By Steve Neavling
One week before trying to assassinate former President Trump, the gunman Googled “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?” FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a congressional hearing Wednesday.
The FBI recovered the July 6 online search on a laptop tied to 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks. The search is a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the gunman who killed President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963.
“That’s a search that obviously is significant in terms of his state of mind,” Wray told the House Judiciary Committee, noting that Crooks’ interest in public figures around that time “became very focused on former President Trump and his rally,” The New York Times reports.
The hearing, which took more than four hours, included new information from Wray.
A day after the Google search, the gunman visited the site of the rally. It was one of three visits that Wray spoke about. Crooks visited the scene for about 20 minutes on his first visit. His second visit was in the morning of the shooting and lasted about 70 minutes. He returned later that afternoon and appeared to fly a drone in the area for about 11 minutes.
“It appears that around 3:50 p.m., 4:00, in that window, on the day of the shooting, that the shooter was flying the drone around the area,” Wray said, noting that it was “not over the stage, but about 200 yards, give or take, away from that.”
Wray also said Crooks bought the gun used in the shooting from his father in October 2023. There were 14 firearms in his family’s house.
Wray said Crooks was “a fairly avid shooting hobbyist.”
“We believe based on what we’ve seen that his father, after purchasing the gun, legally sold the gun to his son,” Wray told lawmakers.
Crooks bought 50 rounds of ammunition on the day of the shooting, Wray said.
