The sniper who stopped Thomas Matthew Crooks from assassinating former President Trump on July 13 at a campaign event in Butler County, Pennsylvania, was not with the U.S. Secret Service.
In his preliminary report to the House Bi-Partisan Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Former President Donald Trump, GOP U.S. Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana has revealed that a county SWAT sniper fired first, hit Crooks’ AR-15 rifle, and disabled it.
A Secret Service sniper then killed Crooks with a head shot.
A former cop, Higgins also complained in the report that Crooks was cremated with the permission of the FBI before the House committee had begun its investigation.
The six-page preliminary report only begins the probe into the attempted assassination.
ESU Sniper
Noting that Secret Service agents did not use radios provided by the county ESU, Higgins wrote that internet videos that appear to show a muzzle flash in the window below the roof of the AGR building from which Crooks fired are either a “digital fabrication” or reflection of iPhone camera flash. “That window does not open and has never opened,” he wrote.
Higgins reported that Crooks did not use a ladder to climb to AGR’s roof. He instead climbed atop an air-conditioning unit and ascended the roof from there.
Higgins has not begun investigating Crooks himself or reviewed the evidence collected on Crooks.
Higgins wrote that Crooks fired eight shots from a position that “provided excellent concealment for Crooks from the northern counter-sniper team due to the foliage/branches of two trees.”
But that position “did NOT offer excellent concealment from the southern counter-sniper team,” he continued:
However, it should be noted that the would-be assassin perfectly positioned himself to minimize the threat of counter-fire from the ground or the USSS counter-sniper teams. Crooks’ firing position was also several feet back from the actual peak of the AGR rooftop. By choosing this position, Crooks effectively minimized the sky-lined profile of his head and upper body.
Higgins has yet to examine the bullet casings from Crooks’s AR-15.
Higgins also detailed the remarkable shot from the Butler SWAT sniper, who fired the ninth shot. The 100-yard shot nailed the stock of Crooks’ AR-15 and “fragged his face/neck/right shoulder area from the stock breaking up.”
The SWAT operator ‘was a total bad**,” Higgins wrote:
[W]hen 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, running to a clear shot position directly into the line of fire while Crooks was firing 8 rounds. On his own, this ESU SWAT operator took a very hard shot, one shot. He stopped Crooks and importantly, I believe the shot damaged the buffer tube on Crooks’ AR. … This means that if his AR buffer tube was damaged, Crooks’ rifle wouldn’t fire after his 8th shot.
Though injured, Crooks recovered and “popped back up,” an ESU SWAT operator told Higgins.
The killing shot from the Secret Service hit Crooks in the “left mouth and exited the right ear area.”
Crooks Was Gone
First responders, released almost immediately by the FBI, were surprised, dismayed, and suspicious that the FBI “released the crime scene so early after J13,” Higgins wrote:
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.
The FBI cleaned up biological evidence from the crime scene, which is unheard of. Cops don’t do that, ever.
And in a line certain to generate even more suspicion about the FBI, Higgins complained that he only learned on August 5, when he wanted to examine Crooks’s corpse, that “the FBI released the body for cremation 10 days” after July 13.
Continued Higgins:
Crooks was gone. Nobody knew this until Monday, August 5, including the County Coroner, law enforcement, Sheriff, etc. Yes, Butler County Coroner technically had legal authority over the body, but I spoke with the Coroner, and he would have never released Crooks’ body to the family for cremation or burial without specific permission from the FBI.
Because of that, no one will ever know whether the coroner’s and autopsy reports are accurate, he wrote.
The FBI knew a committee probe was forthcoming. Higgins wants to know why the FBI released the corpse for cremation.
And contrary to rumor, Higgins concluded, a second shooter could not have climbed to the top of the water tower because the ascent would be too “precarious.”
“I do not believe it was possible for a “2nd shooter” sniper to be on top of that water tower on J13, nor have I seen any evidence that supports the theory of a 2nd shooter,” Higgins wrote.
Higgins did not conclude that a second shooter or other conspirators were not involved in the assassination attempt. But based on his preliminary investigation, 10 shots were fired and he accounted for all of them: eight from Crooks, one each from the Butler SWAT and Secret Service snipers.
Higgins was a cop in several agencies before winning a seat to represent Louisiana’s 3rd congressional district, his Wikipedia biography says.
He began his career in 2004 in Opelousas, was a reserve deputy marshal in Lafayette, and remains a reserve officer with the Louisiana Department of Justice.
H/T: Zero Hedge
