According to the FBI, Trump agrees to be questioned as part of the investigation into his assassination

WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump has agreed to an interview with the FBI as part of the investigation into his attempted assassination in Pennsylvania earlier this month, a special counsel said Monday, revealing that the gunman had researched mass attacks and explosive devices before the shooting.

The expected interview with the 2024 Republican presidential candidate is part of the FBI’s standard protocol for speaking to victims as part of its criminal investigation. The FBI said Friday that Trump was struck in the ear by a bullet or bullet fragments during the July 13 assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“We want to get his perspective on what he observed,” said Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office. “It’s a standard interview with the victim, like we would with any other crime victim under any circumstances.”

In an interview with Fox News that aired Monday night, Trump said he expected the FBI interrogation to take place on Thursday.

In more than 450 interviews, the FBI has built a portrait of shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks that reveals him to be a “highly intelligent” but withdrawn 20-year-old whose main social circle was his family and who had few friends and acquaintances throughout his life, Rojek said. Even on online gaming platforms Crooks frequented, his interactions with peers appeared to have been minimal, the FBI said.

His parents were “extremely cooperative” with the investigation, Rojek said. They said they had no prior knowledge of the shooting.

The FBI has not yet been able to find a motive for why he targeted Trump. However, investigators believe that the shooting was the result of extensive planning. Among other things, in recent months he used an alias to buy chemical precursors that investigators believe were used to build the explosive devices found in Trump’s car and house. In the hours before the event, a drone was also deployed about 180 meters from the rally site.

The day before the shooting, the FBI said, the Crooks visited a local shooting range and practiced with the weapon that would be used in the attack.

After the shooting, authorities found two explosive devices in Crooks’ car and a third in his room at home. The devices found in the car, consisting of ammunition boxes containing explosives, wires, receivers and detonators, could have exploded but did not because the receivers were in the “off” position, Rojek said. How much damage they could have caused is unclear.

The FBI has said Crooks showed online interest in prominent figures in the run-up to the shooting, searching the internet for information about individuals such as President Joe Biden. In addition, Rojek said, Crooks looked up information about mass shootings, explosive devices, power plants and the attempted assassination of populist Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico in May.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress last week that on July 6, the day Crooks registered to attend the Trump rally, he Googled “How far was Oswald from Kennedy?” That’s a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the gunman who killed President John F. Kennedy from a sniper position in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Meanwhile, new details emerged about law enforcement security lapses and missed communications prior to the shooting.

Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released text messages from members of the Beaver County Emergency Unit showing how local officials had communicated with each other about a suspiciously behaving man who, it turned out, had been hanging around nearby more than an hour before the shooting.

A text message sent shortly before 4:30 p.m. describes a man “sitting on a picnic table immediately to the right, approximately 45 meters from the exit.”

In another text message at 5:38 p.m., an officer tells the other snipers: “A boy is studying near the building we are in. I believe it is AGR. I saw him with a rangefinder and looked at the stage. FYI, if you want to notify the SS snipers, tell them to watch out. I lost sight of him.” Photos of Crooks circulated in the group.

AGR refers to a complex of buildings that make up AGR International Inc., a supplier of automation equipment to the glass and plastic packaging industries. Crooks scaled the roof of one of the buildings in the complex and is said to have fired eight shots at the rally stage with an AR-style rifle that his father had legally purchased years earlier.

According to a Beaver County incident report, the shots were fired at 6:12 p.m.

Trump said he was “hit by a bullet that pierced the top of my right ear” and appeared in the days afterward with a bandage on his ear. One protester, Corey Comperatore, was killed and two others were wounded. Crooks was shot by a Secret Service sniper.

In an interview with ABC News, a Beaver County police officer who raised the alarm said that after sending a text message alerting others to Crooks, he “expected someone to come out to talk to this person or find out what was going on.”

Another official told ABC News that the group was supposed to have a face-to-face meeting with Secret Service snipers, but that never happened.

An email seeking comment to the Secret Service was not immediately returned Monday.