The Pennsylvania man who tried to kill Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump most likely worked alone, the FBI has said, adding that his motive remains a mystery.
Thomas Crooks fired eight shots at Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania last month, nicking the candidate’s ear, killing one member of the audience, and injuring two more before he was fatally shot by the Secret Service.
“I want to be clear, we have not seen any indication to suggest Crooks was directed by a foreign entity to conduct the attack,” Robert Wells, executive assistant director of the FBI’s national security branch, told reporters on Wednesday.
The bureau released photos of some of the evidence in the case – the rifle Crooks used, the backpack he carried, the bombs in his car trunk, and the air conditioner he used to climb onto the roof from where he fired – but chose to brief media outlets on a conference call.
Wells added that the FBI had not yet found the motive for the assassination attempt, or any co-conspirators who might have been involved.
Federal agents reportedly conducted more than 1,000 interviews over the past six weeks. The FBI also looked over five years’ worth of online activity by Crooks and found “a mixture of ideologies,” Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office, said.
“We see no definitive ideology associated with our subject, either left-leaning or right-leaning,” Rojek said, according to the Washington Post.
Crooks allegedly researched both parties’ national conventions, as well as information about Trump’s rally in Butler. He also began looking up information about making improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as early as 2019, according to the FBI.
Two IEDs were found in the trunk of Crooks’ car. Initial report spoke of pipe bombs, but the Allegheny County Police Department photos the FBI released showed he used ammunition boxes as casings. The remote detonation receiver was off and the devices “had several problems in the way they were constructed,” the bureau noted.
Crooks had no traces of alcohol or drugs in his system and died from a single bullet to the head, the FBI said, citing the official autopsy results.
Earlier this month, a Republican congressman visited Butler and found out that the FBI had “released the crime scene” after just three days and cleaned up the blood and other “biological evidence” from the roof where Crooks had been positioned. The bureau also allowed Crooks’ family to cremate his remains on July 23, which has made it impossible to independently verify the autopsy findings.
Crooks’ parents have retained a high-powered law firm, even though the FBI said they had been entirely cooperative with the investigation.