Site last updated: Saturday, August 16, 2025
Welcome, GuestSign In

Log In

Reset Password
MENU
Butler County's great daily newspaper

Trump shooter searched online for Oswald, flew drone, FBI head testifies

Former President Donald Trump speaks to the crowd during a rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds in Connoquenessing Township on Saturday, July 13. Morgan Phillips/Butler Eagle

WASHINGTON — The gunman in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump is believed to have done a Google search one week before the shooting of “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?” FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday, revealing new details about a suspect he said had taken a keen interest in public figures but had otherwise not left behind clear clues of an ideological motive.

The July 6 online search, recovered from a laptop the FBI says is tied to 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, is a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooter who killed President John F. Kennedy from a sniper's perch in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

“That's a search obviously that is significant in terms of his state of mind. That is the same day that it appears that he registered” for the Trump rally scheduled for July 13 in Connoquenessing Township, Wray told the House Judiciary Committee.

The FBI is investigating the shooting, which killed one rallygoer and seriously injured two others, as an act of domestic terrorism. The investigation has thrust the bureau into a political maelstrom months before the presidential election, with lawmakers and the public pressing for details about what may have motivated Crooks in the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.

More in Local News

Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter

* indicates required
TODAY'S PHOTOS