An explosive congressional report claims would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks was incapacitated by a local police officer before being killed by a Secret Service sniper.
Two months after Crooks shot the former president in the ear during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a preliminary report by Rep. Clay Higgins offered a different narrative than the official one pushed by the FBI.
Although it was initially claimed that Crooks was shot in the head within seconds by a Secret Service sniper, Higgins’ report claimed it was actually a local SWAT operator who stopped the gunman’s hail of bullets.
The congressman said the local police officer’s shot “hit Crooks’ rifle and shattered his face, neck and right shoulder because the stock (of the gun) broke,” meaning Crooks was unable to continue shooting before he died.
This comes amid growing scrutiny over the FBI and Secret Service investigations into the shooting, weeks after Higgins also revealed that Crooks’ body was mysteriously cremated with FBI approval after just 10 days.
An explosive report claims that would-be Donald Trump assassin Thomas Crooks was initially incapacitated by a local SWAT operator before being killed by a Secret Service sniper.
Trump was hit in the ear and an attendee at his fateful rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was killed by Crooks’ hail of bullets, which was reportedly ended by a heroic officer firing from the ground.
Newly released images of Crooks’ AR-style rifle show the butt of the firearm with a large hole where the bullet struck near the shooter’s shoulder.
The revelations in Higgins’ explosive report were raised last night by Fox News pundit Jesse Watters, who shared his shock at the response to the assassination attempt on Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.
Watters said the FBI and Secret Service have been offering only a frustrating “drip, drip” of information from their investigations, noting that “the real investigative work is being done by Congress.”
He drew parallels between the agencies’ official version of the shooting (that Crooks was quickly killed by a Secret Service sniper) and Higgins’ claim that a local SWAT operator actually killed the gunman first.
“I didn’t know that,” Watters said, pointing to congressional testimony by acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe that “made no mention” of the local police officer’s heroism.
“He gave his agency all the credit for taking down Crooks,” he said.
Newly released images of Crooks’ AR-style rifle show the stock of the firearm with a large hole where the bullet allegedly struck near the shooter’s shoulder.
Higgins revealed that a “totally badass” local SWAT operator fired the gun at Crooks seconds after he opened fire, heroically putting him in the gunman’s line of fire.
Secret Service snipers killed Crooks with a bullet to the head, and some noted that FBI and Secret Service officials failed to mention reports that a local police officer had struck the gunman first.
According to Higgins’ report, the demonstration could have been worse if not for the actions of local officials.
After Crooks fired eight bullets into the crowd, hitting Trump in the ear and wounding three rally-goers, one of them fatally, officers scrambled to locate the source of the bullets and fight back.
Higgins said the SWAT operator, whom he described as a “tough guy” in his report, shot Crooks from the ground about 100 yards from the AGR building where he was sitting.
“When he sighted Shooter Crooks as a moving target nearly obscured by foliage on the AGR roof, he immediately abandoned his assigned position and ran toward the threat,” Higgins wrote.
The congressman said the officer ran into Crooks’ possible line of fire and was hit by a “very strong shot” that struck the end of Crooks’ rifle and rendered the weapon inoperable.
“This means that if the buffer tube on his AR was damaged, Crooks’ rifle would not fire after his eighth shot,” Higgins wrote.
Seconds later, Crooks was killed by a Secret Service sniper on the rooftop perch, who “entered somewhere near the left mouth area and exited through the right ear area.”
Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican who was appointed to the bipartisan task force reviewing the assassination attempt, conducted his own “on-the-ground” investigation.
The revelations came as Higgins also astonishingly claimed Crooks’ body was cremated just 10 days after the shooting at the protest despite investigations still being ongoing.
The Louisiana congressman, a former police captain, compiled the report during his own “on the ground” trip to Butler in early August, which was presented to a 13-member bipartisan congressional task force investigating the shooting of which he is a member.
In the report, Higgins said that when he visited the town for his own investigation, his request to see the body “caused quite a stir and revealed a disturbing fact.”
Higgins claims that “no one knew” that the body had been returned to the family, including the county coroner and local authorities. He writes that the coroner still had “legal authority over the body” when the FBI made this decision and accuses the agency of “obstruction.”
“The problem with not being able to examine the actual body is that I won’t know 100% whether the coroner’s report and the autopsy report are accurate. We’ll never really know,” Higgins said.
The body of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who attempted to assassinate former President Trump, was returned to his family for cremation just ten days after the shooting.
‘Yes, we will get the reports and photographs, but I can never say for sure if those reports and photographs are accurate based on my own examination of the body.
‘Once again, similar to clearing a crime scene and erasing biological evidence from the crime scene… this action by the FBI can only be described by any reasonable man as an obstruction to any further investigative efforts.’
Higgins says that on July 23, the day Crooks was cremated, both the Homeland Security Committee and the Oversight Committee had opened investigations into the assassination attempt, while House Speaker Mike Johnson had declared he was forming a congressional investigative body.
“So why would the FBI release the body to the family for cremation? This pattern of sweeping investigation by the FBI is quite disturbing,” Higgins writes.
His “preliminary investigative report” was submitted to task force Chairman Mike Kelly (R-PA) on August 12 and posted on Higgins’ website on August 15.
On July 29, the Louisiana congressman was named as one of seven Republican members of a bipartisan group charged with investigating the attempted assassination of Trump.
The task force is made up of 13 members, seven Republicans and six Democrats. Its mission is to determine what went wrong on the day of the assassination attempt and make recommendations to prevent future security failures.
The working group will issue a final report by December 13.