Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), a member of the bipartisan House task force investigating President Donald Trump’s assassination attempt, blasted the FBI for releasing the shooter’s body days after the incident.
The task force arranged for Higgins to travel to Butler, PA, to investigate the assassination attempt on Trump.
Higgins wanted to “observe and investigate the available crime scene site, along with consideration of both anticipated and unanticipated interactions with witnesses, the crime scene landscape, hard evidence, corroborative evidence, and circumstantial evidence.”
The lack of a body just adds more questions to the case.
Higgins accused the FBI of obstructing the investigation by releasing the body.
“My effort to examine Crooks’ body on Monday, August 5, caused quite a stir and revealed a disturbing fact… the FBI released the body for cremation 10 days after J13. On J23, Crooks was gone,” Higgins wrote in his preliminary report. “Nobody knew this until Monday, August 5, including the County Coroner, law enforcement, Sheriff, etc. Yes, Butler County Coroner technically had legal authority over the body, but I spoke with the Coroner, and he would have never released Crooks’ body to the family for cremation or burial without specific permission from the FBI.”
Higgins added: “Again, similar to releasing the crime scene and scrubbing crime scene biological evidence… this action by the FBI can only be described by any reasonable man as an obstruction to any following investigative effort.”
(I’ll get to the crime scene problems in a bit.)
Higgins noted the coroner’s and autopsy reports were late as of August 5.
Without the shooter’s body, Higgins cannot examine it to determine if the reports are correct.
“We will actually never know,” Higgins continued. “Yes, we’ll get the reports and pictures, etc, but I will not ever be able to say with certainty that those reports and pictures are accurate according to my own examination of the body.”
The House Homeland Security Committee and Oversight Committee already started an investigation when the FBI released the body:
Please note, Mr. Chairman, that on J23, the day that Crooks was cremated, both the Homeland Security Committee and the Oversight Committee had begun House Committee jurisdictional investigation into J13, and Speaker Johnson had already stated that he was forming an Official Congressional investigative body. Why, then, by what measure, would the FBI release his body to the family for cremation? This pattern of investigative scorched earth by the FBI is quite troubling.
Higgins discovered other disturbing moves by the FBI, which also troubled local law enforcement.
Butler County runs the radio communications tower out of their 911 Call Center. That is pretty much the way radio communications work across America in every County, in every State. If their radios are “interoperable,” a visiting law enforcement agency is assigned a frequency, a “channel” for their operation while in that County. If their radios are not “interoperable” with the County Communications tower, then the visiting agency is assigned/offered actual radios to use while they are running their operation in the County.
Well, the Secret Service never picked up the radios set aside for the agents:
The radio comms were properly and perfectly arranged during the extensive pre-mission planning. On J12, the Butler County ESU Commander personally reminded the USSS counter-sniper teams to pick up their assigned radios at the ESU Command Post RV, which was positioned according to planning at the Butler Fairgrounds, the following morning before 1100 hrs. It didn’t happen.
After three days, the FBI released the crime scene, which surprised local law enforcement and Higgins.
The agents also released all of the First Responders on the evening of the attempt:
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