Media Call Transcript

FBI Assistant Director Cathy Milhoan: Good afternoon, everybody. This is Cathy Milhoan, assistant director of the FBI's Office of Public Affairs. Thank you all for joining us. I know you've had lots of questions, and we wanted to get everybody on the call. This call is on the record and you may record it for audio.

We're going to have brief remarks at the top from Attorney General Garland and Director Wray. They'll both be dropping off the call after that, and then be followed by a series of operational briefings. We  have Deputy Director Paul Abbate. We have Executive Assistant Director Robert Bobby Wells, and we have the FBI Pittsburgh Special Agent in Charge Kevin Rojek. So, with that, Mr. Attorney General, I'll turn it over to you, sir.

Attorney General Merrick Garland: Thank you. I want to begin by saying that I'm grateful that former President Trump is safe following yesterday's horrific assassination attempt. On behalf of the entire Justice Department, I want to extend my deepest condolences to the loved ones of the spectator who was killed. Our hearts are with them and with those critically injured and their families. And I am deeply grateful to the agents and law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line during yesterday's attack.

I spent the morning in briefings with Justice Department personnel, as well as our partners across the federal government. And earlier today, I briefed President Biden in the situation room on our investigation of yesterday's shooting. I have directed the FBI, the ATF, U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania, and the Department's National Security Division to bring every available resources to bear on this investigation.

I want to reiterate that the violence that we saw yesterday is an attack on our democracy itself. The Justice Department has no tolerance for such violence, and as Americans, we must have no tolerance for it. This must stop. I will now pass things over to FBI Director Wray.

FBI Director Christopher Wray: Thank you, Attorney General Garland. What we witnessed yesterday was nothing short of an attack on democracy and our democratic process. An attempt to assassinate a presidential candidate can only be described as absolutely despicable and will not be tolerated in this country. I want to start by offering my deepest condolences to all the victims of yesterday's shooting and their families. Our hearts go out to the family of the individual who was killed, the two others who were critically wounded, and of course, former President Trump and his family.

I want to make sure they know, and the American people know, that the men and women of the FBI are working tirelessly to get to the bottom of what happened. The shooter may be deceased, but the investigation is very much ongoing, and because of that, we are limited in what we can say at this point. But what I can say is that we  have committed the full force of the FBI to this investigation. Both criminal and national security resources, tactical support, evidence response teams to help process the crime scene, victim services specialists, the FBI lab, and our operational technology division to process the physical evidence recovered.

We also continue to operate our FBI tip line and encourage anyone with information to reach out to us as soon as possible. Both in our FBI Field Office in Pittsburgh and in our Command Post at FBI Headquarters, we continue to work closely with our federal, state, and local partners, as we did throughout the night last night, to ensure there was no ongoing threat to former President Trump or to the people of Pennsylvania.

The American people can rest assured that we will leave no stone unturned as we work to get to the bottom of what happened yesterday. Thank you again to all those who are hard at work on this investigation. And with that, I'll go ahead and hand the floor over to FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate.

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate: Thank you, sir. We're going to go out directly to SAC Kevin Rojek for the Pittsburgh Field Office to give us an operational briefing and overview, and then we'll take it back here at FBI Headquarters. Thank you all.

FBI Pittsburgh Special Agent in Charge Kevin Rojek: Good afternoon. My name is Kevin Rojek. I'm the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Pittsburgh Division, and I currently have the lead for this investigative effort on the assassination attempt of former President Trump. To echo the words of the Director, on behalf of the FBI, I want to offer my sincere condolences to the former president, to the family of Corey Comperatore, who was a spectator killed at the scene, as well as the other victims' families and those at the rally and in our communities who were affected by yesterday's violence.

Rest assured, we have brought the full resources of the FBI to bear in the pursuit of answers related to this heinous event. I want to thank the public for your patience as we meticulously investigate this case. At this time, the information that we have indicates that the shooter acted alone and that there are currently no public safety concerns. At present, we have not identified an ideology associated with the subject, but I want to remind everyone that we're still very early in this investigation.

We are working hard to determine the sequence of events related to the subject and his movements in the hours, days, and weeks prior to the shooting, and we are following all investigative leads. We have a robust presence on the ground currently in Butler, Pennsylvania, at the Butler County Fairgrounds, as well as at FBI Headquarters and here in the FBI Pittsburgh Field Office.

This includes our evidence response team, who is on scene processing the scene as we speak, special agents who are covering investigative leads, technical specialists who are exploiting all digital evidence and media, as well as the shooter's social media accounts, lab services who are processing DNA evidence, fingerprints, as well as the shooter's weapon. And we have several victim specialists on the ground who are working closely with Pennsylvania State Police Victim Services specialists. As I mentioned, our evidence response team continues to process the scene, and we have several items of evidence that are being transported to the FBI lab at Quantico, Virginia, for processing and exploitation, to include the shooter's weapon and his cellular telephone.

I can confirm that the gun used in the shooting was an AR style 556 rifle, which was purchased legally. We located the weapon at the scene located immediately adjacent to the shooter at the scene. We searched the shooter's car, and we're in the process of searching his phone.

During the search of the vehicle, we located a suspicious device, which was inspected by bomb technicians. This caused a significant delay in our processing of the scene for officer safety reasons. We have seized the device, rendered it safe, and we are also in the process of analyzing that further. We cordoned off an area around the vehicle for safety, and again, we have transported that device also to the lab at Quantico. The subject has been negative in all FBI holdings.

I want to personally thank the FBI agents, analysts, technicians, who are working around the clock to make sure that we bring justice for the individuals affected by this incident.

I also want to recognize our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners, as well as our partners from the U.S. Attorney's Office and specifically highlight our partnership with the Pennsylvania State Police and their victim services.

I want to remind the public that if you have any information about yesterday's attack, please contact the FBI tip line at 1-800-CALLFBI or send information to fbi.gov/butler. At this time, we've already received over 2,000 tips, which we are diligently analyzing, and we continue to ask for the public's assistance in this effort. Thank you.

Milhoan: AD Wells?

FBI Executive Assistant Director Robert R. Wells: Good afternoon, everyone. Bobby Wells here. Also wanted to start by offering my condolences to the families and victims related to this heinous act. As the SAC mentioned, we're working 24/7 around the clock. We have a 24/7 command post in Pittsburgh, as well as here at FBI headquarters, dedicating every resource that we have at our disposal.

Our number one goal here is to identify the motive of the subject and determine whether he had any other associates or anyone else that was involved. At this point in the investigation, it appears that he was a lone actor, but we still have more investigation to go. We are investigating this as an assassination attempt, but also looking at it as a potential domestic terrorism act.

So our counterterrorism division and our criminal divisions are working jointly to determine the motive in this case. We have deployed all available resources to Pittsburgh. We also have a tip line that has been set up, and we've received over 2,600 tips. Every single tip that we receive, we will be investigating and running it down as quickly as we possibly can.

I think the law enforcement outreach is critically important. We just held a call with some of our senior law enforcement leaders around the country to provide a similar update of what we've seen so far. So, going forward, we'll continue to investigate aggressively, and we're going to be very focused on any other potential threats that we may see coming in via social media, and also threats, any threats that we would see in the upcoming RNC next week and DNC. And I'll now pass it over to Deputy Director Abbate.

Abbate: Cathy, I'm going to turn back to you at this time to go to questions, and then we'll go from there.

Milhoan: Okay, thank you all very much. So the Deputy said we'll now go ahead and open it up for Q&A. I'm going to hand it back to the moderator, he'll give you instructions and key folks up. Thank you.

Reporter Question: Thanks. Can you say whether the gunman had any mental health treatment history or, in the course of your investigation, you've uncovered evidence of a mental health problem?

And also, now that you've gone -- I understand what you said about no holdings related to this subject, but now that you've begun looking at him, have you found any threats that you -- that he had made that maybe weren't picked up or noticed at the time?

Rojek: This is Kevin Rojek. At this time, we have no indications of any mental health issues. And sorry, what was the second part of the question?

Reporter Question: The second one was, I understand you don't have any holdings on him of prior interactions with law enforcement. What I'm curious about is, as you have been unpacking his life and activities, have you now come across any threatening statements by him, either on social media or in other contexts that perhaps did not rise to level of law enforcement before?

Rojek: So, as of this time, no. But again, it's still very early in the investigation. We continue to look at all his social media accounts and look for any potential threatening language, but as of right now, we have not seen any.

Reporter Question: Good afternoon, and thank you for doing this, everyone. I think my question is, can you give us any sense of what type of social media information he was consuming? Was it conspiracy driven misinformation? Can you give us any kind of information on what he was consuming of late?

Rojek: Again, this is Kevin Rojek. Again, the primary avenue we're trying to get to is a determined motive. We're looking into his background, his day-to-day activities, any writings and social media posts that might help us identify what led to this shooting. And we have not seen anything threatening at this time. So, right now, we're still, again, still early on, still diving into all the social media information.

Reporter Question: Hi. Thanks. I think one of you, I think Mr. Rojek, might have mentioned that there was -- his devices were being transported and being looked at. Can you give us an update of what exactly the status of that is? Have you been able to get into his cell phone or his computer? Have you been able to get through those passwords, or is that something that is still ongoing?

And the other, just as a follow up on the circumstance at the rally, we've seen from witnesses and from some of the local officials that he appeared to be trying to get access to the magnetometer area. He was lurking in that area, and that raised some concerns. Have you uncovered any of that in your investigation as far as trying to understand what happened yesterday?

Rojek: So, regarding the devices, right now, our primary focus is on the phone, and we are working to get access to the phone. We have shipped the phone to our lab at Quantico, and as of this time, we still don't have access to the phone, although we do have possession of the physical phone. Regarding the individual's actions in and around the event, I do not have that level of detail.

We are still in the process of creating a timeline associated with his actions prior to the event in the, again, days, weeks, hours leading up to the event. So, that's something that will come out later in the process of the investigation.

Abbate: Just to add to that, as Kevin said, we're urgently working to gain access to the subject's phone and fully exploit it. We believe we'll be able to accomplish that fairly quickly. We do -- I'm not going to go into detail -- we do have some limited insights into recent communications that he's made. Texts and phone call information that thus far has not revealed anything with regard to motive, or the involvement or knowledge of anyone else in this, but we have a lot of work to do still.

Reporter Question: Or any indication of what he was intending to do, correct?

Abbate: Nothing on that either, so far.

Reporter Question: Yes, hi, thank you so much for doing this call. I was wondering if you can elaborate on the nature of former President Trump's injury. Do you have confirmation that he was actively shot, or was his wound caused by some other sort of injury? Thank you so much.

Rojek: I don't have the details on the condition of the former president.

Reporter Question: Thanks, guys, for doing this. Is there any indication that, and again, I'll just ask this, I might be retouching on what was already said, that the shooter had a confrontation with law enforcement before he climbed up on the roof?

Rojek: Again, we don't have any indications of that. We're still, again, working with the local authorities who are there. We're still conducting interviews of people who are actually on the scene. So, we don't have any kind of fidelity right now on the shooter's actions immediately prior to him engaging the former president.

Reporter Question: And the second part of that question is, have the family members been cooperative with the FBI?

Rojek: So, from what the information that I've received is that, yes, the family is cooperating with our investigation at this time.

Reporter Question: Hi. Two quick questions. First, are you guys speaking to anybody with the Secret Service advance team and interviewing them and finding out why there was no coverage of this elevated position?

And then my second question is, and I understand you say that there's no interaction that you're aware of with law enforcement before he shot at former President Trump. The Associated Press is reporting that he pointed his gun at law enforcement and then law enforcement -- so, did that happen on the roof? I'm trying to figure out, was there any interaction on the roof, specifically?

Rojek: To address the first part of your question regarding interviews of Secret Service agents. The focus of our investigation will be the actions associated with the attack on the former president. And so, the questions that we're asking of now are related to that. They are not necessarily focused on the security of the event and the grounds. That's something that the Secret Service would be in a better place to answer than me.

And then, again, as far as the actions of the shooter immediately prior to the event and any interaction they may have had with law enforcement, we're still trying to flesh out those details now.

Abbate: I would add that, ultimately, while we're prioritizing certain things like motive and some of the things we've touched on immediately right now, we do plan a full scope investigation to encompass the entire timeline of the events leading up to this, how it happened, as well.

Reporter Question: And on the phone, are you guys working with Apple or what phone company are you working with?

Abbate: We're not going to be in a position to disclose the service provider in the phone at this stage.

Reporter Question: Hey, guys, thanks for doing this. On the weapon that was bought by his father, do you have any indication whether he borrowed or just took or stole the weapon? And the second part of that, it seemed like he knew what he was doing. So, do you have any indication that he had any practice with an assault rifle? I mean, that's a pretty long way to shoot and fairly accurate if you hit somebody in the ear from X number -- a couple hundred yards away, at least.

Rojek: So, as we conduct interviews of the family members, we're going to direct questions in that vein. As far as how the shooter gained access to the weapon, you are correct, we believe the weapon was purchased by his father, but we do not know specifically how he accessed the weapon and whether he took it without his father's knowledge. These are facts that we'll flesh out as we conduct the interviews. And then the second part of your question, can you say again, please?

Reporter Question: Yes. Thanks. The second part is, do you have any indication yet? I know it's been kind of less than a day, was that he had any practice using a weapon of that sort? That's a pretty good shot from a long way away.

Rojek: We're still trying to work through the details as far as his affinity for weapons and how much, if any, times he went to the range. These are the type of leads that we're trying to track down, and we'll be conducting interviews over the next days and weeks.

Reporter Question: And do you have any indication this is a straw purchase, by any chance?

Rojek: No, we have no indication.

Reporter Question: I'm guessing it's probably premature to say this, but can you just describe the explosive devices that you found in the car and in the residence? What you know, how were those crudely made? Like, what were they made of? Were they designed to go off? Anything that you can say about what those constituted and if they were, and if you can sort of describe, you know, where in the house you found them, and if anybody else who was living in the house seemed to have an awareness of that?

Rojek: I'm not in a position to provide any expertise on the specific components of any potential bombs or suspicious packages. We left that up to the bomb technicians and they just provided us advice as far as officer safety.

So, and the primary focus at the time was at the vehicle and the devices located in the vehicle, and that was our primary focus last night. But again, I relied on the expertise of the bomb technicians on the ground and don't have the specific details of the contents of the device. And again, we're also continue to analyze that with our lab at Quantico.

Abbate: I'm just going to add to that as Kevin mentioned, we don't have a full assessment of these -- what have been described as explosive devices. They are collected as evidence along with everything else, and they're quickly being flown back to the FBI Laboratory Division at Quantico, where they'll be examined by experts in the field to determine their viability, what they were constructed of, whether they can function, and answer some questions along those lines.

I would describe them as rudimentary, though, based on what we, the preliminary evaluation of what those in the field have seen.

Milhoan: We have no additional questions at this time. Deputy, would you like to close this out?

Abbate: Yes, thank you, Cathy. I just want to thank everyone again for joining the call this afternoon and giving us the opportunity to brief you. This is not typical, but we're leaning far forward here, given the circumstances, and want to keep everyone well informed. As has already been expressed, our thoughts and prayers are with those, the family members of the individual who was killed and also with those who were harmed during this incident and their loved ones as well. And of course, former President Trump and his family.

While we're, very urgently, looking in and mounting this investigation to answer many of the questions that have been brought forward here, we are also looking forward on the threat, as we always do every day, 24/7 as well. And particularly with the online elements, we are seeing, although the rhetoric regarding threats of violence has already increased online, we're seeing that tick up in the aftermath of this event.

We've seen individuals go online and attempt to mimic or pose as the shooter who, obviously, is now deceased. And we're also focused on the continuing efforts, which were already substantial given that there are national special security events on the upcoming conventions in Chicago, in Milwaukee, to work with Secret Service in the lead to play our part in protecting the people and the facilities and the events there, as well. And with that, thank you all again.