A bombshell congressional report alleges that would-be Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks was incapacitated by a local police officer before being fatally shot 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 from Rep. Clay Higgins presented a different account from the official one provided by the FBI. It was initially reported that Crooks was shot in the head within seconds by a Secret Service sniper. However, Higgins' report claims that it was actually a local SWAT officer who stopped the gunman's barrage of bullets, before Secret Service snipers shot Crooks in the head.
Local Cop Shot Crooks First
The congressman explained that the local officer's shot struck Crooks' rifle, causing fragments to injure his face, neck, and right shoulder, which prevented Crooks from continuing to fire before he was ultimately killed.
This comes as scrutiny intensifies on the FBI and Secret Service's handling of the shooting investigation, especially after Higgins revealed that Crooks' body was mysteriously cremated with FBI approval just 10 days after his death.
The revelations from Higgins' explosive report were discussed on Tuesday night by Fox News pundit Jesse Watters, who expressed his shock over the handling of the assassination attempt while speaking with Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.
Watters slammed the FBI and Secret Service for providing only a frustrating "drip, drip, drip" of information from their investigations, remarking that "the real investigative work is being done by Congress."
He compared the agencies' official account—that Crooks was quickly killed by a Secret Service sniper—to Higgins' assertion that a local SWAT officer actually struck the gunman first.
"I wasn't aware of that," Watters remarked, highlighting that acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe's congressional testimony made "no mention" of the local officer's heroic actions.
"He gave his agency total credit for bringing down Crooks," he said.
Newly released images of Crooks' AR-style rifle reveal a large hole in the stock end of the firearm, where the bullet is said to have struck near the shooter's shoulder.
Higgins' report suggests that the situation at the rally could have been far worse if not for the intervention of local officers.
After Crooks fired eight shots at the crowd—hitting Trump in the ear and wounding three rally attendees, one fatally—officers were frantically trying to locate the source of the gunfire and return fire.
No Credit to SWAT Officer
According to Higgins, a SWAT operator—whom he praised as a "total badass"—shot at Crooks from the ground, around 100 meters away from the AGR building where Crooks had been positioned.
"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 positioned himself in Crooks' potential line of fire and took a "very hard shot" that hit the end of Crooks' rifle, rendering the weapon inoperable. "This means that if his AR buffer tube was damaged, Crooks' rifle wouldn't fire after his 8th shot," Higgins wrote.
Moments later, a Secret Service sniper killed Crooks on the rooftop, with the bullet reportedly entering around the left mouth area and exiting through the right ear.
The details came as Higgins' also claimed that Crooks' body was cremated just 10 days after the rally shooting, even though investigations were still ongoing.
The Louisiana congressman, a former police captain, compiled the report from his own visit to Butler in early August, which was submitted to a bipartisan Congressional task force investigating the shooting, of which he is a member.
In his report, Higgins noted that his tried to see the body during his investigation caused considerable upheaval and uncovered a troubling fact. He said that "nobody knew" the body had been returned to the family, including the county coroner and local law enforcement.
Higgins argues 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.
Higgins' "preliminary investigation report" was provided to Task Force Chairman Mike Kelly (R-PA) on August 12 and made public on Higgins' website on August 15.
On July 29, the Louisiana congressman was appointed as one of seven Republican members of a bipartisan group assigned to investigate the attempted assassination of Trump.
