MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The FBI says it is still working around the clock looking into the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Today, the bureau said the former president will sit for an interview as part of its investigation. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is following that investigation. He joins me now with more details. Hi, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.
KELLY: Bring on the details. What's the latest on this investigation?
LUCAS: The FBI says it has interviewed more than 450 people so far. That includes dozens of people who knew the gunman, of course, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, also people who had interacted with him. So we're talking about family, coworkers, former teachers, classmates. And investigators say they are learning more about Crooks and what he was doing in the run-up to the events of July 13. The agent leading the investigation, Kevin Rojek, says Crooks was highly intelligent but had a very limited social life. His social circle appears to have been basically his immediate family. The FBI says Crooks' interest in shooting began as a hobby but progressed into basically formal firearms training and courses that he was taking, particularly in the fall of 2023. Rojek said investigators still have not determined a motive, but he did say this.
KEVIN ROJEK: We believe the subject made significant efforts to conceal his activities. Additionally, we believe his actions also show a careful planning ahead of the campaign rally.
KELLY: So Ryan, what I'm not hearing yet there is a motive. Sounds like they're still working on that. But on the point we just heard, efforts to conceal his activities - did the FBI say how the gunman was trying to conceal his activities?
LUCAS: Well, there are a couple of things the FBI pointed to. They say Crooks made 25 gun-related purchases online, starting in the spring of 2023. And then in the first half of this year, he made six online purchases for precursor chemicals - basically, the ingredients that he used to make two explosive devices that were found in his vehicle, which, of course, he didn't detonate. Now, the FBI says, for all of those purchases, Crooks used aliases to buy those things online.
KELLY: We also know they've got his phone. They managed to get into it. What have they learned?
LUCAS: Right. They've been analyzing his cell phones, plus his laptop, his router, memory cards, social media accounts, his online search history, all of that. The FBI director told Congress last week that a week before the shooting, Crooks had searched online for - a direct quote here - "how far was Oswald from Kennedy?" - referring, of course, to Lee Harvey Oswald, who shot President Kennedy in 1963. Today, we learned about a couple of other online searches that Crooks was making. That includes information related to power plants, to mass shootings, information on homemade bombs and the attempted assassination of the Slovakian prime minister earlier this year.
KELLY: What about just the basic question, how he managed to get that very clear line of sight on Donald Trump? What's the FBI saying there?
LUCAS: So the security plan and what went wrong from the security side isn't the FBI's focus. There are other investigations looking at that piece. The FBI is focused on the gunman. And today, they basically gave their timeline so far for Crooks' actions on the 13, including, in particular, the last hour before the shooting. And they say law enforcement identified Crooks as a suspicious person just after 5:00 p.m. About an hour later, at 5:56, he was seen walking with a backpack, but he wasn't on the roof of the building yet. By 6:08, he was up on the roof. A police dash cam saw him walking across the building towards his ultimate firing position. Three minutes later, a policeman was lifted up to the roof, immediately dropped down because Crooks had pointed a gun at him. And it was just 25 to 30 seconds after that that Crooks fired eight shots and then was killed by a counter sniper.
KELLY: NPR's Ryan Lucas. Thank you, Ryan.
LUCAS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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