Trump Shooter Used Drone Like a ‘Rearview Mirror’ Before Rally

Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old man who tried to kill Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, used a drone before the rally “like a rearview mirror” and googled facts about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, according to new testimony Wednesday from FBI director Christopher Wray.

The drone was found in the car Crooks used to get to the Trump rally, and while there aren’t any known photos or videos of the drone from that day, according to Wray, the FBI was able to reverse engineer the flight path. Crooks flew the drone for about 10 minutes, from about 3:50 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., Wray said, about 200 yards away from where Trump would ultimately be speaking. Trump ultimately took the stage at 6:03 p.m. and the first shot was fired at 6:11 p.m., according to CBS News.

Rep. Andy Biggs, a Republican from Arizona, asked about the FBI’s discovery that Crooks had used a drone and what he may have been observing in the lead-up to the shooting. Wray explained that since it wasn’t used during the actual shooting, it was more about observing his surroundings before the shooting.

“It’s almost like giving him a rearview mirror of the scene behind him except, again, he wasn’t flying it overhead while he was later back for the assassination,” Wray said.

But Wray acknowledged that it’s taking some work to figure it all out. And they’re speculating that perhaps Crooks was even livestreaming the video captured by the drone.

“We’re still trying to figure out exactly what he saw because we’re having to, in effect… because there’s no recording of what he saw during those 11 minutes, you know, our hypothesis at this point the experts think he would have been livestreaming it,” Wray said.

Wray explained that the FBI has cracked some of the electronic devices used by Crooks, though “not all of them,” and that’s how they’re gleaning information about his internet activity. “Some of them we’re still waiting on, some of them we may never have access to because of the encryption issue,” Wray said.

Crooks googled “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?”, a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the only person officially believed to have shot the president, though there are plenty of conspiracy theories about what actually happened that day in Dallas back in 1963. That fact came out while Wray was being questioned by Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California. The Google search about Oswald and Kennedy was on July 6, which is the same day that he used his own name to register for the Trump rally online, according to Wray’s testimony.

Wray also noted the collapsible stock that may have allowed Crooks to conceal the weapon he used. The FBI director said that no first-hand account of Crooks walking around with a weapon has surfaced and the only person who saw the shooter with a gun saw him when he was already on the roof of the building where he took the shots.

Wray’s testimony at the House Judiciary Committee in Washington D.C. is just the latest information the public is learning about the attempt on the former president’s life and the various ways Crooks used technology in his plot to assassinate Trump. The shooting set off a range of conspiracy theories about the potential existence of two shooters or some kind of involvement by the FBI, and this new information about both the drone and Crooks’s search history is likely to just produce more wild theories.

Incredibly, some of the conspiracy theories are being floated by Trump-loving members of Congress.

“I’m sure you understand that a significant portion of the country has a healthy skepticism regarding the FBI’s ability to conduct a fair, honest, open and transparent investigation,” Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, told Wray.

Rep. Victoria Spartz from Indiana even took the opportunity during Wednesday’s hearing to suggest the FBI was involved in a false flag against the U.S. Capitol during Donald Trump’s coup attempt on January 6, 2021.

Christopher Wray gets heated over what he feels is Rep. Victoria Spartz’s insinuation that Jan. 6 was an FBI false flag.

“If you’re asking if the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was part of some operation or was orchestrated by FBI sources or agents, the answer is no!” pic.twitter.com/0hDC4GDvEr

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) July 24, 2024

As the Associated Press notes, the hearing was actually scheduled before the assassination attempt on Trump and is just a routine part of congressional oversight of the FBI. But the internet is still going to have a lot of questions about what exactly happened, some of which are reasonable and others which are completely out there.