(News Nation) — The FBI told lawmakers that the agency is still working to determine a motive. Thomas Matthew Crookes In the attempted shooting of former President Donald Trump,
Former Secret Service agent Paul Eklof said the best way to understand Crooks’ motives is to look at “the history of mass shooters in America.”
“If you look at the history of mass public shootings, 25 percent of the perpetrators had a diagnosed mental illness,” Eklof said Thursday. Special Report from NewsNation Regarding the assassination attempt: “It’s an interesting number because it’s so low. In this case, Crooks appears to have been diagnosed with severe depression, but we tend to look at changes in behavior.”
Eklof said that just as the FBI can “forensically examine the site and find out where they went wrong,” there is also an “opportunity to intervene” in mass shootings.
“We need to look at the timeline of his actions, and of course his internet searches are part of that…. It’s definitely an indication that he was researching assassins. But as we know, America is fascinated by assassins,” Eklov added.
According to the FBI, on July 6, the day Crooks registered for the Butler rally, he ran a Google search on his computer asking how far Lee Harvey Oswald was from President John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated in Dallas in 1963.
The online search is FBI Director Christopher Wray Wray said the testimony offered a glimpse into Crooks’ mind in the days leading up to the assassination attempt, and that his online searches began to focus on rallies for Trump and Butler.
Wray testified that Crooks had flown the drone about 200 yards from the stage where Trump was scheduled to speak more than two hours before the shooting.
Crooks, a 20-year-old nursing home worker who graduated from community college last spring, had searched for information about Trump and Biden online and had photos of both men on her phone, deputies said. The Washington Post.
The paper also reported that Crooks’ phone contained photos of US Attorney General Merrick Garland and members of the British royal family. Wray testified that Crooks used an encrypted messaging app on his phone.
An FBI search of Crooks’ phone also revealed he had searched online for information about the shooting of teenage shooter Ethan Crumbly. Four high school students killed There is also information on the Michigan Democratic National Convention, major depressive disorder, the Butler rally, and the Democratic National Convention.
NBC News Other online searches conducted by Crooks in the months leading up to the rally reportedly included searches related to explosives, chemicals, improvised explosive devices and the Department of Homeland Security.
The report said more than 14,000 links and photos were found on Crooks’ phone, including photos of a rally taken before Trump spoke.
NewsNation’s Jeff Arnold contributed to this report.
