Was Trump Hit By Bullet? FBI Directors Casts Doubt During House Testimony | US News LIVE

uh that the shooter was flying the Drone around uh the area about 11 minutes want to be clear but when I say the area not over the the stage and that part of the area itself I would say about 200 yards give or take away from that we we think but we do not know so again this is one of these things that's qualified because of our ongoing review that he was live streaming you know viewing the footage from that again about 11 minutes in around the 35 4:00 p.m. range two hours before he's flying a drone in the in the vicinity of of the about 200 yards away yard okay that's that's important information what about the bombs that we've heard about in in the in the shooters car so again uh the FBI lab is exploiting those uh explosive devices there were uh We've recovered three devices two uh in his vehicle and one back in his residence um are these are these what you would call your experts would call sophisticated operations or this when we I mean I think I mean I don't know that's what I've been told by people who have some understanding of this area yeah I I I think it's um we've seen more sophisticated and less I would say these are relatively again keyword relatively crude devices themselves but they did have um the ability to be detonated remotely and so to that point uh in addition to the two uh devices that we recovered out of his vehicle um there were uh receivers for those two explosive devices with the devices and then on the shooter himself uh when he was killed by law enforcement uh he had a transmitter with him now I do want to add one important Point here was at the moment it looks to us again ongoing review and I can't say that too many times at a moment it looks like because of the uh onoff position on the receivers that that if he had tried to detonate those devices from the roof it would not have worked but that doesn't mean the explosives weren't dangerous and I'm sure we're going to get into all these subjects a little bit later as well uh tell tell us what you can about the encrypted platforms we've heard about so um one of the things that we're drilling into hard with the shooter um in an effort to try to learn more about his State of Mind his mode of his ideology his context everything else is to look at all of his devices any social Med County Head Etc and uh one of the things we've learned in finally getting into his phone which was also a significant technical Challenge from an encryption perspective but in addition once we got on the phone it turned out he was using some encrypted messaging application and again the same question uh relative to the bombs is this was this pretty sophisticated or is this this is the kind of the norm you see with folks like you know similar situation how would yoube on this on this subject I would say this is unfortunately now become very common place and it's a real challenge for not just the FBI but state and local law enforcement all over the state tell me exactly the scope of does the scope of your investigation include what I what I call that critical five minutes from when the 609 when this is based I think on information you've given the Congress 609 when the shooters identified on the roof and 614 when President Trump is ultimately escorted off and all that happens the shots that take place in between there do you have access to the communications that were going on at the time in that critical five minutes so uh our our investigation when you say scope our investigation includes that time frame although focused again on the shooter himself and involved that he's obviously involved in that time frame correct and as part of that as part of our focus our investigation of the shooter and and the attack uh of course we are interviewing law enforcement from the scene because those are some of the most significant Witnesses and we're obviously getting access to their materials and that kind of thing and the Secret Service coer you have access to the communications that exist there that exact question I don't as I sit here at the moment I don't know the exact answer to that question but I know that secret service has been Cooperative with us the Congress would like access to those Communications as well I mean not just at five minutes although I think that's the critical time frame there's lots of communications we'd love to have access as well I see my time is up and they have called votes on the floor I think there are about six minutes left in vote so we will committee will stand in recess until approximately 10 minutes after votes concluded on the house floor e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e things physical evidence in the person's resonance you might see a Manifesto things like that we're not seeing that yet um but we are digging in heart because this is one of the central questions for us what I can say is that the shooter appears to have uh done a lot of searches of public figures in general but so far we're seeing kind of news articles and things like that and so the images that have been reported about really what we're talking about there are when you when you do a news search of an article the image appears in the cache as opposed to like a search for that specific individual uh but again I really want to be clear that that's a place that we're doing a lot of work right now uh and some more to come on that well I thank you for that clarification we're interested also in um the role of access to weapons uh when it comes to this terrible crime the shooter used a semi-automatic rifle really a weapon of war that sadly has also been used in mass shootings around the country including in my own District it seems to me that the assault weapons ban that was once in place has to be a part of the national answer to C the epidemic of gun violence in America I wonder uh if you could with your help director Ray understand a few aspects of the investigation it's my understanding that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco firearms and explosives ATF was quickly able to trace the gun the gun uh the gun's purchaser using records from an outof business gun store records that the government is re re required to correct some of my colleagues on the other out of the all have suggested that collection should stop there have been efforts to digitize it which have been resisted can you tell us about how the the origin of this gun purchase was discovered and uh the technology used what I well I guess what I can say is um the uh we located a number of firearms uh associated with the shooter and his family uh I think it was a total to of I think 14 in the house um the uh weapon that he used uh for the attempted assassination uh was an AR style rifle uh that was purchased legally uh that he um is my understanding uh acquired I think bought actually from his father who was the one who originally bought it uh again legally thank you Mr chairman my time is expired so I yield back gent lady y back gentleman from California is recognized thank you uh director I'll try to ask questions that that are answerable too I think that's been done pretty well on both sides uh you do the advanced threat assessment and deliver that information as to the general threat and then specifics as to protected people to the Secret Service is that correct well sort of uh the Secret Service does a threat assessment but they're doing that based on intelligence that they receive from a number of sources including of course the FBI so we share whenever we have thread information related to a particular individual or protecte then we share it with the secret service at a number of levels so you're a participant But ultimately the responsibility for threat assessment as to these individuals belongs to the Secret Service well again the threat assessment for the individual belongs to the secret servers but we are an important part of that because we share thread information if we have any uh they they get that information from a variety of sources so and and you get them from that same variety of sources they've got no sources that are ex excluded from the FBI do they well not I don't know I'm not aware of any that are excluded from the FBI but they may receive information that comes directly to them that didn't come to us sure okay uh director do you believe that former president Trump was a a high-risk threat under your assessment well I I believe that former president Trump uh can really frankly like any president or former president is a very high profile figure and attracts a lot of unfortunately the kind of thre been talking about it's fair to say not on a scale of one to a million with little nuances but on a scale of 1 to 10 president Trump's risk was very similar to a current president very similar to because he was the presumptive nominee and uh leading in the polls and so on that that uh that he was a high risk by any standard is that correct certainly there's a reason why he has so much protection around him okay uh Robert if Kennedy Jr the son of assassinated Senator and the nephew of an assassinated President would you say he was also as a presidential candidate at significant risk again I think any presidential candidate raises some level of risk it might vary from canidate to but it's clearly a risk okay um so uh in a nutshell the day before this attack president Trump was documented not to have gotten on multiple occasions from the Secret Service what they asked for the day after it looks like they're getting more the day before RFK had been denied by the president multiple times Secret Service protection the day after he now has it so now my question is is the actions of a 20-year-old with a a lone gunman on a roof sufficient to change the risk assessment in your mind for president Trump and RFK or are we just realizing the threat that was always there and being more appropriate in matching it and and I know that's a little vague but but you've been at this for a long time hindsight is 2020 now that we have hindsight is it fair to say that giving Robert F Kennedy Jr security upping the security including drones overhead support for the president former president these are all things that in hindsight should have been done the day before well let me try to answer your question this way of course as I said you know the assessments of the level of security to be provided to individual protectors no no I understand it's a secret service decision but what I would say to you uh is that and I've been saying for quite some time uh including in front of Committees of this Congress is that we are in an elevated threat we have been for some time uh and that comes from a variety of quarters uh it is a it is quite frankly a dangerous time to be a prominent public official in in regards to that the other side has spent a lot of time talking about what people on the right have said but there was an attempted assassination on a Supreme Court Justice we have had the highest ranking Senator on the other side of this body uh saying that there were actions that they were accountable we have had multiple members of Congress in both the house and the Senate uh berating the the character of uh members of the Supreme Court as a result of their uh uh their their decisions made both you know sometimes 63 sometimes unanimous whatever are those comments not any one of them but are those comments and the generation of that sort of oh this guy's bad for democracy this this Supreme Court Justice is a threat to democracy is that the kind of thing that raises the Threat Level and would you caution against that well I I do believe that uh we've seen an increase in threats of violence which again that's the FBI's Lane not rhetoric no matter how Despicable or heated it is but violence and threats of violence we have seen an uptake in threats towards judges among other prominent public officials including as you say a case that we helped investigate involving a threat to a sitting Supreme Court Justice um an attempt an attempt yeah thank you right um and uh I think it's a reflection of a broader phenomenon that we are seeing in this country uh where people again very passionate I respect that very angry I respect that but there's a right way and a wrong way to express yourself when you're angry and and violence and threats of violence just can't be it and that's where we fit in we it's not my role as FBI director to call out you know particular people's rhetoric there's a place for that um but that's that's not my role as FBI director but but when it turns to violence and threats of violence that is has to be treated as unacceptable and that's the way we look at it thank you Mr chairman I yield back director when the FBI learn that Iran was threatening president Trump's life so I want to I want to be a little bit careful here not talk about specific classified information but um we have been for quite some time uh and I'll stick with what's in the open record we for some time and I in particular for some time have been calling out uh the efforts by the Iranian government to attempt to retaliate for the uh the killing of solomani by going after Uh current or former prominent us officials and we've even had an indictment against it and I think that we need to recognize the brazenness of the Iranian regime including right here in the United States and I expect that we're going to see more of it and I expect there'll be more coming on that I'm not aware of any threat information uh related to protes that wasn't you know passed in a timely way but I can't really get into