WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump has agreed to be interviewed by the FBI as part of an investigation into his attempted assassination in Pennsylvania earlier this month, a special agent said on Monday in disclosing how the gunman prior to the shooting had researched mass attacks and explosive devices.
The expected interview with the 2024 Republican presidential nominee is part of the FBI’s standard protocol to speak with victims during the course of its criminal investigations. The FBI said on Friday that Trump was struck in the ear by a bullet or a fragment of one during the July 13 assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“We want to get his perspective on what he observed,” said Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office. “It is a standard victim interview like we would do for any other victim of crime, under any other circumstance.”
Trump said in a Fox News interview that aired Monday night that he expected the FBI interview to take place Thursday.
Through more than 450 interviews, the FBI has fleshed out a portrait of the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, that reveals him to be a “highly intelligent” but reclusive 20-year-old whose primary social circle was his family and who maintained few friends and acquaintances throughout his life, Rojek said. Even in online gaming platforms that Crooks visited, his interactions with peers appeared to have been minimal, the FBI said.
His parents have been “extremely cooperative,” with the investigation, Rojek said. They have said they had no advance knowledge of the shooting.
The FBI has not uncovered a motive as to why he chose to target Trump, but investigators believe the shooting was the result of extensive planning, including the purchase under an alias in recent months of chemical precursors that investigators believe were used to create the explosive devices found in his car and his home, and the deployment of a drone about 200 yards (180 meters) from the rally site in the hours before the event.
The day before the shooting, the FBI says, Crooks visited a local shooting range and practiced with the gun that would be used in the attack.
After the shooting, authorities found two explosive devices in Crooks’ car and a third in his room at home. The devices recovered from the car, consisting of ammunition boxes filled with explosive material with wires, receivers and ignition devices, were capable of exploding but did not because the receivers were in the “off” position, Rojek said. How much damage they could have done is unclear.
The FBI has said that Crooks in the lead-up to the shooting had shown an online interest in prominent public figures, searching online for information about individuals including President Joe Biden. In addition, Rojek said, Crooks looked up information about mass shootings, improvised explosive devices, power plants and the attempted assassination in May of Slovakia's populist Prime Minister Robert Fico.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress last week that on July 6, the day Crooks registered to attend the Trump rally, he googled: “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?” That's a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooter who killed President John F. Kennedy from a sniper’s perch in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
New details, meanwhile, were emerging about law enforcement security lapses and missed communications that preceded the shooting.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, released text messages from members of the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit that showed how local officers had communicated with each other about a suspicious-behaving man who turned out to be Crooks lurking around more than an hour before the shooting.
One text just before 4:30 p.m. describes a man “sitting to the direct right on a picnic table about 50 yards from the exit.”
In another text at 5:38 p.m., an officer tells other counter-snipers: "Kid learning around building we are in. AGR I believe it is. I did see him with a range finder looking towards stage. FYI. If you wanna notify SS snipers to look out. I lost sight of him.” Photographs of Crooks circulated among the group.
AGR is a reference to a complex of buildings that form AGR International Inc, a supplier of automation equipment for the glass and plastic packaging industry. Crooks scaled the roof of one of the buildings of the compound and is believed to have fired eight shots at the rally stage with an AR-style rifle that was purchased legally by his father years earlier.
The shots were fired at 6:12 p.m., according to a Beaver County after-action report.
Trump said he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” and he appeared in the days later with a bandage on the ear. One rallygoer, Corey Comperatore, was killed, and two others were injured. Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service counter-sniper.
In an interview with ABC News, a Beaver County officer who sounded the alarm said that after sending a text alerting others to Crooks, “I assumed that there would be somebody coming out to speak with this individual or find out what's going on.”
Another officer told ABC News that the group was supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service counter-snipers but that that never happened.
An email to the Secret Service seeking comment was not immediately returned Monday.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, listens as U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testifies before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, July 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
Major League Baseball announced Tuesday it will produce and distribute local broadcasts for the Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers and Minnesota Twins next year. All three teams had contracts with Diamond Sports Group that expired at the end of the regular season.
The Texas Rangers, whose deal also expired last month, also announced they will no longer be partnering with Diamond. They are assessing their options for next season.
The addition of the Guardians, Brewers and Twins means MLB will be handling the production and distribution of at least six teams going into 2025.
MLB took over broadcasts of the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks during the 2023 season and the Colorado Rockies this year.
Rick Schlesinger, the president of business operations for the Brewers, said he expects more teams could be partnering with MLB by the opening of next season.
“This has been a long process. It’s a very deliberative process," he said. "We’ve done this through a lot of work, a lot of analysis. I think this is going to be a huge game changer for us, for our content.”
By taking over the broadcasts, MLB expects to increase the market reach of its teams by at least 2 million households in each market. The Diamondbacks went from being available in 930,000 households on a regional sports network to 5.6 million homes through a combination of being on local cable systems, satellite and direct-to-consumer streaming.
“With the media landscape continuing to evolve, Major League Baseball is committed to serving our fans by ensuring they can see their favorite clubs, removing blackouts where we can, and ultimately growing the reach of our games,” Noah Garden, MLB deputy commissioner for business and media, said in a statement.
The Twins took a public relations hit in Minnesota for cutting their 2024 player payroll coming off a division title and their first postseason series win in 22 years, in light of the reduced rights fee coming from Diamond. They will lose the rights fee altogether with this MLB-produced model, but team president Dave St. Peter said this announcement would not have an effect on player spending for the upcoming season.
“We’ve spent a tremendous amount of time with Major League Baseball trying to better understand this marketplace, trying to better understand what a model like this will ultimately provide to the team. We also have studied closely what’s happened in San Diego, in Arizona and in Colorado. We’ve gotten comfortable in those economics. They are where they are," St. Peter said.
"We do expect that there will be a reduction in local revenue coming to the Twins in 2025. I think that’s a fact. That said, over the long haul we have tremendous confidence in our content and believe, while maybe we’ll take a dip for ’25, that over time the viewership and those economics related to that viewership will increase.”
Cleveland games were available on approximately 1.45 million households on its regional sports network. That reach is expected to increase 235% to 4.86 million households. Minnesota's will go up 307% from 1.08 million homes to 4.4 million.
Schlesinger said the Brewers had 800,000 households that could receive games this past season, but he also expects to see significant growth with the new model.
“From a fan perspective, it’s great because you’re going to have total access and no blackouts," he said. “There’s a lot of staffing, a lot of infrastructure, a lot of decisions have to be made, a lot of people to be hired, a lot of sponsors to contact. This is the right time to do this. It’s a good jumping point, platform to make sure when the calendar turns to 2025, we’re already fully immersed in this and that we know when the first game starts, that we’re ready to go and the product’s going to be outstanding.”
MLB could be taking over more teams as Diamond Sports Group continues to go through bankruptcy proceedings. The nation's largest owner of regional sports networks could be down to doing only Atlanta Braves games in 2025.
The operator of the Bally Sports regional networks presented its reorganization plan in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston last week. As part of the reorganization, Diamond plans to void the contracts of the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays and to attempt to rework the deals of the five franchises that are partial owners of their regional sports networks — the Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals.
St. Peter said he expects more teams to sign onto the model in the future.
“Starting to build that direct-to-consumer foundation, which clearly is the future of the way our games will be distributed — it’s time to get on with that and we’re excited about that,” St. Peters said. “Our ownership understands the consequences of that, but I think over time there’s way more upside than short-term downside.”
A final hearing on Diamond's reorganization plan is scheduled for Nov. 14. Diamond also has the rights to 13 NBA and eight NHL teams.
Diamond Sports Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group bought the regional sports networks from The Walt Disney Co. for nearly $10 billion in 2019. Disney was required by the Department of Justice to sell the networks for its acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets to be approved.
AP sports writers Dave Campbell in Minneapolis and Steve Megargee in Milwaukee contributed to this story.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
FILE - A fan takes photos during the seventh inning of a baseball game between the Minnesota Twins and the Kansas City Royals Sunday, Sept. 8, 2024, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)
The Cleveland Guardians hold a baseball workout in Cleveland, Friday, Oct. 4, 2024, in preparation for the American League Division Series against the Detroit Tigers. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Bally reporter, Hanna Yates, broadcasts her pregame with fans standing behind her waiting for autographs before the start of a baseball game between the New York Mets and the Atlanta Braves, Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Jason Allen)
MLB will air local games for Guardians, Brewers and Twins beginning next season
MLB will air local games for Guardians, Brewers and Twins beginning next season
