Bombshell congressional report on Trump assassination attempt reveals 'who REALLY took the first shot at Thomas Crooks'
A bombshell congressional report claims would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks was incapacitated by a local cop before he was killed by a Secret Service sniper.
Two months after Crooks shot the former president's ear at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a preliminary report from Rep. Clay Higgins offered a differing narrative to the official one pushed by the FBI.
While 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 cop's shot 'hit Crooks' rifle and fragged his face/ neck/ right shoulder area from the (gun) stock breaking up', which meant Crooks was unable to keep firing before he was killed.
It comes amid mounting scrutiny on the FBI and Secret Service's investigations into the shooting, weeks after Higgins also revealed Crooks' body was mysteriously cremated with approval from the FBI after just 10 days.
A bombshell report claims would-be Donald Trump assassin Thomas Crooks was initially incapacitated by a local SWAT operator before he was killed by a Secret Service sniper
Trump was hit in the ear and an attendee at his fateful Butler, Pennsylvania rally was killed by Crooks' hail of bullets, which was said to have been ended by a heroic officer shooting from the ground
Newly released images of Crooks' AR-style rifle show the stock end of the firearm with a large hole where the bullet struck near the shooter's shoulder
The revelations from Higgins' bombshell report were raised last night by Fox News pundit Jesse Watters, who shared his shock over the response to the assassination attempt with Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.
Watters said the FBI and Secret Service have been offering only a frustrating 'drip drip, drip' of information from their investigations, and noted that 'the real investigative work is being done by Congress.'
He drew parallels between the agencies' official narrative of the shooting - that Crooks was quickly killed by a Secret Service sniper - and Higgins' claim that a local SWAT operator actually hit the gunman first.
'I didn't know that,' Watters said, pointing to Congressional testimony from acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe that made 'no mention' of the local cop's heroics.
'He gave his agency total credit for bringing down Crooks,' he said.
Newly released images of Crooks' AR-style rifle show the stock end of the firearm with a large hole where the bullet purportedly struck near the shooter's shoulder.
Higgins revealed that a 'total badass' local SWAT operator shot out Crooks' gun seconds after he opened fire, which heroically put him into the gunman's line of fire
Secret Service snipers killed Crooks with a bullet to his head, with some noting that FBI and Secret Service officials failed to mention reports of a local cop hitting the gunman first
According to Higgins' report, the rally could have been worse had it not been for the actions of local officers.
After Crooks fired eight bullets at the crowd, striking Trump's ear and hitting three rally attendees, one fatally, officers were scrambling to locate the source of the bullets and fire back.
Higgins said the SWAT operator - who he described as a 'total badass' in his report - fired at Crooks from the ground around 100 yards from the AGR building where he had been perched.
'When he had sighted the shooter Crooks as a mostly obscured by foliage moving target on the AGR rooftop, he immediately left his assigned post and ran towards the threat,' Higgins wrote.
The congressman noted that the officer ran into Crooks' possible line of fire and took a 'very hard shot' that struck the end of Crooks' rifle and destroyed the gun's functionality.
'This means that if his AR buffer tube was damaged, Crooks’ rifle wouldn’t fire after his 8th shot,' Higgins wrote.
Seconds later, a Secret Service sniper killed Crooks on the rooftop perch, which 'entered somewhere around the left mouth area and exited the right ear area.'
Representative Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana who was appointed to the bipartisan task force reviewing the assassination attempt, carried out his own 'boots on the ground' investigation
The revelations came as Higgins also staggeringly claimed that Crooks' body was cremated just 10 days after the rally shooting despite investigations still ongoing.
The Louisiana congressman, a former police captain, compiled the report from his own 'boots on the ground' trip to Butler in early August, which was submitted to a 13-member Congressional bipartisan task force investigating the shooting that he is a member of.
In the report, Higgins said that when he visited the town for his own investigation, his request to view the body 'caused quite a stir and revealed a disturbing fact.'
Higgins says 'nobody knew' that the body had been returned to the family, including the county coroner and local enforcement. 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 me not being able to examine the actual body is that I won't know 100% if the coroner's report and the autopsy report are accurate. We will actually never know,' Higgins claimed.
The body of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who attempted to assassinate former President Trump, was returned to his family for cremation only ten days after the shooting
'Yes, we'll get the reports and pictures, 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.
'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.'
Higgins states that on July 23, the day that Crooks was cremated, both the Homeland Security Committee and the Oversight Committee had opened investigations into the assassination attempt, while Speaker Mike Johnson had stated he was forming a 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 writes.
His 'preliminary investigate report' was submitted to Task Force Chairman Mike Kelly (R-PA) on August 12 and released to the public on Higgins' website on August 15.
On July 29, the Louisiana congressman was named as one of seven Republican members of a bipartisan group tasked with investigating the attempted assassination of Trump.
The task force consists of 13 members - seven Republicans and six Democrats. Its mission is to determine what went wrong on the day of the attempted assassination and it will make recommendations to prevent future security lapses.
The task force will issue a final report before December 13.
