Lack of motive in Trump attack frustrates the public, but fits a pattern

Unless there is a breakthrough in the investigation, Crooks will join a string of high-profile attackers who have no discernible ideological motivation or are influenced by different beliefs. This outcome is frustrating for a nation trying to make sense of the event, analysts say, but it fits a pattern of bloody episodes that defy categorization along a traditional left-right spectrum.

“It’s difficult because when you have a political goal, you assume a political motive,” says Daniel Byman, a terrorism researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national security think tank.

Investigators have not presented evidence of an ideological motive that meets the official definition of terrorism, Byman and other analysts say. Authorities typically consider other theories, including mental illness or a quest for fame. The lack of conclusive evidence is hard to accept for many Trump supporters, who embrace the idea that he was targeted by an enemy of the MAGA movement – a claim repeated this week by speakers at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Since the shooting, conspiracy theories have been circulating everywhere – from the right and the left – as every aspect of the incident is being investigated by self-appointed investigators. The scraps of information released so far have been woven into elaborate hypotheses. It involves cover-ups by the Biden administration, foreign conspiracies, and demonic spirits.

“Psychologically, it’s very unsatisfying to say, ‘Things are happening and we don’t know why,'” Byman said, adding that without motive, people fill the void with their own conspiracy theories, which increase polarization and reduce trust in institutions.”

Attacks without a clear motive are not uncommon and have increased, researchers say, in part because of the ideologies that intertwine on social media and gaming platforms, creating a toxic soup of grievances with no coherent political agenda. Authorities have cited unclear or overlapping beliefs in recent attacks or acts of violence, such as when white nationalism merged with misogynistic “incel” subcultures or when a member of a satanic neo-Nazi group denounced Islamist militancy, what the Justice Department called a “diabolical cocktail of ideologies.”

In 2022, an attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was carried out by a man armed with a hammer who had been involved in nudist activism and Green Party support before his recent racist rhetoric and expressions of hatred toward Democrats, according to analysts who have studied his writings. As with Trump’s would-be assassin, extremists and partisans quickly moved in to exploit the vacuum where a clear motive existed.

The deadliest recent example was the 2017 mass shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas, in which 60 people were killed and hundreds injured. To this day, it is unclear why 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on concertgoers. The FBI has released a wealth of documents proving that he was seriously addicted to gambling, but never gave a motive for the rampage. Paddock committed suicide before authorities could reach him.

Aaron Rouse, who headed the FBI’s Las Vegas office during the investigation into the attack, said the public should be patient while investigators pursue every possible lead, which is expected to take months.

“As a society, we’re wired to a television culture where there’s an event, then a resolution, and it has to make sense,” Rouse said. “People have to be patient and realize that not every event is a big conspiracy.”

During the Las Vegas investigation, Rouse said, he was surprised to learn from FBI agents investigating mass shootings that in about 20 percent of all cases, a shooter does not want anyone to know his motive or reasons.

“Some of them don’t provide a manifesto or a recording,” Rouse said. “They don’t tell people, and that’s what we saw in Las Vegas, and it was incredibly upsetting.” Rouse’s team eventually concluded that the shooter was a person with a difficult past who didn’t handle disappointment well.

Authorities said Crooks fired an AR-style rifle at Trump from a rooftop outside the rally’s security perimeter, killing one person in the crowd and seriously wounding two others. He was then shot and killed by Secret Service agents. Trump was injured and suffered a bloody ear in the attack.

FBI agents combing through the details of Crooks’ life found little ideological or political motivation for his assassination attempt, which came just days before the former president’s party’s re-run for the White House. Crooks had searched the internet for information on Trump and Biden and stored photos of the two men on his phone, according to lawmakers and other people briefed on the investigation.

Investigators also determined that the shooter visited the site of Trump’s rally nearly a week earlier, the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not made public by the FBI.

State records show Crooks was registered as a Republican, but campaign finance records show that someone with his name and address donated $15 in January 2021 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a Democratic organization promoting voter participation.

In addition to Trump and Biden, the gunman also had photos of Attorney General Merrick Garland and a member of the British royal family stored on his phone, two people familiar with the investigation said. He had been searching for information about a major depressive disorder, the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the Democratic National Convention scheduled for August. The gunman also searched online for information about teenage mass murderer Ethan Crumbley and his parents, according to a person familiar with a briefing law enforcement officials gave to lawmakers earlier this week.

“He had a rangefinder and a backpack with him,” Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) said after a press conference on Wednesday, calling for the resignation of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle.

Since there is no evidence of a political motive or foreign elements, investigators are concentrating on the perpetrator’s psychological causes. But here too, there is not much to report, except that he had been searching for information about depression on the Internet.

Many assume that the motives behind Saturday’s shooting were the heated rhetoric of a presidential campaign, but a 1997 Secret Service study of American assassins and potential assassins of public figures found that “attackers and perpetrators who nearly killed public officials rarely had ‘political’ motives.”

Karl Schmae, a retired senior FBI agent, said the most apt comparison to Crooks might be John Hinckley Jr., who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Before the shooting outside a Washington hotel, Hinckley had been stalking President Jimmy Carter. Investigators concluded that he wanted to shoot a president to impress an actress.

“John Hinckley was a troubled guy and just wanted to be famous,” Schmae said. “There was nothing special about Reagan except that Hinckley would have become famous if he was assassinated.”

Given the security measures surrounding a former president and the nature of the attack, Crooks was certainly aware that he was embarking on a suicide mission, says Gina Ligon, who heads a federally funded terrorism research center at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and has written extensively on political violence.

“It certainly looks like someone who didn’t necessarily want to survive the attack,” Ligon said, but who tried “to do it in a way that would be remembered.”

Ligon said there are still too many unanswered questions to conclude that Crooks fits the profile of a “lone wolf.” Some researchers criticize this label because it overlooks the role of online networks in radicalizing people to violence.

“Nobody acts alone – except the Unabomber,” she said.

Ligon and other analysts pointed to Crooks’ use of an AR-style rifle, his wearing of a T-shirt from a brand popular in gun circles and the homemade explosive devices that authorities discovered in his car and home as indicating influences from a larger “ecosystem.”

Ana Velitchkova, a sociologist at the University of Mississippi who studies political violence, said what little is publicly known about Crooks is consistent with research suggesting attacks are more likely under certain conditions, such as when individuals are “honing their violent skills.” The shooter was a member of the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, a rifle club in Clairton, Pennsylvania, which, through an attorney, condemned the attack as a “senseless act of violence.”

Because there are so few clues, “we may never know what exactly prompted the Crooks to shoot Donald Trump,” Velitchkova said in an emailed response to questions.

“Nothing in Crooks’ profile appears unusual: no extremist ideology, no mental health issues, no problems at school, no family problems,” she said. “Instead, Crooks appears to have been a ‘normal’ young man in today’s America.”

Perry Stein contributed to this report.