FBI: Thomas Matthew Crooks Had SAT Score High Enough for Harvard

Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters
Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters

The FBI told Donald Trump last week that Thomas Matthew Crooks may have been much smarter than many initially thought.

The FBI reached that conclusion in part because Crooks scored higher than 1500 on his SAT pre-college exam—a score that would put him in the running for universities like Harvard, where an admitted student’s average score is 1520.

Federal agents sat down with Trump on Aug. 1 to inform him of new information they’d uncovered about his would-be assassin, sources told ABC News.

The FBI said in the meeting that they believe Crooks was “strikingly intelligent” but likely suffered from an undiagnosed disorder. Citing loved ones and ex-classmates, the FBI said Crooks “would routinely sway back and forth while standing at the bus stop.”

Crooks, 20, worked at an assisted-living facility and lived with his parents at the time of the attack. The FBI reportedly told Trump that Crooks’ motive was still unknown as of last week.

Red brick home with two midsize SUVs in driveway

The Pennsylvania home where Thomas Matthew Crooks lived with his parents.

Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters

Google searches released by investigators shed some light on what was going through Crooks’ mind leading up to the July 13 attack, however. He searched for information about possible public appearances for politicians and officials of both parties, and wanted to know how far away John F. Kennedy’s assassin was when he opened fire.

The site of the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, was about an hour north of where Crooks lived and graduated high school.

ABC News described the FBI’s sit-down with Trump as a “standard victim interview,” but it turned into a pseudo-briefing after Trump repeatedly asked questions of agents from the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office.

Sources told ABC that Trump quizzed investigators on whether there was a potential foreign influence involved in the attack. A source told the network that they accessed three foreign email accounts used by Crooks but they “found no indications that anyone else was involved in the attack.”

Trump confirmed the meeting with the FBI in a rambling press conference Thursday. He didn’t divulge any details of the meeting, but said the FBI had “done a very good job.”

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