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Five days have passed since the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, and authorities are no closer to knowing what motivated Thomas Matthew Crooks to do it than they were five minutes after the fact. Nearly as frustrating is the fact that Crooks was able to get as close to Trump as he did in the first place. ABC News Crime and Terrorism Analyst Brad Garrett has been following the investigation into Crooks and appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to explain his disbelief at the investigation.
Garrett told Berman and Riedel that a post by Crooks, discovered on Thursday morning just moments before he appeared on the show, doesn’t yield any insight into what Crooks was thinking. “They apparently have found something on a gaming platform where he makes some comments that ‘July 13th will be my premier,’ so we’ll see if that sorts out, but that’s just one post. I mean, a twenty-year-old that ends up doing things like this tends to have posts and social media presence all over the place, and apparently he doesn’t, and it’s led [authorities] to scratch their heads as to what was his real motive. Now, obviously he had a motive beyond trying to assassinate a former president. He apparently had an explosive device in his car, at his home, and a remote-control device that potentially could have set both of them off.”
Garrett also explained his disbelief at the statements by Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle that imply she will stay on after the nearly successful assassination attempt. “I don’t know how you can come up with any scenario that you can justify somebody- he was on that roof a long time, I know, that somebody didn’t go up there and either jerk him down or shoot him. This is a communications breakdown, and it may be a lack of manpower. It’s been reported that the Secret Service asked for either the city or county police to place a patrol car by that building, and they said they couldn’t do it [so] to say that this is a colossal failure is an understatement.”
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