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A Senate panel’s investigation into the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump is raising new questions about the bullets fired at the campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has requested the FBI provide a time sequence and trajectory analysis of all rounds fired at the rally from the would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks and federal and local law enforcement but has not received a response.
The FBI has so far accounted for 10 shots fired at the rally: eight rounds from Crooks, followed by one from a local law enforcement officer and one from a Secret Service sniper that killed Crooks.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who has accused the FBI of stonewalling most of the committee’s requests, told The Washington Times that the bullet trajectory analysis is especially important in light of testimony the panel received from two of the four Secret Service counter snipers assigned to cover the event.
The committee summarized that testimony in an interim report released Wednesday on its investigation, which detailed its preliminary findings on the Secret Service’s failures in planning and executing security for the rally.
The bullet trajectory analysis, along with Crooks’ autopsy report the committee has yet to receive, could also provide clarity around the shot the local law enforcement officer fired at Crooks, Mr. Johnson said. The local officer told the committee he hit Crooks before the Secret Service sniper’s kill shot, but the FBI has said it has no forensic evidence to support that claim.
The Secret Service assigned four countersnipers to cover the Butler rally, splitting them into two teams and positioning them on the rooftops of barns located behind the stage.
The “Hercules 1” countersniper team was positioned on the southern barn and included the countersniper team leader and his partner, who fired the shot that killed Crooks.
The “Hercules 2” team was on the northern barn, closest to the AGR building where Crooks climbed onto the rooftop to fire his shots. That team was assigned to scan the area around the AGR building for threats, but their view was partially obstructed by trees.
One of the counter snipers on the Hercules 2 team told the committee that after hearing shots fired, he thought that his partner was hit, “due to the proximity of these whip-like cracks.”
After the shooting, the sniper said he “asked my partner how close he thought the rounds were to our left, and he looked at me and said, ‘I heard them on my right.’ And the[re] were approximately six feet between him and I when we were on the rooftop at the main site.”
Sen. Johnson, who is the top Republican on the committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that has helped lead the probe, said the testimony from the sniper suggesting a bullet passed between him and his partner when the tree line allegedly obstructed them from Crooks’ position on the AGR building is confusing.
“They couldn’t see Crooks. Crooks couldn’t see him. So how did a bullet pass between the two of them?” he told The Times.
“How do you verify it? How do you prove it?” Mr. Johnson said. “I don’t know, but it’s why we need the FBI’s trajectory [analysis] accounting for all the bullets. I don’t know how you explain that one.”
The committee has not yet interviewed the other Hercules 2 sniper to confirm his partner’s account and said in the report it “cannot confirm whether any bullets passed by any of the USSS counter snipers.”
The counter sniper team leader who also worked on the Hercules 1 team was the other sniper the committee interviewed. He told the committee his team’s position had a “clear line-of-sight” of the AGR building, but the majority of the time he was facing “basically the same direction as the stage.”
The Secret Service countersniper team leader received text messages from a local sniper at 5:45 p.m. flagging an individual near the AGR building with a rangefinder looking toward the stage. The texts included two pictures of Crooks.
The Secret Service team leader responded that he would notify his team on the AGR side, which he emailed to the Hercules 2 team at 5:52 p.m.
The Hercules 2 countersniper who the committee interviewed said the email was “worded vaguely” but he and his partner continued to search the site. After several minutes, he spotted two white vehicles pull into the AGR parking lot, but they were obscured by the tree line.
“And from those two vehicles I saw one individual emerge from the tree line, identified him as a police officer, and I couldn’t tell why he was moving urgently, but I went over the radio with the following transmission: ‘Security Room from Hercules, locals are working something at the three o’clock, approximately 200 yards out,’” the sniper said.
After hearing that radio transmission, the Secret Service sniper team leader said he and his partner on Hercules 1 repositioned their rifles to face the AGR building and even without looking through the scopes they could see local police running towards the building with their hands on their pistols.
“I think one actually had a pistol facing towards the ground, out of a holster,” he said. “That’s a pretty big deal for us, so immediately we turned and faced our guns towards the threat area. We didn’t know what was happening, but it seemed pretty serious, especially with the locals’ response.”
The committee asked why he didn’t send a radio transmission telling Mr. Trump’s protective detail not to let him on stage or to remove him if he was already on stage. The sniper team leader said he didn’t know any more about the situation than the Hercules 2 sniper had already communicated about local police working an issue to the three o’clock and they were “trying not to clog the radio.”
“The thought did not cross my mind,” he said when pressed on whether he even considered sending a warning to remove Mr. Trump. “It was more find out what’s happening, figure out what’s happening. Can we help? Can we take action?”
The countersniper team leader said his partner on Hercules 1 fired his weapon at Crooks after he “distinctly heard three shots.” He then heard his partner say, “I got him.”
The sniper team leader did not see Crooks on the roof of the AGR building until after his partner, who spotted him “mere seconds” before firing the kill shot. No permission to fire was requested or required.
That’s all according to the team leader’s account, as the committee has not yet been granted its request to interview the sniper who shot Crooks.
“The excuse they use is the Pennsylvania [district attorney] or Butler County DA hasn’t decided whether they’re going to charge him or not,” Mr. Johnson said.
“Somebody died, and so they have to do an investigation, are they going to charge that individual?” he said. “I mean, I think you can kind of reach that conclusion in a week, right? But here we are two months [later], they haven’t done that. Is that just a convenient excuse? I don’t know. But we haven’t talked to him.”
Mr. Johnson said another issue that has fallen under the radar is the local law enforcement officer who fired at Crooks.
“The guy is certain he hit him,” he said, noting the committee spoke with that Butler officer.
Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe has “never even talked about local law enforcement taking the first shot, which probably disrupted his plans,” Mr. Johnson said. “Why aren’t we talking about that?”
The committee report buries the account of that Butler officer’s shot on page 84 out of 90, not including appendices.
The Butler officer said he shouldered his weapon as Crooks fired his eighth round, recounting that he “saw the gas come from the muzzle, I heard the snap, and then immediately I returned fire.”
Other federal and local law enforcement officers “confirmed that they saw or heard an officer fire from the area where the Butler ESU officer stated he fired from,” including the Hercules 2 countersniper, the report said.
The Butler officer told the committee he believed he shot Crooks in the right shoulder or right side of his neck.
Crooks “did not get another shot off after I engaged,” he said, noting he “went down and slowly came back up.”
The officer said he was “ready to press the second” shot when the Secret Service countersniper “took him out.”
The FBI said on an Aug. 28 press call that it has “no forensic evidence” indicating that that round the local officer fired struck Crooks or his rifle.
The committee has requested but not yet received a copy of Crooks’ autopsy report. Mr. Johnson said the House task force investigating the assassination attempt issued a subpoena to obtain it but has not shared it with the Senate.
The House task force is holding a hearing Thursday on its investigation. The Allegheny County medical examiner who conducted the autopsy is among the witnesses scheduled to testify.
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