Secret Service said building was 'area of concern' 5 days before its use in Trump shooting

The Secret Service identified a building used by the would-be assassin of former President Donald Trump as an "area of concern" almost a week before the shooting at his rally in Pennsylvania.

This came out during a briefing of Congress by the agency, Axios reported on Thursday.

According to the report, the Secret Service also gave Congress a detailed timeline of the immediate leadup to the incident, including at 5:51pm, when they were first "notified of a suspicious person with a rangefinder on the outer perimeter," and 6:10pm, when their counter sniper unit "informed [the] security room that local police were addressing an issue on the outer perimeter." Shots were fired just a minute later.

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The investigation remains ongoing.

The motive of the deceased gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, is still not understood. However, reports have indicated his family were ardent supporters of Trump, and that he appeared to do searches suggesting he would have opportunistically targeted President Joe Biden as well if he were in the area. The Secret Service detailed many of his activities in the days leading up to the rally, which included Googling for information on Trump's movements.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, a number of Trump's allies sought to pin the blame on President Joe Biden, arguing that his rhetoric about the danger Trump poses to democracy helped incite the attack. Biden has apologized for one specific remark about Trump in which he used the word "bullseye," but there remains no evidence that any of this was a motivating factor for the gunman.

Trump is continuing to move forward with accepting the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he is conspicuously sporting a bandage on his ear where he was injured — a bandage that has become adopted as a political symbol by many other attendees to the convention.