Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) — who is assisting with a bipartisan Senate investigation into the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump — told Fox News that the FBI and Secret Service are “slow walking” the investigation.
“All I can really tell you is the Secret Service and the FBI are basically dragging their feet. They’re stonewalling us,” Johnson told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
“We’ve gotten some transcribed interviews, but the documents we request are heavily redacted. They’re delivered you know, the day of the interview, so we really can’t use the documents to conduct the interviews effectively. So, we’re not getting squat from my standpoint from the Secret Service or FBI,” he continued. “We’ve requested all of their 302’s, their transcriptions of their interviews with hundreds of individuals. They’re not turning those over to us as well.”
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The lack of transparency, Johnson continued, is only adding to suspicion surrounding the attempt on Trump’s life, which killed retired firefighter Corey Comperatore as he shielded his family from gunfire. The Wisconsin senator described the FBI’s decision to cremate would-be Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks’ body before any autopsy or toxicology reports could be done as “jaw-dropping.”
“Again, it’s just driving suspicion and conspiracy theories,” Johnson said.
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On Monday, several members of the U.S. House of Representatives gathered for a field hearing on the assassination attempt and the status of the investigation. Members who participated in the hearing — including U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Cory Mills (R-FL) Matt Gates (R-FL) and Chip Roy (R-TX) — raised similar concerns to those raised by Johnson.
Rep. Roy listed a number of irregularities surrounding the investigation that have been chalked up to “incompetence” on the part of law enforcement personnel before asking a panel of experts if they found it unusual. Lawmakers heard testimony from former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, Blackwater founder Erik Prince and SWAT counter-sniper Ben Shaffer, who was working in Butler, Pennsylvania during the assassination attempt.
Roy began by noting that Crooks fired from a building located outside the building. “Do you believe that you can just chalk up to mere incompetence,that the Secret Service did not attend the nine o’clock meeting for scheduling purposes? They literally just didn’t attend.”
Local law enforcement personnel have stated that the Secret Service did not attend a pre-event briefing and ultimately left the roof of the AGR building uncovered due to the heat. They also were not synced up with local law enforcement on radio channels, leading to a delay when a local officer confronted Crooks.
“Can you chalk it up to mere incompetence that they identified crooks about an hour ahead of time and that the President, President Trump, was never removed from the stage, they didn’t delay, they didn’t hold him back, they didn’t remove him from the potential danger,” Roy continued. “That the perimeter did not include the buildings around over here and to the extent, should there have been a perimeter that was farther out and the extent that the perimeter wasn’t farther out, that they at least make sure the building wasn’t covered. Is that just incompetence? Is it just incompetence that there was no drone being flown and the drone was turned down by the Secret Service? Was it just incompetence that the shooter had a drone, as the FBI director testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee, that he literally had flying within a couple hundred feet of the stage the same day mere hours before the shooting?”
Bongino agreed that the security failures are seemingly too “apocalyptic” to be chalked up to mere incompetence alone.
The full exchange can be viewed below.
