Congressman slams ‘disturbing’ FBI probe into Trump shooter

A Republican congressman appointed to the bipartisan House task force investigating the assassination attempt on Donald Trump criticized the FBI’s handling of the crime scene following the shooting.

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) says he is particularly concerned about the FBI’s decision to release the body of 20-year-old gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks to his family for cremation, with so many questions remaining about the motive for the attack.

He also criticized the feds for clearing the crime scene “so early” three days after Crooks opened fire on the former president from a nearby rooftop, hitting him in the ear.

“This scorched-earth pattern of investigation by the FBI is quite troubling,” Higgins wrote in a preliminary report sent to task force chairman Mike Kelly.

The former police officer traveled to Butler, Pennsylvania, where the July 13 shooting took place, and tried to view the gunman’s body on August 5. He said his visit “caused quite a stir and revealed a disturbing fact … the FBI released the body for cremation 10 days after” the attack.

On July 23, he wrote: “Crooks is gone.”

“No one knew this until Monday, August 5, including the county coroner, law enforcement, the sheriff, etc.,” he continued. “Yes, the Butler County Coroner technically had legal authority over the body, but I spoke with the coroner and he would never have released Crooks’ body to the family for cremation or burial without specific permission from the FBI.

“The problem with not being able to examine the actual body is that I won’t know 100 percent if the coroner’s report and the autopsy report are accurate. In fact, we’ll never know.”

Higgins also claimed that first responders at the scene of Trump’s assassination attempt were “surprised” that they were let go from the FBI on the night of the shooting. “I interviewed several first responders who expressed everything from surprise to dismay to suspicion that the FBI released the crime scene so early,” he wrote.

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The congressman, a member of the House Freedom Caucus that supported Donald Trump’s claims that he was a victim of voter fraud in the 2020 election, said that on the day Crooks was cremated, “both the Homeland Security Committee and the Oversight Committee started the Chamber Commission. the judicial investigation into” the shooting.

“Again, similar to the clearance of the crime scene and the cleaning of biological evidence from the crime scene … this action by the FBI can only be described by any reasonable person as an obstacle to any further investigative effort,” he argued in the report.

Higgins praised local law enforcement efforts and said he found no evidence there was a “second shooter” despite “videos on the internet showing a dark figure or a shadow on the water tower” near his rally Trump.

“I do not believe it was possible for a ‘second shooter’ sniper to be on top of that water tower on J13, nor have I seen any evidence to support the theory of a second shooter,” he says in his report. “I am not conclusively saying that there was no other shooter somewhere or that there were no other conspirators involved in J13, but I am saying that based on my investigation so far, there were 10 shots fired at J13 and all shots are accounted for. for, and all photos align with their source.”

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