Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Crooks was taken out by a local police officer before being killed by a Secret Service sniper, according to a shocking Congressional report.
Two months after Crooks shot the former president’s ear out at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a preliminary report by Rep. Clay Higgins offered a different story than the official narrative pushed by the FBI.
Although it was initially claimed that Crooks had been shot in the head within seconds by a Secret Service sniper, Higgins claimed in his report that it was actually a local SWAT agent who stopped the shooter’s hail of bullets.
The congressman said the local officer’s shot “hit Crooks’ rifle and struck his face/neck/right shoulder area due to the butt of the rifle breaking,” meaning Crooks could not continue firing before he was killed.
The announcement comes as the FBI and Secret Service face increasing scrutiny over the investigation into the shooting, just weeks after Higgins revealed that Crooks’ body had been mysteriously cremated with FBI permission after just 10 days.
A shocking report claims that Donald Trump’s would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks, was initially taken out by a local SWAT operator before being killed by a Secret Service sniper
Trump was hit in the ear and an attendee at his ill-fated rally in Butler, Pennsylvania was killed by Crooks’ hail of bullets, which were reportedly ended by a heroic officer firing from the ground
Newly released images of Crooks’ AR-style rifle show the butt end of the firearm with a large hole where the bullet struck near the shooter’s shoulder
The revelations from Higgins’ shocking report were cited last night by Fox News pundit Jesse Watters, who shared his astonishment at the reaction to the attempted assassination with Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.
According to Watters, the FBI and Secret Service provide only a frustrating amount of information from their investigations, noting that “the real investigative work is done by Congress.”
He drew parallels between the official agency story about the shooting — that Crooks was killed quickly by a Secret Service sniper — and Higgins’ claim that a local SWAT officer hit the shooter first.
“I didn’t know that,” Watters said, referring to acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe’s testimony before Congress that made “no mention” of the local agent’s heroics.
“He gave his agency all the credit for Crooks’ downfall,” he said.
Newly released footage of Crooks’ AR-style rifle shows the butt end of the firearm with a large hole where the bullet is believed to have struck, near the shooter’s shoulder.
Higgins revealed that a “totally badass” local SWAT officer shot Crooks’ gun 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, with some noting that FBI and Secret Service officials failed to mention reports that a local police officer had hit the shooter first.
According to Higgins’ report, the demonstration could have ended worse if local officers had not intervened.
After Crooks fired eight rounds into the crowd, hitting Trump in the ear and killing three people in the crowd, one of them fatally, officers quickly searched for the source of the bullets and returned fire.
Higgins said the SWAT officer, whom he described in his report as a “total tough guy,” fired at Crooks from the ground about 100 yards from the AGR building where he was sitting.
“Upon sighting the gunman, Crooks, a moving target largely concealed by the leaves on the roof of the AGR, he immediately left his assigned post and ran toward the threat,” Higgins wrote.
The congressman noted that the officer walked into Crooks’ potential line of fire and fired a “very hard shot,” striking the butt end of Crooks’ gun and destroying the weapon’s functionality.
“This means that if his AR buffer tube was damaged, Crooks’ rifle would no longer fire after his eighth shot,” Higgins wrote.
Seconds later, a Secret Service sniper shot Crooks dead on the roof. The bullet “entered somewhere near the left mouth and exited through the right ear.”
Rep. Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana who was appointed to the bipartisan task force investigating the assassination attempt, conducted his own “boots on the ground” investigation
The revelations came after Higgins also made the astonishing claim that Crooks’ body was cremated just 10 days after the shooting, despite the fact that the investigation is 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. The report was submitted to a 13-member congressional task force investigating the shooting, of which he is a member.
In the report, Higgins wrote that when he visited the city for his own investigation, his request to see the body “caused quite a stir and brought to light a disturbing fact.”
Higgins says “no one knew” the body had been returned to the family, including the county coroner and local law enforcement. He writes that the coroner still had “legal authority over the body” when the FBI made the decision and accuses the agency of “obstruction.”
“The problem with me not being able to examine the body myself is that I don’t know 100 percent whether the coroner’s report and the autopsy report are accurate. We’ll never really 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 just 10 days after the shooting
‘Yes, we get the reports and photos, but I will never be able to say for sure whether those reports and photos are accurate based on my own examination of the body.
“As with the declassification of the crime scene and the erasure of biological evidence from the crime scene… this action by the FBI can only be described by any reasonable person as an obstruction of any subsequent investigation.”
Higgins states that on July 23, the day Crooks was cremated, both the Homeland Security Committee and the Oversight Committee had opened investigations into the attempted assassination, with Chairman Mike Johnson stating that he was creating a congressional investigating body.
“Why, then, in what way would the FBI release his body to the family for cremation? This pattern of FBI investigative burnt earth is quite disturbing,” Higgins writes.
His “preliminary investigation report” was submitted 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 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 assassination attempt and to make recommendations to prevent future security breaches.
The task force will issue a final report by December 13.
