Wray confirms gunman flew drone over Trump rally site hours before assassination attempt

FBI Director Christopher Wray fielded questions from lawmakers Wednesday about the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump and confirmed several details about the incident, including that the shooter flew a drone over the Trump rally site.

Wray said during a House Judiciary Committee hearing that Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, used the drone in the 3:50 p.m. to 4 p.m. time frame on the day of the rally and that the FBI believes Crooks may have flown it about 200 yards away from the stage where Trump would speak two hours later.

“We think, but we do not know, so again, this is one of these things that’s qualified because of our ongoing review, that he was livestreaming, you know, viewing the footage” for about 11 minutes, Wray said.

Wray said the FBI recovered the drone in Crooks’s car and also recovered two explosive devices in the vehicle, as well as a third explosive device at Crooks’s home.

The FBI is leading the investigation into the shooting, which left one dead and two seriously injured. Trump was grazed on the side of the head by a bullet, resulting in a minor injury to the former president’s ear.

Wray reiterated several times that the FBI’s investigation was ongoing. Asked by Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) about why the FBI has not provided more details to the public about the shooting, Wray said he was being as transparent as possible, adding, “frankly, unusually so for an ongoing investigation.”

As lawmakers on the committee began laying into Wray about the massive security failures that led to the shooting, Wray clarified the scope of the bureau’s investigation and deferred security-related questions to the Secret Service.

“The FBI’s mandate is focused on the shooter and all things related to his attack,” Wray said, noting that the Department of Homeland Security inspector general and an independent panel are both investigating the Secret Service’s actions.

“There’s a whole lot of work underway and still a lot of work to do, and our understanding of what happened and why will continue to evolve, but we’re going to leave no stone unturned,” Wray said.

The FBI is tasked with establishing Crooks’s motive, and Wray said that is still a work in progress.

“I think it’s fair to say that we do not yet have a clear picture of his motive,” Wray said, noting agents have found no manifestos or garnered any information about a motive from interviews and an examination of Crooks’s social media.

“The shooter appears to have done a lot of searches of public figures in general,” Wray said.

The director indicated that the FBI had issued warrants to obtain information about Crooks’s various digital accounts.

Wray’s long-planned appearance before the committee comes as part of the FBI’s annual congressional oversight, but the circumstances surrounding his testimony changed after the assassination attempt. Many questions focused on that at the start of the hearing, but Wray was still testifying into Wednesday afternoon.