FBI says gunman researched JFK assassination before trying to kill Trump

Washington: The gunman who assassinated former President Donald Trump is believed to have searched “How far away is Oswald from JFK” on Google a week before the shooting, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday, revealing new details about the suspect who he said had a fascination with public figures but otherwise left no obvious clues to ideological motivations.

The July 6 online search, which was recovered from the laptop of 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, involved Lee Harvey Oswald, the sniper who assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

“The search was significant in terms of his mental state,” Wray told the House Judiciary Committee. “It appears that he checked in on that date” for a Trump rally scheduled for July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The FBI is investigating the shooting, which left one rallygoer dead and two others seriously injured, as an act of domestic terrorism. Crooks was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper. The investigation has thrust the FBI into a political vortex months before the presidential election, with lawmakers and the public pressing to understand Crooks’ motives in the worst assassination attempt on a president or presidential candidate since the 1981 assassination of President Ronald Reagan.

Wray said the agency has developed a detailed timeline of the scammers’ movements and online activity, but their exact motives – or why they specifically targeted Republican presidential candidate Trump – remain unclear.

“A lot of the usual information repositories didn’t turn up any noteworthy clues about motivation or ideology,” Ray said.

The FBI’s assessment is that Crooks acted alone.

Ray noted that Crooks had a growing interest in government officials — in addition to Trump, Crooks’ phone contained photos of Democratic President Joe Biden and other prominent figures — and that in the days before the shooting, Crooks seemed to be particularly focused on Trump.