LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A former top FBI official said the agency would thoroughly investigate the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump without regard to conspiracy theories that sprang up almost immediately in the wake of Saturday's shooting.
On Monday, he said Trump's history of criticism of the FBI wouldn't change the way special agents do their work.
Greg Brower, a former Nevada lawmaker, served as the assistant director and deputy general counsel of the FBI, as well as overseeing the Office of Congressional Affairs, starting in 2016. He also served as U.S. attorney for Nevada from 2008 to 2009.
"It would appear at this preliminary stage that this was a lone wolf sort of effort on the part of the now-deceased shooter and there was not a broader conspiracy," Brower said in an interview Monday. "However, the FBI — you can rest assured — is investigating every possible lead and angle to this event."
That investigation will include how the shooter, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was able to get so close to where Trump was speaking in Butler, Penn., and why he used his father's borrowed rifle to try to kill the former president.
The investigation will include searching his electronic devices for messages, email and phone calls that might point to a motive, establish his whereabouts over the last few days leading up to the attack, determine where he got the ammunition for the rifle he used and even potential interviews of high school classmates to find an answer to the most-asked question: why?
Brower said it's rare to not find a motive. Many times, assailants have posted something on social media or talked to associates about their crime before it happens.
But he noted that in the nation's largest mass shooting — the Oct. 1, 2017 attack on the Route 91 Harvest music festival — no motive was ever determined despite an extensive investigation by the FBI and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
Conspiracy theories thrive after shooting
Conspiracy theories began almost as soon as the shots faded, everything from the idea that the attack was staged to help Trump's campaign to claims Democrats and President Biden ordered the attack. But Brower said those claims would not impact the investigation.
"Not really, except to the extent that there may be something from social media that constitutes a lead, which is not uncommon the way people communicate on social media," Brower said. "If an investigating agent sees something that he or she thinks might lead to some evidence, then of course that will be run down."
The fact that the FBI is the agency charged with investigating Trump's would-be killer is ironic, given the criticism that Trump and Republicans have heaped on the agency in recent years. Trump especially criticized the bureau after special agents served a search warrant on his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 looking for improperly retained classified documents. (Trump claimed the bureau was authorized to use deadly force against him during the raid, a claim fact checkers said was exaggerated.)
On Monday, a federal judge dismissed the classified documents case that was the reason for that search.
But Brower said the bureau had acted apolitically, even after Trump infamously fired former FBI Director James Comey , and would continue to do so.
"What I can tell you, having worked closely with him, Chris Wray, the FBI director, will ensure the bureau does the best job it can possibly do in investigating the facts, and then communicating as transparently as possible what the findings of that investigation are," Brower said.
But that kind of probe — even if the would-be assassin acted alone — is still labor-intensive and the public may have to wait for answers, he said.
WATCH FULL INTERVIEW WITH FORMER FBI EXECUTIVE GREG BROWER
