Before attempting to shoot Donald Trump, the would-be assassin went to Google and typed: “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?”
As the Associated Press reported, Thomas Matthew Crooks searched for the answer to that question on July 6, the same day the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was announced. Lee Harvey Oswald is the man who killed President John F. Kennedy on. Nov. 22, 1963.
The FBI found the search after recovering Crooks’ laptop in an attempt to discern his motive for shooting at Trump.
“A lot of the usual repositories of information have not yielded anything notable in terms of motive or ideology,” FBI director Christopher Wray told the AP. Crooks also had photos of President Joe Biden saved on his laptop, though he reportedly was fixated on Trump in the days leading up to the shooting, Wray said.
Though Crooks’ intent remains unknown, the FBI revealed that Crooks flew a drone “around the area” just hours before the rally began. The drone was in the air for approximately 11 minutes, CNN reported.
“It was almost like giving him a rear-view mirror of the scene behind him,” Wray told CNN.
The assassination attempt on Trump has been widely considered as a major failure on the part of the Secret Service, with many questioning how it could happen at such a high-profile event.
The scrutiny has been so severe that the previous director of Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned this week after lawmakers from both parties repeatedly called for her to do so.
The FBI will continue its investigation into the shooting, Wray promising lawmakers that his agency would “leave no stone unturned."
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