It's been over a month since Thomas Matthew Crooks fired a shot at former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, nearly assassinating him.
In that time, multiple investigations have been opened, and fingers are still being pointed given the gravity of the situation and the fact that people want and deserve answers.
According to Fox News, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) apparently triggered the FBI after he accused the agency of giving the suspect's body back to the family just over a week after the shooting.
Higgins is a member of a bipartisan investigation task force looking into how it was the Crooks was nearly able to kill President Trump at the Butler rally on July 13.
Higgins, in a preliminary finding, accused the FBI of mishandling the investigation, and said the agency handed the shooter's body back to his family just 10 days after the assassination attempt.
The FBI has vehemently denied such accusations.
Fox News noted:
The agency says it refutes allegations by Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., who says that when he requested to view Crooks' body on Aug. 5, nobody on the ground in Butler knew it had been handed back to the suspect's family on July 23. Higgins said the revelation "caused quite a stir and revealed a disturbing fact."
Fox continued:
Higgins says the releasing of the body, and other claims of bad practice leveled at the FBI, amounts to an "obstruction to any following investigative effort."
In his report to the chairperson of the task force, Higgins wrote, "My effort to examine Crooks’ body on Monday, August 5, caused quite a stir and revealed a disturbing fact . . . the FBI released the body for cremation 10 days after J13 [July 13]."
He added, "Nobody knew this until Monday, August 5, including the County Coroner, law enforcement, Sheriff, etc," Higgins writes. "Yes, Butler County Coroner technically had legal authority over the body, but I spoke with the Coroner, and he would have never released Crooks’ body to the family for cremation or burial without specific permission from the FBI."
In a statement to Fox News, Higgins once again insisted that the FBI authorized the release of Crooks' body at that time.
"My report states the precise truth, which is that the coroner released Crooks body to the family for cremation only after the FBI had specifically authorized the coroner to release Crooks' body to the family for cremation," he said.
The Louisiana Republican expressed concerns that we'll never know "for sure if the coroner’s report and the autopsy report are accurate" given that the body was released so early for cremation.
Obviously, there are a mountain of questions that still need truthful answers. Hopefully, Higgins and others get to the bottom of what happened.
