FBI Director Christopher Wray spoke with lawmakers in a House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and offered bits of new information about the gunman who attempted to assassinate Trump.
The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired at Trump from a rooftop just outside the rally security perimeter, using an AR-style rifle, on July 13.
How far was Oswald from Kennedy?
Wray testified that a laptop connected to Crooks showed that on July 6 the shooter searched how far Oswald was from President Kennedy when he was shot and killed in 1963. July 6 was the same day the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was announced.
Crooks registered to attend the outdoor rally that same day.
“That’s a search that’s obviously significant in terms of his state of mind,” Wray said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. “He was interested in public figures and — I think this is important — starting around July 6 or so, he became very focused on former president Trump and this rally.”
The shooter’s drone was found in his car following the shooting.
Wray also revealed that “around 4 p.m.,” the shooter “was flying the drone around the area” of the rally, approximately 200 yards from the stage.
The drone was in the air for about 11 minutes, and the FBI believes Crooks watched the live feed from the drone on his phone.
Wray said that investigators have been able to “reverse-engineer the flight path of the drone from the day of the rally,” and now think that the drone footage “would have shown [the shooter] what would have been behind him.”
“It was almost like giving him a rear-view mirror of the scene behind him,” Wray said.
The gun had a collapsable stock.
Investigators found that Crooks fired at least eight rounds from an AR-type rifle with a collapsible stock — a weapon feature that may explain why witnesses did not report seeing him carrying the weapon before he climbed onto a roof to launch the attack.
“The weapon that he used for the attempted assassination was an AR-style rifle that was purchased legally, that he – as my understanding – acquired, I think bought actually from his father, who was the one who originally bought it,” Wray said.