Armed with evidence he says counters parts of the FBI’s official narrative on the July 13 assassination attempt on President-elect Donald Trump, Rep. Clay Higgins is planning to supercharge his independent investigation next Congress.
Mr. Higgins, Louisiana Republican, is a member of the bipartisan House task force that concluded its investigation of the Trump assassination attempts on Thursday, approving its final report soon be released to the public.
But the congressman and former law enforcement officer has also been working independently on a supplemental investigation, digging into evidence he says the FBI has withheld or misrepresented.
“I’m not done by a long shot,” Mr. Higgins told The Washington Times. “There’s many things that are not covered here in this report that I have in my investigative file.”
One of his main investigative findings so far counters the official FBI narrative about what stopped Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman who fired at Mr. Trump at his July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Crooks fired eight rounds, one of which grazed Mr. Trump in the ear. His gunfire also killed a rallygoer and injured two others.
The FBI says a Secret Service counter-sniper neutralized Crooks with a single kill shot.
Mr. Higgins does not dispute that the counter sniper’s shot killed Crooks. But before that shot, he says, Crooks was injured and unable to continue shooting after a local officer from the Butler County Emergency Services Unit team fired at him.
The Butler County ESU officer, whom Mr. Higgins previously identified as Aaron Zaliponi, has testified that the single shot he fired hit, which the FBI has disputed. Mr. Higgins says the physical evidence, his ballistics analysis and layered expert testimony corroborates Mr. Zaliponi’s account.
“His one round — shot number nine at nine seconds from the first round fire — hit the buttstock of Crooks’ weapon, smashed that weapon into his jaw line,” he said. “There’s a corresponding injury on Crooks’ jaw that I’ve observed from the medical examiner’s report and those photographs precisely match the broken buttstock of Crooks’ rifle.”
The FBI, which has not provided any public updates on its investigation since Aug. 28, has said it has no forensic evidence indicating the round Mr. Zaliponi fired hit Crooks or his rifle. The bureau’s laboratory division tested Crooks’ rifle and concluded it was fully operational.
However, an evidence photo of the rifle that the FBI released does show damage to the buttstock.
In response to The Times’ request for comment on Mr. Higgins’ findings, the FBI reiterated the Aug. 28 comments and said had “nothing additional” to add.
Ariel Goldschmidt, the Allegheny County medical examiner who conducted the autopsy of Crooks testified at a hearing the House task force held in September. He said his examination of Crooks found one bullet fragment and related wound that came from a single shot to the head.
Mr. Higgins asked Dr. Goldschmidt if he knew where the local officer’s shot went. Dr. Goldschmidt said he didn’t know. He asked if injuries on Crooks’ shoulder could have been caused by a combined impact of Mr. Zaliponi’s shot hitting Crooks’ rifle and fragmenting and the Secret Service sniper’s shot.
“No, it’s not possible,” Dr. Goldschmidt said.
Nine second pause
According to Mr. Higgins’ timeline, Crooks got off eight shots before Mr. Zaliponi fired his round nine seconds into the shooting. Crooks did not fire any additional rounds before the kill shot from the Secret Service counter-sniper was fired at 18 seconds.
Absent from the FBI’s narrative, he said, is what happened in those nine seconds between Mr. Zaliponi’s shot and the round from the Secret Service sniper.
Crooks “fired five rounds in his final three seconds of shooting,” Mr. Higgins said. “If he had not been stopped by the Butler County ESU shot number nine, then you would presume he would have continued to fire at that rate, which means he would have dumped 15 more rounds in his remaining nine seconds of life had it not been for the Butler County ESU shot.”
Mr. Higgins said when information about Mr. Zaliponi’s shot was released, the FBI had already begun developing its narrative and interacting with the medical examiner, who only knew about the Secret Service sniper’s shot while conducting Crooks’ autopsy.
“So I think the FBI was too fast on some of their own conclusions in the initial 24-36 hours of the investigation,” he said. “And once they had moved forward in that direction, they were hesitant to back up.”
The Secret Service has also “been sort of protective” of that narrative, Mr. Higgins said.
“These guys were on an elevated position with the most advanced optics in the world and and somehow a SWAT operator — a badass, yes, and a well trained guy, yes — somehow a SWAT operator from Butler County located the shooter, got on target with the shooter, squeezed off a round and stopped him faster than than the entire apparatus that was deployed by the Secret Service,” he said.
Missing evidence
When the medical examiner turned over Crooks’ autopsy report to the House task force, it was missing post-mortem X-rays.
Mr. Higgins said he learned from reading a Pennsylvania State Police report that the X-rays revealed bullet fragments that remained in Crooks that were not retrieved from his body and retained for evidence.
“Who made that decision? Was it the FBI?” he said. “They were supposed to be present during the autopsy. I don’t have a clean answer on that.”
“He was released for cremation by the FBI. So you understand, the fragments are gone,” Mr. Higgins said.
The FBI told The Times that it was present during the autopsy to collect evidence but its investigative focus is the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump; the Pennsylvania State Police investigated Crooks’ death.
“The FBI is aware that the medical examiner performed a postmortem X-ray on Crooks’ body, which revealed small bullet fragments. The medical examiner extracted one bullet from the body during the autopsy and an FBI agent collected that evidence,” the bureau said in an emailed statement. “The fragment, item 80, was examined at the FBI Laboratory.”
The House task force’s interim report said that the FBI has possession of “a small copper colored metal bullet jacket fragment” that was recovered from Crooks’ upper right back during the autopsy.
The Times reached out to the Pennsylvania State Police for a copy of its report but did not hear back.
Ballistics
Mr. Higgins said he has conducted his own ballistics research and testing because the FBI has not shared its analysis with him or the task force. Other task force members also spoke to their frustration that the FBI withheld a lot of critical information, citing the need to protect the ongoing investigation.
The FBI did, however, allow Mr. Higgins to go to its lab at Quantico to examine two bullet fragments, the one recovered from Crooks’ back and one collected from the roof where he was positioned when shooting at Mr. Trump.
“I’ve had limited access, as controlled by the FBI. So I’ve had to get the original ammunition, each of which are law enforcement only controlled ammunition from Butler County ESU and from the Secret Service,” Mr. Higgins said.
The manufacturers of the ammunition told him they would be able to confirm whether the fragments came from their ammunition if they could examine them.
“But absent their access, I can’t confirm either of them,” Mr. Higgins said. “We just don’t know. We know it came from one of two rifles.”
In his limited interactions with the FBI, Mr. Higgins said he observed “a notable lack of investigative sharing,” adding, “They’re operating in silos.”
For example, he said he asked the FBI personnel working in the laboratory at Quantico if they read the autopsy report or the Pennsylvania State Police report to question where the other bullet fragments were.
Mr. Higgins said they did not do any of those things, telling him: “It’s not our job, congressman. We just examine what they give us.”
‘Chair with a gavel’
GOP leaders want Mr. Higgins to continue his investigation and he said he expects to “be in a chair with a gavel” — potentially a new subcommittee under the Oversight and Accountability Committee he already serves on — to do so.
“The full truth should eventually be revealed,” he said. “And because my investigative conclusion is at variance with the FBI investigative conclusion and the narrative being supported by the medical examiner and the Secret Service … it puts me in a position where I have to slowly and calmly present all the evidence to drag along these huge agencies to be in alignment with what I know to be the truth.”
Mr. Higgins has also looked into Crooks’ background, trying to assess his motive for the shooting, as the FBI has not identified one.
“I think Crooks went mad, which you have to ask yourself is why?” he said.
Mr. Higgins has not been allowed to interview Crooks’ parents but has spoken at length with their attorney and talked to others who knew Crooks.
“I’ve spent hours on the ground in Crooks’ neighborhood. I’ve spoken to members of the board of the college where he was scheduled to attend. They were very excited to get him. He was a highly accomplished engineering student,” he said. “What caused this guy to become a shooter talking to himself in the final year of his life?”
That’s one of the key questions Mr. Higgins hopes to answer as his investigation moves forward.
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.