The FBI is leading the probe into the attempted assassination of ex-President Trump

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

We begin with the calls for calmer political rhetoric, one of which came from President Biden. At another fraught time, just before the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln told his fellow citizens, we are not enemies, but friends. Biden chose similar language as he listed a series of violent events.

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PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: While we may disagree, we are not enemies. We're neighbors, we're friends, co-workers, citizens, and, most importantly, we're fellow Americans. We must stand together.

SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:

The President went on to say there is no place in America for violence, like Saturday's assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

INSKEEP: The FBI is leading the investigation, and NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is following that investigation. Ryan, good morning.

RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.

INSKEEP: What are the facts you know?

LUCAS: Well, the FBI says they believe that the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, acted alone. The main question hanging over this, of course, is motive, and the FBI says at this point, it has not identified a motive or an ideology that drove Crooks. It's investigating the attack as an assassination attempt and possible domestic terrorism act. The FBI official leading this investigation, Kevin Rojek, spoke to reporters yesterday. He also says investigators haven't found any social media posts or writings that contain threatening language, and he says there's no indication that Crooks had any mental health issues. We in the media, of course, are also doing our own digging. I have confirmed that Crooks was a member of a shooting range near his home, the Clairton Sportsmen's Club. Crooks was also a registered Republican, but had donated $15 to a Democratic group back in 2021. He doesn't appear to have had any criminal record. The FBI, though, has its own tools to dig, and officials caution that this is going to be a long investigation, and there's a lot of work to be done.

INSKEEP: This feels similar to a lot of shooting investigations - you have all these data points, they're gathering data points about the person, and in the middle is this question of motive, which is a blank. So what does the FBI do to try to get into that hole?

LUCAS: Well, there are two key pieces of evidence that they have recovered that they're working on - the alleged shooter's gun, and his cellphone. Both have been sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., for analysis. Now, the FBI says the gun was purchased legally, it believes, by the shooter's father. Rojek identified it as an AR-556, which is an AR-15-style rifle. The cellphone, though, to your question, is an urgent focus for investigators. The FBI has the phone, but, as of yesterday afternoon, hadn't been able to crack into it to get access to its contents - and doing that, of course, would likely reveal a ton of information about the alleged gunman's communications, his whereabouts, text messages and so on, and that would be useful for the FBI as it's trying to build out a timeline, a sequence of events, to understand what Crooks was doing, where he was in the weeks, the days and then hours leading up to the shooting.

INSKEEP: I want to think about the way that President Biden framed this. He named a large number of incidents over a number of years. What are authorities making of this wider pattern?

LUCAS: Well, look, two of the top law enforcement officials in this country, Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, have been warning about the problem of political violence for years now, and there has been a steady drumbeat of violent threats against everything from local election workers and local government officials to federal law enforcement and judges and, of course, also members of Congress, and there have also been plenty of examples of real political violence, as well, some of which President Biden mentioned last night. Members of both parties have been shot in recent years. Democrat Gabby Giffords, Republican Steve Scalise come to mind. There has been violence directed at the FBI. There was the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and now, we have this attempted assassination of former President Trump. Biden, in his speech, was clearly, as you noted, trying to cool things down and to remind Americans not to head down that path - that violence isn't the way to solve political differences.

INSKEEP: We had a similar statement from House Speaker Mike Johnson on TV over the weekend, urging people from both parties to cool down the rhetoric. Ryan, thanks very much for the insights. Really appreciate it.

LUCAS: Thanks, Steve.

INSKEEP: That's NPR's Ryan Lucas. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.