FORMER US president Donald Trump has agreed to meet with the FBI for a “victim interview” about this month’s assassination attempt, bureau officials said Monday.
Providing an update on the status of the probe into the July 13 shooting, Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said they have still not determined a motive for the attack by the 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks.
They said Crooks, who was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper after firing eight shots during Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, appeared to be a “loner” and they have not identified any co-conspirators.
FBI special agent Kevin Rojek said the interview with Trump will be “a standard victim interview like we would do for any other victim of a crime under any other circumstances.
“We want to get his perspective on what he observed,” Rojek said.
FBI officials said they have interviewed dozens of people who knew or interacted with Crooks, including family members, co-workers, former teachers, classmates and others.
“We have learned the subject was highly intelligent, attended college and maintained steady employment,” Rojek said. “His primary social circle appears to be limited to his immediate family as we believe he had few friends and acquaintances.”
The FBI officials said Crooks’s parents have said they had no advance knowledge of their son’s plot. “We do find that to be credible at this stage,” Rojek said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray, testifying before a congressional committee last week, said Crooks had searched online for details about the November 1963 shooting of US president John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald.
“On July 6, he did a Google search for, quote, ‘How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?’” Wray said.
Rojek said the investigation has revealed that Crooks “also made searches related to power plants, mass shooting events, information on improvised explosive devices and the attempted assassination of the Slovakian prime minister earlier this year.”
