What FBI said after Donald Trump survives assassination attempt: ‘Shooter acted alone, but…’

FBI director Christopher Wray said the probe agency has committed the “full force” to the investigation in the Donald Trump's assassination attempt.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI has said the gunman who shot at former US president Donald Trump during an election rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday appears to have acted alone and there is no current public safety threat. The FBI is investigating it as a potential “domestic terrorism” act.

This 2021 photo provided by Bethel Park School District shows student Thomas Matthew Crooks who graduated from Bethel Park High School with the Class of 2022, Crooks was identified by the FBI as the shooter involved in an assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally on Saturday, in Butler. (AP)

FBI director Christopher Wray said during a briefing on Sunday afternoon the probe agency has committed the “full force” 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, Bloomberg reported.

“At this point in the investigation, it appears that he was a lone actor, but we still have more investigation to go,” Associated Press quoted said Robert Wells, the executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, as saying.

The FBI, he said, was investigating this as an assassination attempt,” and also as a “potential domestic terrorism act".

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. According to Rojek, it appeared the man identified as the shooter, 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 added that the FBI had Crooks’s phone and was working to access the information stored in it. Getting into the phone was a priority, he said, as investigators search for evidence of Crooks’s motive. His family is cooperating with the investigation, the FBI officer said.

Donald Trump said he had suffered a gunshot wound to his right ear. An FBI official said on Sunday they didn’t have additional details on Donald 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 said 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.”

“The shooter may be deceased, but the investigation is very much ongoing. And, because of that, we are limited in what we say at this point,” the FBI director said.

“What we witnessed yesterday was nothing short of an attack on democracy and our democratic process,” Christopher Wray told reporters at a news conference in Washington DC.

According to an FBI official, the investigation into the gunman at Donald Trump’s rally has not yet turned up any mental health issues, threatening posts or other motives, but cautioned it was still early.

(With inputs from Bloomberg, AP)