The most incredible part of this story is the fact that his body was already “gone” when Higgins, who was appointed to a congressional bipartisan task force to look into the assassination attempt, asked to view it on August 5.
He said that his request to see the body “caused quite a stir and revealed a disturbing fact” -- it turns out that the FBI actually released Crooks’s body for cremation just ten days after the shooting that killed him when he tried to assassinate Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania.
According to Higgins, “nobody knew” that Crooks’s body had already been returned to his family – including people who should have been well aware of its movements, such as the county coroner and local law enforcement. In fact, the coroner still had legal authority over the body when the FBI decided to give it to his family, prompting Higgins to accuse the agency of “obstruction.” He said there was no way the coroner would have released the body to the family without receiving permission from the FBI.
“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,” he lamented, before going on to question why the FBI was so quick to offload the shooter’s 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,” he added.
Crooks was cremated on July 23, which is the same day that the oversight committee and the Homeland Security Committee opened their investigations into the failed assassination attempt, and Higgins said that the FBI's “scorched earth” approach was “troubling.” He explained that the FBI would have been completely aware that an investigation by Congress was forthcoming and should have known that releasing the crime scene would affect it.
FBI cleaned up the crime scene and released it surprisingly quickly
Higgins, a former police officer, also criticized the FBI for the way it handled the crime scene. He wrote in his report: “The FBI cleaned up biological evidence from the crime scene, which is unheard of. Cops don’t do that, ever.”
The first responders he spoke to shared a range of reactions to the FBI releasing the crime scene so quickly, with some surprised and others suspicious of their motives.
One of the bullets fired by Crooks killed 50-year-old firefighter Corey Comperatore, while two other bullets severely injured 74-year-old James Copenhaver and 57-year-old David Dutch. One bullet grazed the ear of Trump, and experts say that it could well have killed him had he not moved his head slightly just before the bullet made contact.
There were already so many parts of this story that just didn’t add up, and although the committee sought answers, their report really just leaves us with a lot more questions. Why would they be in such a hurry to cremate the body before an independent examination could be carried out on it? Why did the FBI release all of the first responders who went to the scene that evening, why were they so eager to wash the site down on just the second day, and why did they release the entire crime scene on the third day?
Sources for this article include:
Please contact us for more information.
