Gunman at Trump’s rally saw it as ‘target of opportunity’, FBI official says

New details have come to light in the FBI’s investigation into the assassination attempt of Donald Trump, including how the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, researched and planned the attack.

In a call with journalists on Wednesday, a senior FBI official shared that the gunman had searched online for events of both the former president and Joe Biden and saw the Pennsylvania campaign rally where he opened fire last month as a “target of opportunity.”

Crooks, who shot at Trump from a nearby roof before being killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper, did extensive research for an attack before the shooting and had looked at any number of events or targets, including the current president and former president, said Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office.

In the month before he opened fire at the Trump rally on 13 July, which resulted in the death of one person and serious injuries to two others, Crooks conducted dozens of searches related to both Trump and the president, according to the FBI.

His search history, however, revealed that he may have spent years thinking about committing violence.

Crooks began researching explosive devices as far back as 2019 and continued to do so into 2024, searching for phrases like “how to make a bomb from fertilizer”, and “how do remote detonators work”. Two explosive devices were found in his car after the shooting, both with remote detonation receivers made from materials that are legal to buy and easy to find online, according to Rojek.

The shooter also obtained specifics about conditions and set-up that he used during the attack, including where Trump would be speaking, photos of the area, and what the weather would be like on the day of the rally.

“When … the Trump rally was announced, early in July, he became hyper-focused on that specific event and looked at it as a target of opportunity,” Rojek said.

The new details were disclosed as FBI officials, in the latest in a series of briefings about the investigation, revealed that they had yet to uncover a motive for the attack in Butler, Pennsylvania, despite conducting nearly 1,000 interviews. The FBI has also found no evidence of co-conspirators who may have known Crooks was planning an attack.

The 20-year-old Pennsylvania resident had demonstrated a marked interest in politics, making a small political donation to an organization called Progressive Turnout Project that supports Democrats before he could even vote, and registering as a Republican shortly after his 18th birthday, but little has been uncovered about his beliefs or even his partisan leanings at the time of the shooting.

Officials continue to investigate a trove of social media posts that contain antisemitic and anti-immigration sentiments, among other potentially extremist or politically violent views, but Rojek said the FBI is still working to determine whether Crooks wrote them.

“We have a clear idea of mindset,” Rojek said, “but we are not ready to make any conclusive statements regarding motive at this time.”