WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The gunman who tried to kill Donald Trump mounted a “sustained, detailed effort” to attack a major gathering of some sort before deciding to target the Republican presidential candidate at a Pennsylvania rally in July, FBI officials said on Wednesday.
FBI officials said Thomas Crooks, 20, searched more than 60 times for information about the Republican presidential candidate and his then-rival, Democratic President Joe Biden, before registering for the Trump rally in early July.
“We saw … a sustained, detailed effort to plan an attack on some events, meaning he looked at any number of events or targets,” said Kevin Rojek, the FBI’s top official in western Pennsylvania, in a telephone briefing to reporters.
Rojek said Crooks became “hyper focused” on the Trump rally when it was announced in early July “and looked at it as a target of opportunity.”
Rojek said the FBI has not yet been able to determine what motivated Crooks to try to assassinate Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.
Crooks’ computer activity showed he was interested in a mix of ideologies, but did not show definitively that he was motivated by a particular left-leaning or right-leaning point of view, Rojek said.
FBI officials said they had not found any evidence indicated that Crooks had worked with other people, or had been directed by a foreign power.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Andy Sullivan; Editing by David Gregorio)
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