by WorldTribune Staff, May 7, 2025 Real World News
The FBI botched its investigation of the 2017 shooting at the Republican team’s practice for the year’s congressional baseball game, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said.
In a report released on Tuesday, the committee said the FBI used “false statements” and “manipulated known facts” in its investigation into the shooting 0n June 14, 2017 in which leftist activist James Hodgkinson, armed with a rifle, opened fire on Republican lawmakers at the practice field in Alexandria, Virginia. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise was shot and suffered severe injuries.
Hodgkinson shot four people, including Scalise, U.S. Capitol Police officer Crystal Griner, congressional aide Zack Barth, and lobbyist Matt Mika. A ten-minute shootout took place between Hodgkinson and officers from the Capitol and Alexandria Police before officers shot Hodgkinson, who died from his wounds later that day at George Washington University Hospital.
The committee’s report said the FBI “failed to even conduct substantive interviews of all the shooting victims and other eyewitnesses.”
The committee noted that the FBI released a report just seven days into its investigation “arriving at a conclusion there was ‘no nexus to terrorism’ by utilizing false statements and manipulation of known facts.” The FBI “doubled down on this hasty determination,” saying that Hodgkinson’s motive had most aligned “with an act of ‘suicide by cop.’ ”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said: “Suicide by cop? The guy had a hit list in his pocket. He had six names, Republican members of Congress, on a piece of paper in his pocket,” adding that FBI Director James Comey and other bureau officials “all knew it was domestic terrorism, but that didn’t fit their narrative.”
The report said the FBI had in its possession from Hodgkinson a list of names of Congress members with no additional context, with the FBI stating in its initial investigation that it “does not appear to be a ‘hit list.’ ”
The report states: “Whatever its political purpose, the FBI’s starting position was that the shooter was suicidal, hoping to die by gunfire with police. It appears to the Committee that investigative efforts and intelligence analysis then attempted to reinforce the ‘suicide by cop’ argument despite the clear and contrary facts of the case. The FBI case file makes clear this case was a premeditated assassination attempt on Republican congressmen by a radical, left-wing political extremist, who was seeking to affect the conduct of our government.”
The committee’s report said that Hodgkinson had taken actions in the lead up to the shooting “that may indicate he hoped to survive the firefight,” including concealing himself behind a building while firing, and looking up directions from his location in Alexandria to his home in Illinois the night before.
The Committee concluded after reviewing thousands of documents handed over by the FBI under current Director Kash Patel’s leadership that “1) the FBI investigation failed to substantively interview eyewitnesses to the shooting; 2) the FBI investigation failed to develop a comprehensive timeline of events; and, 3) the FBI case file was improperly classified, which may have assisted the FBI in obfuscating its substandard
“This is the same FBI that can’t tell us who planted the pipe bomb [on Jan. 6], who can’t tell us who leaked the Dobbs opinion, and who can’t tell us who put cocaine at the White House,” Jordan noted. “We shouldn’t be surprised that they reached the wrong conclusion. They knew what the facts were.”
The bureau stuck with the “suicide by cop” motive until 2021 when it reclassified the incident as “domestic violent extremism” after pressure from Congress.
“This wasn’t suicide by cop,” Scalise said at a GOP press conference. “The guy went there with the intention of killing all of us on the baseball field.”
“This report definitively shows the FBI completely mishandled the investigation into the congressional baseball shooting of 2017,” Scalise said. “Ignoring crucial and obvious facts to sell a narrative is unacceptable.”
“The FBI knew what the facts were, but they deliberately chose to suppress them because acknowledging the truth didn’t fit their narrative,” Scalise said. He also praised Patel for providing the additional documents obtained by Congress that facilitated the report.
“This is about more than one event. It’s about accountability,” Scalise said. “The American people deserve to know the truth, and this report is one step toward achieving that.”
Support Free Press Foundation
The American Free Press is Back!
House Intel report slams FBI ‘investigation’ of 2017 GOP Congressional baseball shooting added by Editor Two on May 7, 2025
View all posts by Editor Two →
Source link