WASHINGTON (TND) — The FBI deputy director, Paul Abbate, shared a possible motive in the Trump assassination attempt during an explosive hearing before Senate lawmakers.
According to Abbate, investigators recently uncovered a social media account they believe is associated with 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks.
Crooks, the would-be assassin, had over 700 comments from an account made in a 2019 and 2020 timeframe that reflected antisemitic and anti-immigration themes.
Abbatte said the comments "espouse political violence and are describedas extreme in nature."
He pointed out to lawmakers that the investigative team on the Butler, Pennsylvania rally shooting are still "working to verify the [social media] account."
"We believe it important to share and noted today, particularly given the general absence of other information to date from social media and other sources of information that reflect on the shooter's potential, motive, and mindset," said Abbatte.
In a post hearing news conference Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) demanded that the FBI provide clarity on Crooks’ latest social media account that the Republican said reveals "leftist policies."
"It was an account@gab.com,and this account shows Crooks to besomeone who is leftist in his leanings.He was pro illegal immigration.He was pro lock downs - pro those leftist policies," said Blackburn.
U.S. Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe Jr. was in the hot seat after his opening remarks where he admitted his agency's failures on July 13.
In Rowe's opening statement, he testified that he “cannot defend" why the roof where Crooks shot from "was not better secured.”
Rowe, a 25-year veteran with the agency, said he visited the site and got on the roof. He was "ashamed" at what he saw.
"I laid in a prone position to evaluate his [Crooks] line of sight.What I saw made me ashamed,"said Rowe.
The testimony was the most detailed catalog to date by the Secret Service of law enforcement failings and miscommunications, with Rowe criticizing local law enforcement for communication breakdowns that resulted in his agency not receiving information that a gunman had been seen on the roof of a building less than 150 yards from the rally stage where Trump was speaking.
“Neither the Secret Service counter sniper teams nor members of the former president’s security detail had any knowledge that there was a man on the roof of the building with a firearm,” Rowe said. “It is my understanding those personnel were not aware the assailant had a firearm until they heard gunshots.”
He said that the shooting amounted to a “failure on multiple levels,” including a failure of imagination and a “failure to challenge our assumptions.”
“We assumed that the state and locals had it,” Rowe said. “We made an assumption that there was going to be uniformed presence out there, that there would be sufficient eyes to cover that, that there was going to be counter-sniper teams” in the building from whose roof Crooks fired shots.
“And I can assure you,” Rowe added, "that we’re not going to make that mistake again.”
Sen. John Corny called Rowe's assumptions "lethal."
Rowe became acting director of the Secret Service last week after Kimberly Cheatle resigned in the aftermath of a House hearing in which she was berated by lawmakers of both major political parties and failed to answer specific questions about the communication failures preceding the Trump rally shooting.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said if something like this happened in the military, “a lot of people would be fired. And if a lot of people are not fired, the system failed yet again.”
He added: “Nothing’s going to change until somebody loses their job.”
The hearing came a day after the FBI released new details about its investigation into the shooting, revealing that the gunman had looked online for information about mass shootings, power plants, improvised explosive devices and the May assassination attempt of the Slovakian prime minister.
The FBI also said that Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has agreed to be interviewed by agents as a crime victim. The bureau said last week that the former president had been struck in the ear by a bullet or a bullet fragment. Trump, who appeared at events over the next few days with a bandage on his right ear, said he expects the interview to take place on Thursday.
One rallygoer was killed, and two others were injured. Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service counter-sniper.
At Cheatle's hearing last week, she said the Secret Service had “failed” in its mission to protect Trump. She called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades and vowed to “move heaven and earth” to get to the bottom of what went wrong and make sure there’s no repeat of it.
Cheatle acknowledged that the Secret Service was told about a suspicious person two to five times before the shooting at the rally. She also revealed that the roof from which Crooks opened fire had been identified as a potential vulnerability days before the rally.
Cheatle said she apologized to Trump in a phone call after the assassination attempt.
In a Monday night interview on Fox News Channel, Trump defended the Secret Service agents who protected him from the shooting but said that someone should have been on the roof with Crooks and that there should have been better communication with local police.
“They didn’t speak to each other,” he said.
He praised the sniper who killed Crooks with what he said was an amazing shot but noted: “It would have been good if it was nine seconds sooner.”
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) called for an independent, non-political commission to review investigation into the Trump assassination attempt and for President Biden to appoint a crisis leadership team at the U.S. Secret Service.
Editor's Note: The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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