Fox News host Jesse Watters ripped into the initial reports on the death of Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump in July after a congressional report offered an alternate conclusion.
The preliminary report presented a narrative about who first shot at Crooks that is decidedly different than the one the FBI has delivered. The investigative report from Rep. Clay Higgins showed that a local SWAT operator at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania was the first to strike Crooks despite initial reports that a Secret Service sniper killed the would-be assassin with one shot to his head.
Higgins, a member of the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump, delivered his findings after a personal trip to the rally site and, among other conclusions, noted that “The 9th shot fired on J13 was from a Butler SWAT operator from the ground about 100 yards away from the AGR building. Shot 9 hit Crooks’ rifle stock and fragged his face/neck/right shoulder area from the stock breaking up.”
The host of “Jesse Watters Primetime” expressed his surprise over the SWAT operator’s role during a discussion on the congressional investigation with Sen. Josh Hawley.
Watters criticized the frustrating “drip drip, drip” of information from the FBI investigations, noting that “the real investigative work is being done by Congress.” After he explained the first shot that neutralized Crooks was actually made by the local cop, Watters said, “I didn’t know that.”
ALERT: @HawleyMO reveals shocking new whistleblower testimony about the agents assigned to Trump’s detail the day he was nearly assassinated. pic.twitter.com/IFR8c25hI1
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) September 4, 2024
Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe made “no mention” of the SWAT operator’s role during his testimony before Congress, Watters noted, saying, “He gave his agency total credit for bringing down Crooks.”
However, according to Higgins’ report:
The SWAT operator who took this shot was a total badass; when 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. I won’t be certain of this until I can examine Crooks’ rifle, but I’m 99% sure, based upon reliable eye-witness ESU tactical officers who observed Crooks’ rifle before the FBI harvested it as evidence. This means that if his AR buffer tube was damaged, Crooks’ rifle wouldn’t fire after his 8th shot.
Crooks “went down” from his firing position when shot 9 was fired, and the SWAT officer was certain of his hit. According to the ESU SWAT operator, Crooks recovered after just a few seconds, and “popped back up”.
The 10th (and, I believe, final) shot was fired from the southern counter-sniper team. I will not be100% certain of this until further investigation. However, I am quite sure that the USSS southern counter-sniper team fired the killing shot, which, according to my investigation, entered somewhere around the left mouth area and exited the right ear area. Instant over. This entry-exit aligns with USSS southern counter-sniper team position.
The same report had noted that Higgins’ attempt to examine the shooter’s body “revealed a disturbing fact… the FBI released the body for cremation 10 days after J13.”
Once again, the FBI is lying. It is 100% NOT “standard procedure” to cremate a body at the center of a major criminal investigation BEFORE a following investigative authority has had an opportunity to examine that body, when the FBI is VERY MUCH AWARE that a following… pic.twitter.com/z8W2G1B0k4
— Rep. Clay Higgins (@RepClayHiggins) August 29, 2024
“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,” the Louisiana congressman, a former police captain, wrote.
