The Trump rally shooter searched online for information on the arrest of a Michigan mass shooter and his parents, who were prosecuted in a 2021 high school shooting. He visited websites for how to build explosives. And in the minutes before he fired shots in an attempted assassination of Donald Trump, he screenshotted a picture from a livestream of the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally.
A week before the shooting, Thomas Matthew Crooks searched online for the date of the Democratic National Convention and where Trump planned to speak, as well as other searches for Trump and President Joe Biden.
These details were among those shared by FBI and US Secret Service officials in a Wednesday briefing with lawmakers and by additional people familiar with the investigation. The previously unreported readout documents the scope of the investigation, including an expanded timeline of the would-be assassin’s actions leading to up his assault and law enforcement’s failure to prevent it.
Investigators remain puzzled about possible motives for Saturday’s attempted assassination of the former president, finding little to point to political or ideological intentions for the attack.
But the would-be assassin’s recent trail on the internet has provided investigators with a detailed picture of his possible mindset before the attack. FBI behavioral experts are building a profile of Crooks based on the findings, the FBI told lawmakers.
One emerging theory by investigators, based in part on the timing and subjects of his online searches, is that the shooter was looking to carry out a mass shooting and that the Trump event’s proximity and timing offered the most ready opportunity, according to a US official briefed on the matter.
Unlike other mass shooters who often leave behind manifestos or…
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