The gunman who opened fire at a Pennsylvania campaign event for Donald Trump appears to have acted alone and there is no current public safety threat, FBI officials said.
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray said during a briefing with reporters on Sunday afternoon that the FBI has committed the “full force” of the agency to the investigation.
Officials said they will continue to probe the shooting “aggressively” and will be focused on averting any potential threats in connection with the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee as well as the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month.
Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office who is leading the inquiry, shared new details about what investigators have uncovered so far. Rojek said that it appeared the man identified as the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, had used an AR-556 style rifle that investigators believed was legally purchased by his father.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the alleged shooter had gotten the firearm.
Rojek said that the FBI had Crooks’ phone and was working to access the information stored in it. Getting into the phone was a priority, he said, as investigators searched for evidence of Crooks’ motive. Crooks’ family is cooperating with the investigation, Rojek said.
The FBI is investigating the incident as an assassination attempt as well as a potential domestic terrorism event, according to FBI Assistant Director Robert Wells.
Trump said that he had suffered a gunshot wound to his right ear. An FBI official said Sunday that they didn’t have additional details on Trump’s condition. Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed in the shooting and two other people were wounded, according to Pennsylvania officials.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, speaking at the start of Sunday’s briefing, said that he was “grateful that former President Trump is safe following yesterday’s horrific assassination attempt” and expressed condolences to Comperatore’s family.
“The violence that we saw yesterday is an attack on our democracy itself,” Garland said. “The Justice Department has no tolerance for such violence, and as Americans, we must have no tolerance for it. This must stop.”
Officials said that they hadn’t identified any ideology yet associated with the shooter and were combing through digital evidence and the shooter’s social media accounts.
They confirmed earlier reports that a suspicious device was found in Crooks’ car – one official said that it appeared “rudimentary” based on a preliminary evaluation — and that it had been “rendered safe” and was being analyzed.
The FBI has received more than 2,000 tips so far, Rojek said. The FBI hadn’t identified any record of Crooks having previous interactions with law enforcement and so far hadn’t found evidence of him expressing threats before the incident, he said.
The US Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting Trump as a former president as well as a candidate, has come under scrutiny following the attack. The agency said that the shooter had fired shots at the stage from an elevated area outside of the rally and was killed by Secret Service personnel.
Officials said that while the FBI’s investigation, for now, is focused on the shooting and not broader questions about how the event was secured, there would also be a full probe of the timeline of the shooting and how it happened.
