time.
The chilling detail is the latest hint at why Crooks tried to kill Trump during his appearance at a rally in Pennsylvania. So far, investigators have not been able to find conclusive clues about his motive.
The chilling detail is the latest hint at why Crooks tried to kill Trump during his appearance on stage in Butler, Pennsylvania. So far, investigators have not been able to find conclusive clues about his motive.
Oswald’s fatal shots at Kennedy’s motorcade on November 22, 1963, were made from about 80 metres. Crooks was even farther away, about 120 metres — though still a shot that most practised marksmen could make.
As a Marine veteran, Oswald was a trained marksman and fired three shots, the last of which killed Kennedy.
He was also a known entity to both the FBI and CIA before the assassination.
Crooks “was a fairly avid shooting hobbyist,” Wray told US politicians, and got off eight shots — but was not on the FBI’s radar.
“We did not have any information about the shooter,” the FBI director disclosed. “He was not in our holdings before the shooting.”
“So far, we have not found any evidence of any accomplices or co-conspirators, foreign or domestic,” he added at another point. “A lot of people describe him as a loner. … His list of [cell phone] contacts, for example, is very short.”
Other images recovered from the Crooks’ laptop search history, according to Wray, did not point to an immediate motive for targeting Trump.
“There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of rhyme or reason so far,” he said. “They cover both parties, they cover both US people and even some foreign public officials.”
TELLING POLICE BODYCAM FOOTAGE
It comes as newly-released footage shows a policeman and a Secret Service agent standing near the body of would-be Donald Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crook as they appear to confirm the 20-year-old was identified as a suspicious person before he opened fire.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley released police bodycam footage showing Crooks’ lifeless body, with a trail of blood after he injured the former president and fatally shot a firefighter at a rally earlier this month.
In the video, the Secret Service agent receives information that Crooks was sighted by a sniper, who distributed his photo to other law enforcement officers.
One man, who appears to be a Secret Service agent, then tells a Beaver County Emergency Service Unit officer that Crooks’ body appeared to be that of a suspicious person who was previously reported to them.
“Beaver County snipers seen him, sent the pictures out. This is him,” an agent said, as Crooks’ body is shown on the roof.
They then begin discussing his bike which has been spotted nearby.
“So we’re treating that as suspicious device?.” the Secret Service agent confirms.
However, it would later be revealed that Crooks drove rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, parking about less than half a kilometre away at a gas station.
The Secret Service agent also said that two people who had been filming in the moments leading up had also been detained.
“Maybe they were involved, maybe they weren’t. The guys that saw them said, “they were filming us, then filming the guy on the roof, then filming us”,” he said.
“When the shots started firing they tried to run away, isn’t that what everyone would do that had a phone? I’m not saying they were involved or they weren’t involved but I got no problem detaining them.
“I just want to detain those guys find out what they know, who they are whatever, I’m trying to get clear information to relay back to DC.”
NEW My office has obtained docs from law enforcement on July 13 assassination attempt of Pres Trump I’m writing Secret Service Acting Dir Rowe & DHS Scty Mayorkas AGAIN 2get badly needed answers/clarity pic.twitter.com/LyQMzYGCkD
— Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) July 23, 2024
The Secret Service has faced intense bipartisan scrutiny over their security failure and the new footage confirmed they were aware of the threat, further raising questions over their handling of the incident.
After being grilled in a congressional hearing on Monday, Director Kim Cheatle announced her resignation the next day.
Hours later, Senator Chuck Grassley released the body camera footage his office obtained, to further scrutinise the Secret Service and their response.
It comes as Crooks’ father revealed the family is just trying to “take care of ourselves” — as he stepped out in public for the first time since the shooting.
Matthew Brian Crooks, 53, made the remarks as he was spotted leaving a grocery store.
“We just want to try to take care of ourselves right now. Please, just give us our space,” Mr Crooks said.
“We’re going to release a statement when our legal counsel advises us to do so – until then, we have no comment.”
TRUMP GUNMAN’S SICK FINAL ONLINE
Crooks made one final online search before heading off to the rally where he attempted to assassinate Donald Trump – and that was for pornography.
Crooks’s last search was found when the FBI gained access to the 20-year-old’s encrypted Samsung phone, a senior law enforcement official told the Daily Beast.
Initial attempts to break into the Android device had failed, and the phone was flown to Quantico for agents to forensically examine it, the source explained.
The only other recent activity the FBI found on the phone was texts from Crooks’s parents asking where he was.
The messages started around 1pm and continued through the afternoon as the parents apparently believed their son had taken one of his father’s AR-15 rifles and gone to a local shooting range.
Six days after the assassination attempt, the FBI has mostly finished looking at Crooks’s phone and is now focused on his laptop and hard drives that were found in his bedroom, they added.
So far, investigators have found a troubling online history that included searches for Oxford High School shooter Ethan Crumbley and other mass shooters, law enforcement sources told the New York Post.
Crooks kept a photo on his phone of the mass shooter, pictured just after his arrest, and he also kept information about Crumbley’s parents, who were both convicted of involuntary manslaughter for failing to stop their son’s carnage.
Authorities are looking into the possibility that Crooks was aiming for a mass-casualty event and that Trump’s rally, which was close to Crooks’s home in Pennsylvania, was a convenient target.
The discovery of porn searches on Crooks’s phone was “not unusual” for mass shooters and terrorists, the source told the Daily Beast.
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter Adam Lanza had images of child abuse on his phone, and al Qaeda suspects have been found to have made extremely disturbing pornography searches, they noted.
In April, Crooks made online searches for major depressive disorder, though there is no evidence he was ever formally diagnosed with the condition.
“One thing may be that he was trying to diagnose himself and could tell that he was having these thoughts or these feelings,” former FBI terrorism task force supervisor Michael McKeown told WTAE of the unearthed searches.
“And then, unfortunately, instead of getting mental health counselling, he took the other route of violence,” McKeown added. Crooks’ search history could be part of the first step in what the FBI calls the “pathway to violence,” which is known as expressing grievances, he explained.
It comes as new details have emerged, including that Crooks had a remote-control device connected to explosives in his car which was parked nearby.
He also flew a drone to get aerial footage of the western Pennsylvania fairgrounds shortly before Trump was due to speak, according to the Wall Street Journal citing law-enforcement officials briefed on the investigation.
The report suggests Crooks flew the drone multiple times to gather intel on the site.
Authorities also found a ladder and backpack that allegedly belonged to him, after a workman found them lying on the side of the road near Crook’s home.
Crooks’ motive is unclear, but he may have been more interested in attacking a high-profile target when he shot at Trump.
He went shooting at a firing range regularly, but did not have strong political views, according to CNN, which referred to a review of notes from a briefing to Congress.
The notes also indicate Crooks searched for the location of the rally, and found Trump was due to speak just an hour away from his home.
Speaking to Fox News, Robin Dreeke, a former FBI agent, also said establishing a motive for Crooks may prove elusive. “I think this was more of something he was going to try to do to get notoriety,” Dreeke said.
He lived with his parents, worked in a retirement home and recently graduated from community college.
His electronic devices — a laptop and two mobile phones — have been searched, revealing his recent internet searches were queries about Trump, President Joe Biden, the dates of the Butler rally and the upcoming Democratic convention.
Other searches were for FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney-General Merrick Garland and Princess Catherine.
Crooks also looked up pornography not long before he shot at Trump, a senior law enforcement source told The Daily Beast.
Multiple investigations are being conducted into the attempted assassination of Trump.
Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asked FBI Director Christopher Wray in a letter whether “communications breakdowns” had hampered the ability of law enforcement to “identify the shooter as a potential threat and mitigate the threat before he took action?”
Jordan also claimed that “whistleblowers” had told the committee the Secret Service had “limited resources” because of the just-concluded NATO summit in Washington and an upcoming visit to Pennsylvania by First Lady Jill Biden.
The revelations provoked outrage among some Republicans including House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has called for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle’s resignation.
In the aftermath of the attack, one of the main questions being asked is how the gunman was able to secure a perch on the roof of a nearby building with a clear sightline of the stage where Trump was speaking.
Cheatle has said the building was outside the agency’s security perimeter and securing it was the responsibility of the local police.
Politicians were briefed by the FBI and Secret Service in a closed session on Wednesday and were provided with a timeline of notable events on the day.
Crooks “was identified as being suspicious one hour before the shooting,” said Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming. “The Secret Service lost sight of him.” Rally goers spotted Crooks on the roof of the building a few minutes before Trump took the stage and alerted police on the ground to his presence.
Crooks opened fire with an AR-style rifle just minutes after Trump began to speak, leaving him with a bloodied ear.
Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper 26 seconds after firing the first of eight shots.
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