FBI: Trump’s shooter also targeted Biden’s actions

“We saw a sustained, detailed effort to plan an attack on an event,” said Kevin Rojek, the FBI’s top officer in Pennsylvania. Twenty-year-old Crooks according to Reuters before the attack, he searched more than 60 times for information about the Republican candidate Trump, but also about his rival Biden.

Rojek went on to say that the shooter was “extremely focused” on the Trump rally when it was announced that it would be held on July 13 in Pennsylvania. “He saw it as a suitable target,” he said.

In the days leading up to the rally, he searched for location information, including where Trump planned to speak. He was also looking for details about the company that owned the building nearby where he was later to shoot eight pictures. One of them hit Trump’s ear. Video footage shows that Crooks was only on the roof of the building for about six minutes.

The attacker sought Trump’s activities as far back as September 2023, FBI officials said. In April, he began looking for events for the two candidates near where he lived in western Pennsylvania. He also looked at the dates of the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions.

Crooks, who left several explosive devices in his car, requested information on bomb components as early as 2019.

However, the motive of the attacker is still unknown. Nevertheless, the FBI said they had “got some sense of his attitude”. Crooks’ computer activity showed he was interested in a variety of ideologies, but did not definitively prove he was motivated by a particular left-wing or right-wing viewpoint, Rojek explained.

FBI officials found no evidence that Crooks was working with other people or that he was under the control of a foreign power. No traces of illegal drugs or alcohol were found in his body, the agency recalled.