The American public want to know what happened, how it happened and the context for how an assassin was so easily able to get within 150 yards of President Donald Trump and take several shots, killing one and wounding several others – including President Trump.
Today, the Senate Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing at 10:00 am EDT with U.S. Secret Service acting director Ronald Rowe and FBI deputy director Paul Abbate, to ask questions about the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump.
In previous House testimony given by FBI Director Chris Wray, he was curiously willing to answer specific questions about the ongoing investigation and the discoveries therein. A substantive change in approach against the backdrop of his years of obfuscation. That said, Wray’s responses were not always factually accurate. Acting Director Ronald Rowe and FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate have not yet answered questions and specific lines of congressional inquiry.
The senate hearing begins at 10:00am with livestream links below:
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[Via PBS} – […] FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress last week that on July 6, the day Crooks registered to attend the Trump rally, he googled: “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?” That’s a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooter who killed President John F. Kennedy from a sniper’s perch in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
New details, meanwhile, were emerging about law enforcement security lapses and missed communications that preceded the shooting.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, released text messages from members of the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit that showed how local officers had communicated with each other about a suspicious-behaving man who turned out to be Crooks lurking around more than an hour before the shooting.
One text just before 4:30 p.m. describes a man “sitting to the direct right on a picnic table about 50 yards from the exit.”
In another text at 5:38 p.m., an officer tells other counter-snipers: “Kid learning around building we are in. AGR I believe it is. I did see him with a range finder looking towards stage. FYI. If you wanna notify SS snipers to look out. I lost sight of him.” Photographs of Crooks circulated among the group.
AGR is a reference to a complex of buildings that form AGR International Inc, a supplier of automation equipment for the glass and plastic packaging industry. Crooks scaled the roof of one of the buildings of the compound and is believed to have fired eight shots at the rally stage with an AR-style rifle that was purchased legally by his father years earlier.
The shots were fired at 6:12 p.m., according to a Beaver County after-action report.
Trump said he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” and he appeared in the days later with a bandage on the ear. One rallygoer, Corey Comperatore, was killed, and two others were injured. Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service counter-sniper.
In an interview with ABC News, a Beaver County officer who sounded the alarm said that after sending a text alerting others to Crooks, “I assumed that there would be somebody coming out to speak with this individual or find out what’s going on.”
Another officer told ABC News that the group was supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service counter-snipers but that that never happened.
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