Details continue to slowly emerge about would-be Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks and the minutes leading up to the shooting.
Despite growing pressure over the Secret Service’s outright incompetence that nearly ended with the first assassination of an American president since John F. Kennedy, Director Kimberly Cheatle refuses to step down. Republican senators, including Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and John Barrasso of Wyoming, confronted Cheatle at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday over her refusal to answer their questions following a conference call with U.S. Senators that took place earlier in the day, during which she also did not take any questions. Barrasso described the meeting to Fox News as a “100% cover-your-a** briefing.”
“It was a 45-minute briefing, and they spent 30 minutes just filibustering, walking through all the things they did that day; walking through a detailed timeline of every other factor of what they did in the field, what they did on the stage, what they did backstage — everything except how they didn’t stop a man with a rifle from shooting the former president,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said on Fox.
ABC News reported Wednesday that investigators told lawmakers that the Secret Service spotted Crooks on the roof minutes before gunfire erupted. Snipers reportedly spotted him at 5:52 p.m. ET, and the shooting happened 20 minutes later at 6:12 p.m. ET. Officials further said that Crooks was first identified as a person of interest at 5:10 p.m. ET — over an hour before the shooting took place — and was subsequently spotted with a rangefinder at 5:30 p.m.
Investigators also reported that Crooks had visited the site of the attack at least once in advance of the assassination attempt.
An exclusive video obtained by Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 appears to show Crooks walking around near the rally area at least an hour before the shooting took place. The man who shot the video was attempting to capture the size of the crowd but realized later that he had captured something much more important.
“When I saw the video last night, when I was going back through my video clips and saw him, I was chilled to the point where I couldn’t fall asleep right away,” the man who shot the video told Action News 4.
The Telegraph reported that FBI investigators told Congress that Crooks searched online for an unnamed member of the British Royal family as he was planning his attack. According to the report, Crooks also searched for FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
According to the investigation, it took 11 seconds for the Secret Service sniper to set his sights on Crooks and another 15 seconds before he was shot dead.
Despite accessing the shooter’s cell phone and laptop, as well as conducting 200 interviews and combing through 14,000 images, authorities are still no closer to determining a motive. Fox News reports on what investigators found on Crooks’ laptop as well as a message he posted online teasing the shooting. Here’s the start of the story:
Fox News has learned that U.S. senators were told during an all-member briefing on Wednesday, July 17, that former President Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, wrote a threatening message on a gaming platform ahead of his shooting.
On “Steam,” a popular platform where gamers purchase games and communicate, Crooks allegedly wrote: “July 13 will be my premiere, watch as it unfolds.”
When investigators reviewed the laptop, they found a few searches in July of: Trump, Biden, when is DNC convention, and July 13 Trump rally.