Donald Trump will meet with FBI agents for a victim interview as part of the bureau’s investigation into the recent assassination attempt on the former president, an FBI official said during a briefing on Monday.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Kevin Rojek, who heads the bureau’s Pittsburgh Field Office, told reporters the interview would be “consistent with any other victim interview.”
“We provide victims with support from our victim services, and we want to get his perspective on what he observed,” Rojek said. “So just like any other witness to the crime, as well as get his perspective on what occurred to him during that event, but it is a standard victim interview, like we would do for any other victim of crime under any other circumstances.”
Rojek’s remarks came as part of a broader update the FBI gave about the progress of its investigation into the shooting, which occurred at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania on July 13. The FBI is focused on the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who killed one and critically injured two at the event. Trump suffered a minor injury after a bullet missed his head by inches and instead grazed his ear.
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said during the briefing that after more than two weeks, the shooter’s motive is “still not clear” but that the investigation “remains urgent and ongoing.”
Rojek said the bureau’s behavioral analysis unit is still building out a profile of Crooks, but he emphasized that Crooks was a “loner” and that he was “highly intelligent.”
Crooks made 25 purchases online related to firearms beginning more than a year ago, in the spring of 2023, Rojek said. Crooks also made six chemical precursor-related purchases online that he used to build three explosive devices that agents found in the shooter’s vehicle and home on the day of the assassination attempt, the FBI agent said. He added that Crooks used online aliases to make the purchases.
Rojek said the FBI has served legal requests to 86 different companies for different accounts associated with Crooks with the aim of obtaining his data and content from those accounts.
“While the FBI investigation may not yet have determined a motive, we believe the subject made significant efforts to conceal his activities,” Rojek said, adding that the 20-year-old’s actions demonstrated “careful planning” ahead of the rally.
Crooks had a shooting hobby that transformed into “formal firearms training courses” around the fall of 2023, Rojek said. The AR-15 rifle he used at the rally had a collapsible stock, an accessory that helps make a gun more compact, he said.
One data point that FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed last week gave at least some context to Crooks’s intentions: On July 6, the same day he registered to attend the Trump rally, Crooks researched on Google how far away Lee Harvey Oswald was when he shot and killed President John F. Kennedy.
Rojek said that in addition to that search, Crooks also made internet searches for power plants, mass shooting events, information on improvised explosive devices, and the attempted assassination earlier this year of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico.
When FBI agents interview Trump, they will add to the more than 450 interviews agents have conducted so far. They have interviewed Crooks’s parents, who Rojek said have been “extremely cooperative,” and they have interviewed coworkers and former teachers and classmates.
The FBI has focused heavily on determining whether Crooks had any accomplices, and Rojek said there is still no evidence he conspired with or had help from anyone.
The special agent in charge said that investigators have identified “only a couple people who we would call his friends, and most of those contacts were, in fact, dated.”
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