Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins has blasted the FBI for releasing attempted Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks’ body to his family for cremation days after the shooting — calling it “disturbing” that the agency would impede further investigation.
The Republican congressman said he discovered that Crooks’ body was handed over to his family when he requested to examine it during his visit to the Butler, Pennsylvania rally site to investigate the shooting.
“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 (July 13),” Higgins wrote in the report to the July 13 Task Force, a bipartisan committee organized to investigate the security failures around the shooting.
“On J23, Crooks was gone. Nobody knew this until Monday, August 5, including the County Coroner, law enforcement, Sheriff, etc.”
Higgins described the FBI’s actions “as an obstruction to any following investigative effort,”
Higgins claimed that while the body was under the Butler County Coroner’s authority, the coroner would “have never released Crooks’ body to the family for cremation or burial without specific permission from the FBI.”
The four-term congressman said he wanted to examine the body to know 100% if the coroner’s report and autopsy were accurate.
“We will actually never know. 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,” he added.
Along with revealing the “disturbing fact” of Crooks’ body, Higgins blasted the FBI for its handling of the crime scene, stating the law enforcement agency released the area after three days.
“The FBI cleaned up biological evidence from the crime scene, which is unheard of,” Higgins wrote. “Cops don’t do that, ever.”
“I interviewed several First Responders who expressed everything from surprise to dismay to suspicion regarding the fact that the FBI released the crime scene so early after J13,” Higgins said.
“It should be noted that the FBI was fully aware of the fact that Congress would be investigating J13. The FBI does not exist in a vacuum. They had to know that releasing the J13 crime scene would injure the immediate observations of any following investigation. “
Higgins found that the 20-year-old shooter had “perfectly positioned himself (on the roof) to minimize the threat of counter-fire from the ground or the US Secret Service counter-sniper teams.”
“Crooks effectively minimized the sky-lined profile of his head and upper body,” he wrote.
He fired eight shots before a Butler SWAT operative shot back, with the bullet believed to have damaged the buffer tube on Crooks’ AR, Higgins said.
“The 10th (and, I believe, final) shot was fired from the USSS southern counter-sniper team,” the report stated. “Which, according to my investigation, entered somewhere around the left mouth area and exited the right ear area.”
Crooks’ bullets struck three rallygoers, killing Firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, while severely injuring David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 74.
One bullet grazed Trump’s right ear, drawing blood before the 45th president was secured by Secret Service agents.
