FBI Director Christopher Wray told House lawmakers Wednesday his agency believes former President Donald Trump’s would-be assassin in Butler, Pennsylvania live-streamed the venue with a drone two hours before the rally.
“We have recovered a drone that the shooter appears to have used,” Wray said, which is now being analyzed by an agency lab. “The drone was recovered in his vehicle, so at the time of the shooting the drone was in his vehicle with the controller.”
Wray said the shooter was “flying the drone around the area” roughly “200 yards” away from the rally grounds just hours before the event was scheduled to begin. “We think, but we do not know,” Wray said, “that he was live-streaming, viewing the footage.”
Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan pressed Wray about several bombs discovered in the shooter’s car after the assassination attempt.
“We’ve recovered three devices,” Wray said, “three in his vehicle and one back in his residence.” The FBI director characterized the bombs as “relatively crude devices” but added “they did have the ability to be detonated remotely.” The shooter, Wray said, had a transmitter with him when he was killed by law enforcement, but explained “because of the on/off position on the receivers, that if he had tried to detonate those devices from the roof, it would not have worked.”
Wray also told lawmakers the weapon used by the shooter had a “collapsible stock,” which, “could explain why it might have been less easy for people to observe.”
“We haven’t yet found anybody with a first-hand observation of him with the weapon walking around beforehand,” Wray said.
A source with the Secret Service told Fox News last week that authorities believe the shooter hid the firearm at the site of the event.
The FBI director told the Judiciary Committee his agency has no evidence of co-conspirators at this point, and that the 20-year-old may have acted alone despite leaked intelligence of an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump.
“So far, we have not found any evidence of any accomplices or co-conspirators, foreign or domestic,” Wray said.
Wray also offered more details into what investigators found on the would-be assassin’s recovered laptop. The shooter had searched how far away Lee Harvey Oswald was from the President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade in 1963.
“On July 6th, he did a Google search for ‘How far away was Oswald from Kennedy,’” Wray said.
“That is the same day that it appears that he registered for the Butler rally,” said the FBI director.
The Wall Street Journal first reported news of the drone last week which flew “on a programmed flight path.”
“The predetermined path,” the Journal reported, “suggests Crooks flew the drone more than once as he researched and scoped out the event site.”
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned Tuesday after her own hearing before the House Oversight Committee on Monday wherein the agency chief refused to answer many of lawmakers’ questions into the worst presidential security failure in more than 40 years. At one point, Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C. asked Cheatle whether the Secret Service had “recorded communications from the July 13th event.”
“We do not have radio communications from that day,” she said.
Cheatle stepped down after a bipartisan crescendo of calls for her to lose her job in the wake of brazen security lapses at Trump’s Pennsylvania event. A source told The Federalist that Trump’s team had repeatedly pled with federal officials to beef up security but were rebuffed “time and again” while the roof from where the shooter shot the Republican presidential nominee was left open because it was “sloped.”
On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported the Secret Service encouraged the Trump campaign to quit planning any more events outside. Federalist Senior Election Correspondent Matt Kittle reported “it’s not clear whether the agency has made the same requests of Vice President Kamala Harris.”
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