It was a shot from above that killed would-be assassin Thomas Crooks at a July campaign rally where he almost murdered former President Donald Trump.
But it was a shot from below that took Crooks out of action first, according to a congressional report made public Thursday.
And that shot, fired by a local law enforcement sniper, was incredible.
The report was written by Louisiana Republican Rep. Clay Higgins.
It found that Crooks fired eight shots, killing a firefighter who attended the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally with his family, critically wounding two others, and coming within a hair’s breadth of ending the life of the 45th president.
The ninth shot fired that day came from a SWAT team member from Butler County.
It did not kill Crooks but struck the stock of his rifle and “fragged his face/neck/right shoulder area from the stock breaking up.” The shot is also believed to have disabled the rifle’s buffer tube, a critical component in the weapon’s cycling function.
The document contains unusually colorful language for a congressional report:
“The SWAT operator who took this shot was a total bada**; 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.”
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It was one shot, but it was enough to disable the assailant’s weapon and could well have saved more lives.
The 10th shot fired that day apparently came from a Secret Service sniper from a location above Crooks. That shot put Crooks down permanently.
The heroically accurate shot fired from the ground is one of the details Higgins has documented so far in his investigation of the July 13 assassination attempt. Not all of the findings are as welcome.
He has criticized the FBI, for instance, for releasing Crooks’ body for cremation before it could be thoroughly examined.
He accused the FBI of cleaning up “biological evidence” at the scene, as the Washington Examiner reported.
And he found that Butler County law enforcement had set aside radios for the Secret Service that were “were properly and perfectly arranged during the extensive pre-mission planning.” But the Secret Service never picked them up.
The American public already knows, however, that security failure abounded at the Trump rally that day.
Anytime a would-be assassin gets within firing range of a president or former president it’s a failure in itself.
But the American public didn’t have a picture of a local law enforcement SWAT team officer taking one shot — from the ground — at Thomas Crooks and his murderous weapon.
And making it an incredible one.
