Washington: The gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump at a campaign rally searched online for details of the November 1963 shooting of US President John F Kennedy, the FBI director said on Wednesday.
FBI Chief Christopher Wray, testifying before a congressional committee, said the gunman flew the drone to where the former president was scheduled to speak about two hours before he took the stage on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Bray told members of the House Judiciary Committee that investigators have not established a motive for the shooting but “we're going to dig hard because that's one of the central questions for us.”
Trump survived the assassination bid, with his right ear injured, and a Secret Service sniper shot and killed the suspected gunman — identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks — less than 30 seconds after he fired eight shots.
“With respect to former President Trump, there is some question as to whether it was a bullet or shrapnel that hit him in the ear,” FBI chief Wray said.
Two rally participants were seriously injured and a 50-year-old firefighter from Pennsylvania was shot and killed.
Wray said that Crooks “seems to have done a lot of searches of public figures in general” but that there was no clear pattern to the investigation.
“Most general repositories of information contain nothing remarkable in terms of purpose or ideology,” he said.
“Starting somewhere around July 6 or so, he became very focused on former President Trump and this rally,” the FBI chief said, and he registered to attend a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, that same day.
“On July 6, he did a Google search, 'How far was Oswald from Kennedy?'” he said, referring to Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination of Kennedy.
“It's obviously important in terms of his state of mind.”
The FBI director said that no evidence has yet been found that Crooks had any accomplices or co-conspirators and that he was a “loner.”
While the Republican White House candidate was addressing a rally in Butler, Crooks sat on the roof of a nearby building and opened fire on Trump with an AR-style assault rifle just after 6:00 p.m.
US Secret Service Director Kimberly Chettle resigned on Tuesday, a day after the agency admitted it had failed in its mission to prevent assassination attempts.
Wray said Crooks flew the drone over the rally area for about 11 minutes — between 3:50 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. — on the day of the attack.
He said it was not directly on the stage but about 200 yards (meters) away.
The drone and its controller were recovered in the gunman's car, along with two “relatively crude” explosive devices, Ray said.
Another explosive device was found at Crooks' home.
Ray said the gunman apparently bought a ladder the day of the shooting but didn't use it. Instead, he climbed onto the roof using some mechanical equipment and vertical piping on the ground.
Wray also said Crooks' AR-style gun had a collapsible stock, which could explain why he wasn't seen by rallygoers or members of law enforcement with weapons before he was shot.
He said Crooks visited the rally site at least three times: a week before the shooting, about 70 minutes into the morning of the rally and again in the afternoon.
He bought 50 rounds of ammunition on the day of the attack and visited the shooting range the day before.
