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FBI Director: Trump assassin searched for information about Oswald

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W. Niederhut Grand Master

W. Niederhut

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Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, Jean Ceulemans said:

Can someone copy the text please, can´t read it here in EU...

Here it is, Jean.  Not much about Oswald in the text.

Trump rally shooter searched for info on JFK assassin, FBI chief says

Christopher Wray’s appearance at a House Judiciary Committee hearing comes a day after the resignation of the Secret Service director.

 
 
Updated July 24, 2024 at 2:04 p.m. EDT|Published July 24, 2024 at 10:40 a.m. EDT

The gunman who tried to assassinate former president Donald Trump had searched online days earlier for information about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and used a rifle with a collapsible stock that may have made it easier for him to disguise the weapon before climbing onto a roof, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said Wednesday.

 

The 20-year-old gunman, who was killed by a Secret Service sniper after he opened fire during the July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pa., searched for answers to "how far away was Oswald from Kennedy,” Wray said — a reference to the assassin who used a rifle to kill President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.

“That’s a search that’s obviously significant in terms of his state of mind,” Wray said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing where he answered hours of questions about the attack on Trump, the Republican presidential nominee. “He was interested in public figures and — I think this is important — starting around July 6 or so, he became very focused on former president Trump and this rally.”

 
 
 

That same day, Wray said, the gunman also registered to attend the outdoor rally.

 

“There’s a whole lot of work underway and still a lot of work to do,” Wray said. “The shooter may be deceased, but the FBI’s investigation is very much ongoing.”

The hearing was scheduled before the attempted assassination, but the attack has dominated the discussion as officials worry about political violence in a presidential election year.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, who lived about an hour away in Bethel Park, Pa., fired at Trump from a rooftop just outside the rally security perimeter, using an AR-style rifle. One rallygoer was killed, two others were critically injured, and Trump suffered a graze wound to his ear.

 

The security lapses that afforded the gunman a sightline to Trump on the rally stage have prompted multiple investigations of the U.S. Secret Service, whose director resigned Tuesday under pressure from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

 
 

FBI investigators have said so far that the gunman did not appear to have any discernible ideology, suggesting he was not motivated primarily by political animosity.

 

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who chairs the Judiciary Committee, is a longtime Trump ally and critic of Wray, the FBI and the Justice Department. He began the hearing by criticizing what he called “the Biden-Harris Justice Department” — an acknowledgment that Vice President Harris is now running for the Democratic nomination after President Biden announced he would not seek a second term.

 

Wray, who was nominated to lead the FBI in 2017 by then-President Trump, avoided discussing the security shortcomings that preceded the attack, saying those issues are under review by an inspector general and an outside group of experts.

The gunman’s weapon was bought legally in 2013 by his father, who later sold it to his son, the FBI director testified.

 

The weapon had a collapsible stock, Wray said, meaning the gunman might have been able to hide it from view while carrying it before the attack. Wray noted that witnesses at the rally reported seeing a man with a gun on the rooftop, but not earlier, which might be explained by the collapsible stock.

 

The FBI director also confirmed a number of details from the investigation that have been publicly reported already, including that there were eight spent bullet casings found near the gunman’s body — indicating that he fired at least that many times.

 

The director also described how Crooks apparently used a drone hours before the shooting to examine the area near the rally, but not directly overhead.

“The drone was recovered in his vehicle,” Wray testified. “The shooter was flying the drone around the area, not over the stage. … We think that he was live-streaming, viewing the footage for about 11 minutes, about 200 yards away.”

 

Two explosive devices were found in the shooter’s car, items that Wray called “relatively crude devices themselves, but they did have the ability to be detonated remotely.”

 

Because the remotely controlled devices attached to the homemade bombs were left in the “off” position, Wray said, it appears “that if he had tried to detonate those devices from the roof, it would not have worked.”

Technical experts at the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., were able to crack open the gunman’s phone within two days of the attack. While they found some evidence of interest, the device did not provide an explanation for his motive, people familiar with the investigation have said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the ongoing case.

The gunman used some encrypted messaging applications, which Wray said have “unfortunately now become very commonplace” in FBI investigations, as popular messaging software often includes encryption.

Asked whether the FBI believed there were any accomplices or co-conspirators in the shooting, Wray answered, “Not at this time, but again the investigation is ongoing.”

 

Edited by W. Niederhut
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