The FBI said it had discovered social media accounts believed to be linked to Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump, that shared “anti-Semitic” views and endorsed “political violence.”
The account agents identified left about 700 comments online between 2019 and 2020, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate testified before Congress on Tuesday morning.
“Some of these comments, if ultimately attributed to the shooter, reflect anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant themes, promote political violence and appear to be extreme in nature,” Abbate said.
“While our investigative team is still working to verify whether this account indeed belongs to the shooter, we believe it is important to share and document this today, especially given that little other information has been obtained to date from social media or other sources that reflects the shooter’s potential motive or mindset,” he acknowledged.
Investigators are still struggling to determine the motive of Crooks, 20, who climbed onto the roof of a factory in Butler, Pennsylvania, and opened fire on Trump during the July 13 rally.
President Trump was shot in the ear, a heroic firefighter was killed, and two other people at the rally were seriously injured.
Abbate was one of several law enforcement officials who took the stand Tuesday at a joint congressional hearing into the botched assassination attempt on President Trump.
Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe acknowledged he was “ashamed” of the failings that allowed Crooks to get onto the roof and pull an AR-15 rifle unchallenged.
Rowe, who was appointed head of the department last week following the resignation of previous director Kimberly Cheatle, added that the shooting was a “failure in many ways.”
Rowe argued that information about the threats was “locked up or siloed in state and local channels” and prevented the Secret Service from acting before Crooks opened fire.
A Secret Service agent at the rally knew only that local authorities were dealing with a “problem” to the right of Trump: “A guy on a roof, a guy with a gun, none of that information was coming through our radar,” he said.
