Trump says motivation in Brown University shooting still unknown, defends FBI probe

President Trump said Monday the motivation for the mass shooting at Brown University remains unknown as he defended the FBI, which is once again facing criticism for prematurely touting its efforts to track down a person of interest.

Speaking with reporters from the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said investigators don’t know if there was a specific target in the Saturday evening attack that killed two and injured nine at the Ivy League university.

Asked about the criticism of FBI Director Kash Patel for his handling of the investigation, Mr. Trump expressed confidence that the bureau will “do a good job.”

“It’s always difficult,” Mr. Trump said of finding a suspect in high-profile criminal cases. He highlighted the FBI’s success in finding the alleged assassin of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.

The president then quickly said questions about the investigation and security should be directed at Brown officials.

“You’d really have to ask the school a little bit more about that, because this was a school problem. They had their own guards, they had their own police, they had their own everything,” Mr. Trump said. “But you’d have to ask that question, really to the school, not the FBI.”

“We came in after the fact and the FBI will do a good job, but they came in after the fact,” he said.

After the shooting, Mr. Patel announced on X that the FBI had detained a “person of interest in a hotel room” in Coventry, Rhode Island, acting on a tip from the Providence police department. But the person of interest was released from custody hours later and the shooter remains at large.

Local authorities said in a press conference Sunday night that a tip came in about a person of interest but the evidence wasn’t sufficient to keep the person, a 24-year-old from Wisconsin, in custody.

“We have not solved this case, but I am confident we are going to do that in the near future,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said Monday, adding there was a “quantum of evidence” that justified detaining the person.

It was the second time in three months that Mr. Patel erroneously posted on social media that a suspect in a shooting was in custody. After Kirk was killed on a college campus in September, Mr. Patel wrote on social media that “the subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody,” before the alleged shooter was arrested.