Donald Trump is going to be interviewed as part of the investigation into his own assassination attempt, the FBI has said.
This comes as it emerged that police noticed gunman Thomas Crooks more than an hour before he opened fire – and even took a photo of him to share with other law enforcement officers.
The former president was shot in the ear by Crooks during a rally on 13 July in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Trump in the aftermath of the shooting. Pic: AP
“We want to get his perspective on what he observed,” Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said on Monday.
The expected interview with the 2024 Republican presidential nominee is part of the FBI’s standard protocol to speak with victims of federal crimes during the course of its investigations.
Through around 450 interviews, the FBI has fleshed out a portrait of the gunman.
Crooks, 20, was said to be a “highly intelligent” but reclusive young man, who maintained few friends and acquaintances.
The FBI named Thomas Matthew Crooks around seven hours after the alleged assassination attempt of Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Gunman was identified and spotted by SWAT team
Mr Rojek added: “The shooter was identified by law enforcement as a suspicious person.”
He said a local officer took a photo of Crooks and sent it to other law enforcement officials at the scene of the rally.
Then, some 30 minutes later, SWAT team operators saw Crooks using a rangefinder and browsing news sites, Mr Rojek said.
At around 5.56pm local time, Crooks was seen carrying a backpack, less than 20 minutes before the shooting took place.
At 6.08pm he was caught on a police dashboard camera walking on the roof from where he ultimately fired the shots, Mr Rojek added.
Snipers eventually killed Crooks after he opened fire at the rally – injuring Mr Trump and killing Corey Comperatore, 50, a bystander.
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Assassination attempt was extensively planned
Crooks also searched online for details about mass shootings, power plants and improvised explosive devices, the FBI said.
It still isn’t clear what Crooks’s motives for the attack were, but investigators believe the shooting was extensively planned.
This included the purchase of chemical precursors in recent months, that investigators believe were used to create explosive devices that were found in his car.
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On the day that Crooks registered to attend the Trump rally, he searched online: “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?” in a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooter who killed President John F Kennedy from a sniper’s perch in Dallas on 22 November 1963.
Crooks’s parents have been “extremely cooperative” Mr Rojek said and he added they had no knowledge of their son’s plans.